THE RIGHT BOOKS

Timothy Ashby’s The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow’s Caribbean Strategy (Lexington Books/D. C. Heath & Co., 125 Spring Street, Lexington, Mass. 02173; $22.95) is a fine and important book. Its subject is the protracted global conflict between East and West, its theme the enterprising aggressiveness of the Soviet Union in confrontation with the slackness, inattention, and tergiversation of the United States. It is alarming, unpleasant, at times infuriating to read, but of course it is unreasonable to blame Timothy Ashby for this: He is but the bearer of truth in the form of bad news—as well as, ultimately, some words of encouragement.

While the Soviets’ strategic interest in Latin America is certainly not a recent preoccupation, it was not until 1956, following the Twentieth CPSU Congress, that the Kremlin made it an important one. Even so, Russian strategists assumed that Washington was taking every precaution to safeguard its “strategic rear”; Fidel Castro’s embracement of Moscow was a nutty surprise, which remained, however, more explicable than the United States’ acquiescence in the development of a Communist state on the island that King Philip II of Spain had called “the key to the New World,” and which, even before the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. had taken decisive action to protect. But as successive American Administrations appeared eager to overlook Soviet activities in Cuba, the Russians became increasingly encouraged. When, in 1979, President Carter tacitly concurred with a permanent Soviet military presence in Cuba, it seemed to bear out Leonid Brezhnev’s 1974 statement, “Having assessed the overall correlation of forces in the world, we came to the conclusion . . . that there existed a real possibility of securing a radical turnabout in the international situation.”

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

Featured Tags

Timothy Ashby’s The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow’s Caribbean Strategy (Lexington Books/D. C. Heath & Co., 125 Spring Street, Lexington, Mass. 02173; $22.95) is a fine and important book. Its subject is the protracted global conflict between East and West, its theme the enterprising aggressiveness of the Soviet Union in confrontation with the slackness, inattention, and tergiversation of the United States. It is alarming, unpleasant, at times infuriating to read, but of course it is unreasonable to blame Timothy Ashby for this: He is but the bearer of truth in the form of bad news—as well as, ultimately, some words of encouragement.

While the Soviets’ strategic interest in Latin America is certainly not a recent preoccupation, it was not until 1956, following the Twentieth CPSU Congress, that the Kremlin made it an important one. Even so, Russian strategists assumed that Washington was taking every precaution to safeguard its “strategic rear”; Fidel Castro’s embracement of Moscow was a nutty surprise, which remained, however, more explicable than the United States’ acquiescence in the development of a Communist state on the island that King Philip II of Spain had called “the key to the New World,” and which, even before the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. had taken decisive action to protect. But as successive American Administrations appeared eager to overlook Soviet activities in Cuba, the Russians became increasingly encouraged. When, in 1979, President Carter tacitly concurred with a permanent Soviet military presence in Cuba, it seemed to bear out Leonid Brezhnev’s 1974 statement, “Having assessed the overall correlation of forces in the world, we came to the conclusion . . . that there existed a real possibility of securing a radical turnabout in the international situation.”