Communism: The Specter and the Struggle

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Communism have appealed both to the lofty aspirations for justice and progress of peoples emerging from colonial rule and to their baser desire for revenge. Also, there have been numerous vacuums to fill in Africa, particularly in the wake of the Portuguese pullout from Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, all of which now have Marxist governments. By its highly opportunistic denunciations of the racist regime in South Africa, the Soviet Union has managed to insinuate itself as godfather to black liberation movements like the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in South African-controlled Namibia and to the Marxist-oriented African National Congress (ANC) inside South Africa itself. Soviet benefaction remains attractive as long as a liberation group like SWAPO or a leftist regime like Angola's is embattled. The attraction tends to fade when Third World leaders get down to the business of governing.

While the Soviet Union's largesse seems inexhaustible in the form of the wherewithal for armed struggle, its record in granting foreign aid for peaceful purposes is abysmal. The Soviets and their allies have given African countries about $2 billion in economic aid since the mid-1950s; the U.S. alone has granted about three times as much in the same period. What the Soviet Union offers these clients is primarily the means necessary to answer Lenin's question of "Who—whom?" in their own favor.

French Scholar Alain Besançon says, "Everyone in the world knows that Communism produces neither social justice nor economic development. But it is still seductive because of another promise: to bestow power. That is why many Third World leaders readily identify themselves with socialism in the Bolshevik sense. It seems to afford them a possible guarantee of power." Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan Arkhipov recently told TIME that his government does not share the West's obligation to promote economic development in the Third World. Unlike the West, he claimed, the U.S.S.R. has never been guilty of exploiting the natural resources of less developed guilty of exploiting the natural resources of less developed countries.

That alibi is wearing thin among many Third Worlders, including some leftists who came out on top with Soviet backing. For example, two Marxists who have come to power in Africa, Mozambique's President Samora Machel and Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, while differing in many of their policies, have agreed that their countries must look to the West for economic help. Like many other Third World countries, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are seeking to gain or restore order and normalcy after a tumultuous period of postcolonial revolution. Those are places where the complaint is increasingly heard about the Soviet Union, "We can't eat guns."

Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is that Third World leaders who are still fighting cannot shoot grain, or fight tanks with tractors, or repel cross-border raiding parties with Peace Corps volunteers. Hence, areas of turmoil will remain targets of opportunity for Soviet intervention and influence. In the international marketplace of insurgency, civil war, conspiracy and palace coups, the Soviet Union has remained almost the exclusive purveyor of violent goods and services to customers on the Left, often subcontracting