With regard to the Cuban missile crisis, it is
perhaps worth noting that there were at least two
motives for Khrushchev putting the missiles in
Cuba. One was to respond to the US having put
missiles in Turkey. The other was in response to
pressure from Castro who we now know was begging]
for him to put them in to help protect Castro from
invasion from the US. The first of these was certainly
very clearly in the USSR's national interest.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 01, 2001 6:05 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:7682] Re: Soviet Union foreign policy
>The USSR quite sensibly backed off from nuclear war with the US over
>Cuba--Khrushchev, unlike Kennedy, having more brains than testosterone. The
>bet, not a crazy one, though wrong, in putting missiles in Cuba, was that
>the US would respond sanely without postering. The assertion that the USSR
>had an internationalist foreign policy is unsupported, and also nonsense.
>The USSR supported national liberation and socialism where it conformed to
>Soviet natioan interests, and not where not. Stalin himself crushed the
>Spanish revolutioon. He sold Greece and tried to sell Yugo to the West at
>Yalta. He established an imperial buffer zone in East Europe that was
>maintained by force in Berlin, Hungary, Czecho, and Poland. I could go
>on.Soviet foreign policy is only internationalist for someline like you,
>Charles, who identifies the interests of the world working class with those
>of the Soviet state. The USSR was not a _capitalist_ exploiter, but it wasa
>traditional great power in its foreign relations, looking to the narrow
>national interests of the state, not to the interests of a wider group,
>such as the working class. --jks
>
>
>>
>> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>After the mid 20's, you can
>>get a lot further in predicting Soviet foreign policy using a straight
line
>>national interest calculation than an ideological one.
>>
>>((((((((((
>>
>>CB: How was almost going to nuclear war with the U.S. over Cuba in the
>>Soviet narrow national interest ? How was one way economic support to Cuba
>>and other countries in Soviet national interest ?
>>
>>The SU had internationalist foreign policy
>>
>>
>>
>>Sure, the USSR supported some national liberation movements--that is one
of
>>the few half-way decent things it did. But it never did that when it
didn't
>>seem that this would not further great power goals.
>>
>>(((((((((((
>>
>>CB: The SU didn't act like a capitalist great power. It didn't have
>>colonies , i.e. economically exploitative relations with the other
>>socialist and socialist path nations
>>
>>
>
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