The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow's Caribbean Strategy (review)

232 SAIS REVIEW The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow's Caribbean Strategy. By Timothy Ashby. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987. 240 pp. $22.95/cloth. Reviewed by Thomas Mahnken, M. A. candidate, SAIS. As Timothy Ashby amply demonstrates, since 1960 Soviet influence has increased in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to Ashby, Soviet strategy aims to use this influence to apply geopolitical pressure on the United States pressure that the Soviets hope will lead to a retraction of U.S. overseas commitments and to a shift in the global balance of power. The policy is vulnerable, however, because Latin America is distant from the Soviet Union, while literally in the back yard of the United States. Hence, the strategy is not only extremely costly to the USSR but also dependent on proxies, which are themselves vulnerable to internal and external pressures (and which, though Ashby rarely mentions it, have their own interests). Ashby's thesis, that the USSR has a systematic plan for the penetration of Latin America, is itself arguable. Still, his enumeration of Soviet activities in the region is impressive. The linchpin of the strategy is Cuba, the USSR's "unsinkable aircraft carrier." Despite the fact that Fidel Castro's relationship with the Cuban Communist party began as one of mutual mistrust and hostility, Soviet assistance to Castro escalated rapidly after he seized power. Cuba's dependence on the USSR grew throughout the 1960s, climaxing in Castro's 1968 decision essentially to trade Cuban sovereignty for steady aid. Since then Cuba has become a major Soviet surrogate for spying, power projection, and support of revolutionary movements. Unfortunately, the book lacks sufficient consideration of the effect of domestic politics on Cuban foreign policy. While Ashby sees Havana's policies as a function of subservience to Moscow, Castro's own aspirations to grandeur may be equally important. A similar transformation occurred on Grenada following the 1979 coup that brought Maurice Bishop and his NewJewel movement to power. Evidence of the Soviet- and Cuban-sponsored covert buildup, which made the island an epicenter of regional revolutionary activity, is compelling and is corroborated by documents captured during the 1983 U.S. invasion. Grenada was anxious to be a Soviet proxy, probably as much for national prestige as for socialist internationalism . While Grenada was no doubt valuable to the Soviets as a rallying point for regional destabilization, its strategic significance is debatable. Ashby's exploration of the origins of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua is insightful, although here, too, the analysis suffers from ignoring Nicaraguan society as a variable. In contrast with its initially cautious attitude following the Cuban revolution and its covert assistance to the Bishop regime, Moscow heralded the Sandinistas with immediate and substantial aid. Cuban and Soviet sponsorship of the massive Nicaraguan buildup is incontrovertible , as is the Nicaraguan role in exporting revolution through such groups as the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador and the M- 19 faction in Colombia. BOOK REVIEWS 233 Ashby uses a wide range of sources to back his assertions, including captured Cuban, Grenadan, and Nicaraguan documents; interviews with government leaders and defectors; congressional testimony; and memoirs. The author's reliance on details, however, often obscures the larger picture in which regional events occur and which would provide a more useful context for studying Soviet strategy in the Caribbean. Life and Death in Shanghai. By Nien Cheng. New York: Grove Press, 1987. 496 pp. $19.95/cloth. Reviewed by Linda S. Crowl, SAIS M.A. 1987. Life and Death in Shanghaiis a highly readable account of one woman's disenchantment with the People's Republic of China. Nien Cheng relates the story of her imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution and her subsequent years of "freedom" and "rehabilitation" before her emigration to the West. The tale flows so well that the reader has difficulty setting the book aside. One wonders how Cheng could recount the dialogue with such precision so many years after the events. But prison is a lonely place; she had many solitary days to reflect on her captors' words. Cheng writes fluently and for the most part chronologically of the strugglemeeting leading to her arrest, her stay...