Perspectives on the Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa During the Cold War

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FORUM PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOVIET UNION AND THE HORN OF AFRICA DURING THE COLD WAR

✣ Commentaries by Robert H. Donaldson, Jeremy Friedman, Edward A. Kolodziej, Margot Light, Robert G. Patman, and Sergey Radchenko Reply by Radoslav A. Yordanov

Radoslav A. Yordanov, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War: Between Ideology and Pragmatism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 293 pp. $95.00.

Editor’s Note: This forum brings together six experts on Soviet policy toward the Third World to take part in forum about a book recently published in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War, by Radoslav A. Yordanov. The commentators discuss the signiﬁcance of the book’s topic, many speciﬁc episodes covered by Yordanov, and the book’s strengths and shortcomings. The six commentaries are published here seriatim with a reply by Yordanov.

Commentary by Robert H. Donaldson

The international system at the end of World War II was perceived in both the United States and the Soviet Union as rigidly bipolar. In 1947, both the Truman Doctrine and Andrei Zhdanov’s speech at the founding conference of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) portrayed a struggle between two camps, each united around its own ideology. As the European colonial empires collapsed in the postwar period, newly independent countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa joined the few already independent states in those regions. Termed the “Third World,” they were unwillingly cast in the role of an arena for the competition of the two blocs. In the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev revived the Leninist perception of the developing world as the “vital reserve of imperialism” and initiated a

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2020, pp. 210–242, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_c_00931 © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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relatively low-risk Soviet challenge that sought ideological victories for “socialism” as well as strategic benefits in the economic and military spheres. The initial Soviet forays became a broader-based investment under Leonid Brezh- nev, as the USSR sought to counter Western (and Chinese) influence in all areas of the Third World, establishing in the process facilities that allowed Soviet military power to be projected on a truly global basis. Soviet influence reached its high-water mark in the mid-1970s, after which the USSR lost some of its hard-won beachheads, while also failing to persuade the United States that its expansionist and revolutionary activities in the Third World were compatible with superpower détente. Even before the end of the Cold War, problems with the Soviet economy spurred Mikhail Gorbachev to begin ending some of the USSR’s most costly and unproductive Third World investments. Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, and the USSR cooperated in arranging negotiated solutions to long-standing regional conflicts in Asia, Africa, and Central America. As the global competition ended, both the Soviet Union and the United States sharply cut back their economic and military assistance programs in these regions. Radoslav Yordanov’s book illuminates Soviet activities in the Horn of Africa during the entire postwar period. He brings to the subject, much an- alyzed in earlier studies, two especially valuable contributions: extensive coverage of the activities undertaken in the region by the Soviet Union’s East European partners, and outstanding research in various archives containing documents pertaining to both Soviet and East European observations and efforts in the Horn. Yordanov argues persuasively that the policies pursued by Moscow in Ethiopia and Somalia were heavily influenced by considerations of Cold War strategy and by limitations in Soviet capabilities, rather than strictly adhering to a doctrinal approach focused on the promotion of socialist revolution. He labels these competing priorities the “Comintern” and “Narkomindel” lines, harking back to Vladimir Lenin’s early approaches to Soviet foreign policy. Yordanov attempts to distinguish which elements of the Cold War–era Soviet Communist Party and government bureaucracies followed which line, but the attempt (beginning on p. xxv) ultimately proves awkward and confusing—not surprisingly, given the enormous differences in the global context between the 1920s and the Cold War. The contrast between the early post-revolutionary period, when the Rus- sian working class had “nothing to lose but its chains,” and the position of the USSR in the world of the 1970s and 1980s is graphically depicted in the

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often repeated statement Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko made in 1971 that “there is no question of any importance in the world nowadays that can be decided without the Soviet Union or in opposition to it.”1 This statement reflects an attitude of pride and confidence that is quite different from the earlier era of hostility and suspicion. As the USSR’s stake in the international order increased, Soviet leaders’ unwillingness to make a risk-laden challenge to the status quo was reflected in a marked loss of revolutionary fervor. Soviet officials long claimed that their chief internationalist duty was not the export of revolution abroad but the building of Communism at home. Many thorough studies of the topics pursued in Yordanov’s book have been published by Western scholars, especially in the 1970s and 1980s when Cold War competition in the Horn of Africa was at its height. Although Yor- danov includes a large number of these secondary sources (17 pages’ worth!) in his bibliography, he fails to point out clearly and precisely what his extensive archival research has added to (or subtracted from) the more contemporaneous studies. Did the scholarly studies written during the Cold War fail to appreciate the relative unimportance of ideological factors in shaping the Soviet approach? Some specialists surely did, and the U.S. government itself was prone to exaggerate the threat of the spread of Communism in the Third World, but Western scholarly studies of the era were by no means universally alarmist in their assessments of Soviet activities. Most analysts have correctly differentiated among the approaches taken by successive Soviet leaders during the Cold War. Oddly, however, Yordanov takes no notice of Iosif Stalin’s death in 1953 or Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964 and the changes in Moscow’s line that accompanied these leadership shifts. It is hard to understand why Yordanov devotes only twenty pages (about the same space allotted to the spotty Soviet involvement in Africa in the 1940s and 1950s) to the critical period December 1978 to March 1985. This was a time of extensive change in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War competition (and in the attitudes of major Third World powers) that witnessed decisive changes in the Soviet leadership and the ill-fated December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yordanov evidently attributes more significance to the Islamic revolution in Iran in explaining Washington’s perception of a greater regional threat from Moscow (p. 210), whereas most accounts (including those of U.S. policymakers) underscore the threat said to emanate from the Afghanistan

1. XXIV S”ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza, 30 marta–9 aprelya 1971 goda: Stenograﬁch- eskii otchet, 4 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), Vol. 1, p. 482.

