U.S.-Soviet Interactions in the Third World.

This chapter will begin by outlining the general structure of US-Soviet conflict in the Third World in the first three postwar decades, analyze the several important changes that occurred during the mid-to-late 70s, and conclude with an elaboration of the implications of these changes for the balance of the decade and beyond. While future US-Soviet interaction in the Third World will look similar to what has occurred in the past, with the Soviet Union and its allies seeking to change a status quo backed by the United States, the present paper will argue that the United States and the Soviet Union are in the process of reversing roles in the Third World in certain key respects, and that consequently superpower interactions there are likely to appear quite different from what we have come to expect in the past.