For many years Soviet leaders have anticipated military–political and strategic benefits for the Soviet Union from the shift in the global ‘correlation of forces’ represented by the spread of non-alignment in the Third World. They understood that neutralism and non-alignment could impede or restrain the development of close military relations between many newly independent states and the Western powers. In the 1950s and 1960s the American strategy of containment sought to integrate key Third World states in anti-Soviet (and anti-Chinese) coalitions and alliances in regions close to the Soviet borders. In response Soviet officials strove to convince third World states that entry into such alliances and the concession of military bases and facilities to Western states were counterproductive. The developing countries were urged to renounce such military links and embrace a policy of neutralism or non-alignment. This Soviet strategy is analysed in the first section of this chapter.

The continent where coordination in questions of military security between the Western powers and Third World states aroused the greatest concern among Soviet leaders was Asia. To counteract Western influence Soviet officials advocated a system of collective security. The idea of collective security had emerged as a theme in Soviet policy in the 1950s. Western statesmen had perceived it as a Soviet device to prise the United States and Western Europe apart. A Soviet statement in March 1958 had called for the establishment of collective security in both Europe and Asia as a basis for destroying the Western-inspired pacts, NATO and SEATO.