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Proxies: The Long Arm of Soviet Foreign Policy
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12212 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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Date : |
2 / 1987 |
2,738 Words |
| Author
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Paul Seabury
Paul Seabury is a professor of political science at the
University of California at Berkeley. His War: Ends and
Means, coauthored with Angelo Codevilla, is forthcoming. |
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
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