Military Proxies

The role of Vietnam in South East Asia has been fully documented by this correspondent in Salient earlier this year. In essence, like Cuba, Vietnam too has become a proxy for the Soviet Union. Both Cuba and Vietnam receive billions of dollars a year from the Soviet Union in military aid and both have used it in committing aggression against third countries. And characteristically enough for imperialist "alliances", both are no better off for the aid they have received from the Soviet Union.

And yet for reasons best known to themselves, the leaderships of both countries have moved still closer to the Soviet Union. They now embrace Soviet foreign policy as their own and try to palm it off as the natural road which should be taken by the Non-Aligned Movement. All during the summit they called, implicitly and explicitly, on the member countries and organisations to accept the Soviet Union as the "natural ally" of the Movement.

The Cuban penned draft of the final communique could not go far enough in it condemnation of US imperialism around the world but was silent about the unsavoury deeds of Soviet foreign policy.

The fact that the final draft was significantly altered to include a condemnation of "dominationism and hegemonism," diplomatic code words for Soviet imperialism, represented a setback for Moscow.