The Soviet Union and the Arab World
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Author | John R. Swanson |
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591297402700406 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
637
THE
SOVIET
UNION
AND
THE
ARAB
WORLD:
REVOLUTIONARY
PROGRESS
THROUGH
DEPENDENCE
ON
LOCAL
ELITES
JOHN
R.
SWANSON
Central
Methodist
College
t
has
by
now
become
virtual
doctrine
for
many
American
analysts
of
Soviet
~
foreign
policy
that
ideology
and
ideological
goals
are
of
relatively
low
priority
for
Soviet
policy
makers,
and
in
the
opinion
of
some
scholars
simply
irrelevant.
The
prevailing
mode
of
analysis
today
is
to
examine
Soviet
policy
more
or
less
entirely
in
terms
of
&dquo;national
inte~rest,&dquo;
bipolar
or
tripolar
rivalry
with
the
United
States
and
China,
or
more
&dquo;behavioral&dquo;
conceptions
of
state
behavior
in
the
inter-
national
political
system.’
The
consequence
of
these
efforts
has
been
the
fruitful
discovery
that
the
Soviet
Union,
as
a
state,
shares
the
attributes
and
political
processes
typical
of
states,
including
interests
which
it
pursues
in
more
or
less
rational
and
responsive
interaction
with ,its
environment.
This
less
than
astonishing
discovery,
in
itself
a
commentary
on
the
insularity
and
conceptual
inadequacy
of
earlier
Sovietology,
has
brought
the Soviet
Union
closer
to
the
&dquo;normal&dquo;
range
of
human
political
behavior
and
promoted
a
beneficial
interchange
between
Soviet
specialists
and
the
rest
of
the
discipline.
The
purpose
of
this
essay
is
thus
not
to
revive
the
old,
sterile
&dquo;ideology
de-
bate,&dquo;
which
more
than
anything
rested
on
argumentation
over
which
among
assertedly
exclusive
single
motives
or
causes
was
&dquo;the&dquo;
key
tao
Soviet
behavior.
Rather,
it
is
to
urge
a
more
careful
examination
of
the
character
and
significance
of
Marxism-Leninism
as
a
major
influence
on
Soviet
foreign
policy
behavior.
This
will
be
done
through
a
survey
of
Soviet
policy
in
the
Arab
world
aimed
at
simply
making
the
point
that
the
ideological
dimension
of
Soviet
policy
cannot
be
as
facilely
dismissed
as
might
appear
to
be
the
case
on
the
surface.
Before
doing
this,
however,
it
is
necessary
to
comment
on
some
shortcomings
in
the
treatment
of
ideology
in
much
of
the
Western
literature
on
the
Soviet
Union.
Briefly,
the
ideological
-
or
specifically
Communist -
dimension
of
Soviet be-
havior
has
been
dealt
with
quite
simplistically,
especially
by
those
who
find
it
philosophically
or
conceptually
distasteful
and
are
thus
prone
to
disregard
it
a
priori.
The
recent
application
of
general
political
science
concepts
and
method-
ologies
to
the
study
of
the
Soviet
Union
has
intensified
an
overly
simplistic
approach
to
ideology
since
it
involves
a
frame
of
analysis
which
is
still
rather
firmly,
and
at
times
somewhat
parochially,
rooted
in
the
Western
nation-state
tradition.
The
difficulty
with
this
is
that
Soviet
Marxism-Leninism,
however
much
it
is
linked
to
Soviet
statehood,
is
significantly
trans-national,
both
conceptually
and
operationally.
This
trans-national
character
of
the
ideology
is
probably
at
the
base
1
An
excellent
compendium
of
traditional
and
more
contemporary
approaches
to
Soviet
foreign
policy,
including
the
"ideology
debate,"
can
be
found
in
Erik
P.
Hoffmann
and
Frederick
J.
Fleron,
Jr.,
The
Conduct
of
Soviet
Foreign
Policy
(Chicago:
Aldine-
Atherton,
1971),
pp.
18-30.
638
of
historical
Western
discomfort
over
Soviet
policy,
for
from
the
perspective
of the
Western
political
experience
it
was
simply
incomprehensible.
