Recent Trends in Soviet East Asian Policy

While Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Soviet foreign and security policies in East Asia were a sad spectacle of frustration and failure. A recent evaluation in Pravada described the predicament.

Power politics swallowed up tremendous resources and weighed heavily on the country without paying any dividends. Not only did the threat to our security not diminish, it actually increased. The U.S.S.R.’s prestige declined, and its political positions were undermined. Meanwhile, the Soviet Far East lagged increasingly behind in economic development

The policy legacy included the huge expansion of Soviet regional land, naval, air and strategic forces (first in the mid-1960s and then again after 1978), the support of Vietnamese expansion into Laos and Cambodia, the new bases at Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the growing military cooperation with North Korea. All of this had elicited the predictable responses from other powers. China sought diplomatic and military cooperation with the United States and Japan, the United States initiated a large regional military buildup, Japan began to rearm, and U.S.-Japanese-South Korean military cooperation expanded. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s cooperation with Vietnam damaged its relations with both China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Soviets found themselves diplomatically isolated and faced with the prospect of a futile and costly Asian arms race to match that in Europe.