This article analyzes changing Soviet foreign policy toward Southwest Asia, mainly Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. The region is important to Soviet security and strategic interests, and Soviet policy toward the region has been consistently cautious, far-sighted, flexible, and shrewd. Moscow avoids serious risks and adjusts quickly to changing conditions. The USSR is interested in widening and protecting its interests in Southwest Asia in order to achieve regional capability and to influence events beyond the region.
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References
1.
1. Malcolm Yapp, “The Soviet Union and Iran Since 1978,” in The Soviet Union and the Middle East in the 1980s: Opportunities, Constraints and Dilemmas, ed. M. V. Kauppi and R. C. Nation (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1983), p. 227; Malcolm Yapp, “Soviet Relations with the Countries of the Northern Tier,” in The Soviet Union in the Middle East: Politics and Perspectives, ed. Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 42.
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2. Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Mission for My Country (London: Hutchinson, 1961), p. 120.
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3. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977-1981 (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1983), pp. 426-428.
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4. For the text of Brezhnev's statement, see Fred Schulze, ed., Soviet Foreign Policy Today: Reports and Commentaries from the Soviet Press (Columbus, OH: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 1983), pp. 97-98.
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5. Cited in Jonathan Steele, World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy under Brezhnev and Andropov (London: Michael Joseph, 1983), p. 116.
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6. Leonid I. Brezhnev, Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the XXVI Congress (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1981), p. 18.
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7. Desmond Ball, Soviet Ears in the Ether: A Guide to Soviet Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Capabilities and Operations (forthcoming); private sources.
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8. Brezhnev, Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the XXVI Congress, p. 19.
9.
9. Martin Talbot, “Afghanistan: New Stage for Tudeh Party,”Soviet Analyst, 13:13 (27 June 1984).
10.
a translation of an abstract in Schulze, ed., Soviet Foreign Policy Today, p. 88.