This
may
well
also
be
the
major
reason
for
the
long-standing
assumption
in
Western
lay
and
scholarly
analyses
of
the
Soviet
Union
that
the
ideology
is
ultimately
unworkable
and
must
eventually
give
way
to
a
more
&dquo;normal&dquo;
pattern
of
behavior,
i.e.,
that
of
a
nation-
state
in
a
community
whose
major
units
are
nation-states.
Without
belaboring
the
point,
it
need
only
be
noted
that
however
fundamental
national
units
are
to
Western
political
traditions
and
thus
to
Western
political
science,
the
nation-state
is
far
from
being
the
basic
unit
of
human
political
ex-
perience
either
globally
or
historically.
Indeed,
in
much
of
the
world
it
is
still
quite
artificial.
It
is
thus
simply
an
assumption
that
the
nation-state
attributes
of
the
Soviet
Union
are
necessarily
incompatible
with
Marxism-Leninism
and
that
they
must
thus
supersede
ideology
as
a
motive
force
in
Soviet
behavior.
It
is
also
an
assump-
tion
that
the
&dquo;dualism&dquo;
which
Western
scholars
have
long
perceived
in
Soviet
behavior
is
a
phenomenon
of
which
Soviet
leaders
are
intensely
cognizant
and
with
which
they
are
uncomfortable.2
2
The
present
essay
particularly
takes
issue
with
the
arguments
that
since
Soviet
behavior
is
demonstrably
responsive
to
environmental
events
and
since
it
has
been
oriented
toward
tangible
benefits
for
the
Soviet
Union
itself,
ideology
is
ipso
facto
diminishing
as
a
relevant
factor
in
Soviet
policy.3
The
point
to
be
made
here
is
that
ideology.
Soviet
state
interests,
and
a
realistic
relationship
to
the
political
environment
are
not
only
compatible
nearly
all
of
the
time
but
are
integrated
in
a
continuous
process
of
synthesis
and
resynthesis.
Soviet
policy
in
the
Arab
world
has,
indeed,
pursued
and
promoted
tangible
returns
in
the
form
of
improved
Soviet
security,
prestige,
power
and
influence,
and
economic
reward.
It
has
also
been
ideologically
purposive
in
promoting
conditions
conducive
to
internal
change
in
the
Arab
world
in
the
direction
of
Communist-style
socialism
as
well
as
to
the
enhancement
of
the
situations
of
Arab
Communist
parties
within
their
respective
states.
It
has
also
been
very
much
attuned
to
the
Arab
political
environment
by
necessity.
It
is
obvious
that
motives
associated
with
the
state
interests
of
the
U.S.S.R.
must
be
operationally
defined
in
relation
to
political
trends
in
the
environment.
It
should
be
equally
obvious
that
ideological
goals
must
similarly
be
operationalized.
Yet
it
is
at
this
level
of
policy-making
that
the
treatment
of
ideology
has
been
most
lacking,
despite
the
existence
within
the
Communist
tradition
of
a
wealth
of
literature
dealing
precisely
with
the
question
of
operationalization :
&dquo;the
unity
of
theory
and
practice.&dquo;
2
Vernon
Aspaturian,
while
analyzing
the
Soviet
situation
in
terms
of
multiple
roles,
including
those
of
member
of the
state
system
and
member
of
a
Communist
subsystem,
deals
with
this
problem
in
terms
of
the
integration
of
roles
rather
than
the
need
to
choose
between
them.
See
his
The
Soviet
Union
in
the
World
Communist
System
(Stanford:
Hoover
Institution,
1966).
3
William
Zimmerman
makes
the
former
of
these
arguments
in
"Elite
Perspectives
and
the
Explanation
of
Soviet
Foreign
Policy,"
in
Hoffmann
and
Fleron,
op.
cit.,
pp.
18-30.
The
exclusion
of
ideology
by
the
demonstration
of
Soviet
benefit
from
an
action
is
an
old
but
recurrent
theme
in
the
literature
on
Soviet
foreign
policy
at
least
since
the
Hitler-Stalin
Pact
of
1939.
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