On 1/15/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Iraq was a soviet satellite who's number was up as
> soon as the cold war was over.
Iraq was never a Soviet "satellite." that status was reserved for
Eastern European countries and not all of them. It was more of a
"marriage of convenience." The USSR backed the Ba'athist "non
capitalist road" (nationalist state capitalism) in order to get points
in the Cold War game. Saddam -- who initially won his reputation by
killing Communists -- was willing to play along in order to get MiGs
and the like.
Also, by the time of Perestroika, the USSR, _still existing_, was
already pulling back its support for third world governments. The
USSR basically stood with the USA against Saddam Hussein's invasion of
Kuwait and for the Gulf War.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/gorbachev/1.html>
Q: You issued a joint Soviet-American statement condemning Iraq within
two days of the invasion. What led you to do that?
Gorbachev: The world had become different and the two superpowers were
in the situation where we had to show whether we were able to
cooperate in this new situation, especially on such a critical issue
like aggression. A country was occupied. If we were not able to cope
with that situation, everything else would have been made null and
void.
Q: How difficult was that decision to throw your lot in with the United States?
Gorbachev: We were quite firm about it. Similar steps were made by
other countries. We called for an immediate end to the aggression and
solving the problem politically. But, we did not declare that we were
breaking all our relations with Iraq at once. On the contrary by this
firm demand we gave them a clear-cut signal that we would be together
with the UN and what they did was unacceptable. But on the other hand,
we were also acting as friends of Iraq. There was no contradiction in
it. We were throwing a life ring to Iraq. If they reversed the
situation, they could have preserved the relations. We didn't say we
were breaking everything at once.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
