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Proxies: The Long Arm of Soviet Foreign Policy
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12212 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1987 |
2,738 Words |
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Paul Seabury
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One feature of the "struggle over peace" since the Bolshevik Revolution has been the Soviets' use of proxy forces to advance their interests. In the interwar years, when the Soviets' capacity to project power was much more confined than today, their chief assets were the Comintern, local parties, and front organizations. Recently, however, Soviet proxy operations have grown to proportions few could have imagined decades ago. As the proxy system has grown, it has become more difficult for observers and analysts to grasp its entirety. From time to time, analysts have well understood pieces of it - such as Soviet proxy operations in Angola, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Party and government documents seized by the United States in Grenada provide vivid glimpses of the dynamics of the proxy system on that little island during the New Jewel period. Proxy operations sponsored by the Soviets in southern Lebanon have been well documented in PLO materials seized and published by the Israelis after their invasion of that region in 1982. Information collected by Italian authorities after the attempt upon the pope have thrown much light upon proxy terrorist activities in Europe - notably, the "Bulgarian connection."
The terrorist networkings now are sufficiently known to show their lineage in great detail. For instance, Sadinista Marxists were trained by the PLO in southern Lebanon before they returned to Central America. Others were trained in Cuba. The Cuban and PLO camps were established with help from the Soviets, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Similar camps have been established in Nicaragua since the Sandinistas seized power.
Early on, observers of Soviet proxy operations in Africa and the Middle East noted a functional division of labor among proxies - those bloc states and fronts which aided the Soviet struggle for "national liberation," and the consolidation of Marxist regimes. While Soviet forces normally remained behind the scenes, the role of consolidating police-state power fell to the East Germans, who instructed and controlled local elements in developing concentration camp and internal security police. Cuban troops were cannon fodder and other proxies had other specific functions. One might call this the "socialist division of labor," since the pattern has held both in East and West Africa. Our knowledge of Soviet proxy operations in South Africa today is still, in public print primitive; African National Congress (ANC) military and terrorist operations appear to be headquartered in Addis Ababa. Little is publicly known of the methods and location of training sites for professional ANC cadres, although some surmise them to be in Ethiopia.
Soviet satellite states
Long lists of such participants in the proxy system could be recited. But here is one critical observation: New to the proxy system since the 1930s is the participation of communist states and, in particular, Soviet satellite states.
Few analysts ponder the interrelations among the Soviet satellite states; instead, there is an inclination to concentrate upon particulars, especially ones which erupt into great local crises. Thus, we are ill-informed as to the strategic interrelations among them and how they are coordinated and funded. We are ill-informed about their frictions and, most of all, their various incentives, spirits, and commitments - in other words, how they relate to each other.
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