The Soviet Union and East Asia

Abstract

In a volume devoted to Soviet relations with the Third World, East Asia is an anomaly. Although both South and North Korea regard themselves as ‘Third World’ members and each is accepted, to some degree, as such by other states, few take China and Japan as Third World even though China is a ‘developing’ nation in the objective sense. Japan is an economic superpower; China, a member of the strategic triangle; South Korea, a newly industrialising country; and North Korea, a Marxist hermit kingdom. The development of Soviet policy in this region must therefore be placed in a broader framework, namely, relations with the United States and China in the strategic triangle, Japan as concerns mostly economic matters (with a small security component), North Korea in terms of inter-party relations and Pyongyang’s attempts to use Moscow for its own aggressive purposes against the South, and South Korea hardly at all, since diplomatic relations do not exist and trade is almost non-extant. So East Asia provides a contrast with Soviet policy elsewhere outside the orbit of ruling communist parties.