The Superpower Quest for Empire: The Cold War and Soviet Support for ‘Wars of National Liberation’

Abstract

As the Cold War with its focus on confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States fades further into the historical background, the legacies of that struggle continue to flourish in large portions of the developing world. The murderous warfare that devastated Afghanistan and Somalia after 1990, the lethality of local and regional conflicts in Africa and Asia, and the dominant role of the military in so many developing countries are but part of the negative legacy of the Cold War throughout the Global South. In this essay we examine the ways in which the superpowers expanded their initially European-based conflict throughout the developing world, so that by the 1970s and 1980s they were involved in supporting opposite sides in numerous regional conflicts throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. We begin with a discussion of the origins and nature of the global confrontation known as the Cold War. We will argue that only after it had become clear by the mid-to-late 1950s that direct military confrontation in Europe was likely to bring with it mutual annihilation through nuclear war did the Soviets and Americans shift the focus of their competition to the developing world. We will then focus on the escalating level of Soviet involvement in the support of ‘progressive forces’ across the Third World (Global South) in their struggle against the West, including Arab states, against what both viewed as Israeli and American imperialism, and in wars of national liberation that culminated in direct military intervention in Afghanistan. We will point to the factors that contributed to the growing Soviet hubris that contributed to the imperial overstretch that, along with internal political and economic stagnation and emerging nationalism, eventually brought down the entire Soviet imperial system. The US response, especially under Ronald Reagan, was to provide support to forces throughout the developing world that challenged those who had sided with the Soviets and their Cuban allies; the result was a significant expansion of military conflict in