Critics of the Reagan Doctrine hope that Gorbachev will make the Sandinistas behave. They point to last summer’s sharp criticism of Soviet foreign policy by a Soviet Foreign Ministry official, Andrei V. Kozyrev, in an official ministry publication, no less. He notes that “a primitive system was used to identify . . . the ultra-progressive phraseology of some individuals and movements in the developing countries with their socio-economic practices. . . . Meanwhile, while relying on foreign aid and practicing ‘ultra-left-wing’ anti-imperialist rhetoric, some regimes in these countries were in no hurry to solve the problems of hunger and backwardness. . . . there are no data about what it costs the Soviet Union to assist these countries. Estimates published in the West give rise to grave reflections about the returns from, and expediency of, this aid.”
No wonder Alexander Cockburn hates the Soviet reformers; they’re major heretics opposed to “world revolution.” But the article seems to point more at the Soviets’ various African and Asian clients than at Castro’s unsinkable aircraft carrier or Ortega’s Central American beachhead. Despite a budget deficit three times as large as previously thought, with defense spending a quarter of the total, Gorbachev hasn’t given up on the Ortegas yet. Here are some of those Western estimates, from State and the Defense Intelligence Agency:
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