Soviet Political Relations with Africa

Soviet Political1 Henry Bienen Relations with Africa I Policy analyses of soviet behavior in Africa often focus on whether the USSR has a "grand design" or whether it operates opportunistically, reacting to openings as they arise.' The intention in posing this question is to weigh Soviet threats and to try to anticipate Soviet actions. But investigating Soviet behavior from the either/or dichotomy posed by grand design uersus targets of opportunity is not very useful. Certainly, the Soviet Union has goals and policies towards Africa, and it presumably orders them in some hierarchy. However, goals and policies change over time both in response to events in Africa and in response to successes and failures of Soviet (and American) policies in other parts of the world. Different factional and institutional actors may differ on questions of goals and priorities or, at the very least, over weighing costs and benefits of specific policies and programs. Even if all decision-makers in the Soviet Union-the highest level Politburo members, Central Committee apparatchiki with African responsibilities, officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, civilian and military defense planners, and members of the research institutesshare highly general goals such as expanding Soviet power and weakening Western countries, analysts would expect that these actors would make different estimates of possibilities given their functional and institutional roles, their factional alliances, and their personal estimates of situations . It is difficult to judge with any confidence who in the Soviet Union shares particular assumptions, as well as which actors are willing to pay what costs to further particular objectives. Observers have a difficult enough time understanding specific policy decisions in the United States, even when decisions are made public or quasi-public through interviews, publications, and Henry Bienen is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also Director of the Woodrow Wilson School's Research Program in Development Studies. This article was written under the auspices of Princeton University's Center of lnternational Studies. 1. For further discussion see Henry Bienen, "Perspectives on Soviet Intervention in Africa," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 95, No. 1(Spring 1980),pp. 2942. ~~ Znternatiunal Secunty, Spnng 1982 (Vol 6, No. 4) 0162-2889/82/040153-21$02.50/0 @ 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 153 International Security I 154 leaking of documents. As for the USSR, analysts, by reading the Soviet press and officialpublications,2and by employing modes of bureaucratic analy~is,~ can discern objectives and infer assumptions with regard to Soviet behavior in Africa. But evidence will frequently be weak and contradictory, and there will be relatively few independent means to confirm or deny hypotheses about Soviet behavior in specific cases. Because of the closed nature of the Soviet system, the difficulties in analyzing Soviet behavior towards Africa have led some observers to simply postulate a set of Soviet global or regional goals that are deduced from what the observers believe to be Soviet ideology or from the Soviet Union’s commitments to world-wide expansion. (The drive to expand may be thought to stem not from ideology, but from historical national drives for security and great power status.) Other students of Soviet behavior in Africa who have examined actions over time try to consider Soviet activity in terms of economic and military commitments and cultural exchanges. They attempt to analyze the intensity of relationships by measuring the transfer of resources and the nature of exchanges, and then relating these transfers to phases of Soviet activity in the third world or in particular regions. These phases may be determined by Soviet capabilities and shifting perspectives, as well as by opportunities provided in specific countries. Soviet perspectives and intentions may be in turn affected by Soviet relations with the United States over issues which are removed, in the first instance, from great power stances toward third world countries. Again, analysts cannot be sure about the weight that should be given to various factors in evaluating Soviet policy commitments. It is possible, for example, that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and earlier large-scale interventions in Africa were influenced by a conviction that trade relations with the West...