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invasion as the more important precipitating factor in the final collapse of détente and formulation of the Carter Doctrine.2 U.S. and Soviet policymakers viewed events in the Horn of Africa during this period in the larger context of their naval competition in the Indian Ocean. Yordanov writes about Soviet designs on the Somali port of Berbera (esp. pp. 85–89) without full consideration to this larger context or of the variety of motives ascribed at the time to the Soviet moves. At the very least, a certain level of Soviet naval activity seemed to be a natural outgrowth of the USSR’s acquisition of superpower status and global military capabilities. But a detailed analysis of port calls in the region by the Soviet Navy in the period from 1968 to 1974 does not support the theory (undergirding the Carter Doctrine and Ronald Reagan’s policies) that Moscow was attempting to gain military dominance in the region (by matching U.S. naval strength or by “filling the vacuum” resulting from British withdrawal) in order to achieve strategic dominance over regional oil resources and shipping routes or to in- tervene in regional crises by means of “gunboat diplomacy.” Nor does the evidence show that the Soviet Union was concentrating its naval presence only on “progressive” regimes in the area. Although the Indian Ocean provided the most direct route for the routine transfer of naval units from the Far East to the Black Sea, Moscow used its expanding naval capability for the purpose of “showing the flag” and supporting its foreign policy objectives, including its foreign trade, in many of the littoral states. In so doing, So- viet leaders were following the examples of the “imperialist” British and U.S. navies and the teachings of their nineteenth-century mentor, Alfred Thayer Mahan.3 Ethiopia and Somalia were only two of eleven countries with which the USSR concluded treaties in the 1970s, and competing doctrinal and strategic considerations were present in most of the regions of the Third World in which the Soviet Union was heavily involved. I have written extensively about these factors in the case of Soviet policy toward India.4 A volume I edited in

2. Dan Caldwell, in Vortex of Conflict: U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 38–39, quotes both Zbigniew Brzezinski and President Jimmy Carter to this effect. 3. The statistical evidence for these conclusions can be found in Robert H. Donaldson, “The USSR, the Subcontinent, and the Indian Ocean: Naval Power and Political Influence,” Lawrence Ziring, ed., The Subcontinent in World Politics: India, Its Neighbors, and the Great Powers (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 168–195. 4. See the following monographs and articles by Robert H. Donaldson: Soviet Policy toward India: Ideology and Strategy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); The Soviet-Indian Alignment: Quest for Influence, Monograph Series in World Affairs Vol. 16, Books 3–4 (Denver: University of

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1981 drew together the work of twenty specialists to assess how successful (or rather, relatively unsuccessful) the USSR had been in its approaches to the Third World. The evidence adduced in these studies shows that Soviet influence in the Third World remained limited, in part—as Yordanov also shows— by the strong impulses toward autonomy and national self-determination of the Third World countries themselves. Many of Moscow’s biggest “victories” in the Third World resulted from events over which it had little or no control. Together the studies in the 1981 volume demonstrate that, rather than overestimating the ideological appeal of the Soviet Union (or the USSR’s ability to provide economic support), U.S. policymakers should have given as much or more attention to promoting economic development and political institutionalization, rather than focusing mainly on the military dimensions of security.5 In sum, Yordanov’s research on Soviet Cold War policies in the Horn of Africa begs to be placed in a comparative context, examining some of the other cases in which “clients” attempted to play their “patrons” off against each other or in which the Soviet Union preferred maintenance of stability to support of revolutionary impulses. Unfortunately, the most worthwhile insights to be gained from archives in Moscow and East European capitals are hard to locate in the book. Readers who are not already closely familiar with the history of Ethiopia and Soma- lia will find the twists and turns of the conflicts in the Ogaden and Eritrea difficult to sort out, especially because Yordanov’s narrative does not proceed chronologically. Most of his chapters are too dense, reading more like a dis- sertation, so that it becomes hard to find the forest for all the trees. Adding to the difficulty, the volume contains many mistakes of spelling and syntax and even internal contradictions, and the tables and maps are not well sourced or described. A better-written account that placed the Soviet Union’s Cold War activities in the Horn of Africa in a comparative context would have made this volume a more valuable contribution to the literature.

Denver, 1979); “The Soviet Union in India,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., The Pattern of Soviet Conduct in the Third World (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 81–108; “Soviet Security Interests in South Asia,” in Ziring, ed., The Subcontinent in World Politics, pp. 196–211; “Soviet Involvement in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region,” in Roger E. Kanet, ed., Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1980s (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp. 330–349; “Soviet Policy in South Asia,” in W. Raymond Duncan, ed., Soviet Policy in the Third World (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), pp. 212–238; and “The Soviet Union in South Asia: A Friend to Rely On?” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 1980/1981), pp. 235–258. 5. Robert H. Donaldson, ed., The Soviet Union and the Third World: Successes and Failures (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981).

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Commentary by Jeremy Friedman

As the frontier of Cold War scholarship moves into the late 1970s and 1980s, the story of superpower involvement in the Horn of Africa looms large for several reasons. First, Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam (1977–1987) was the closes thing there has been to an attempt to implement Stalinism in Africa, complete with a Red Terror and a massive famine resulting from disastrous state policies. Second, the Ogaden War of 1977–1978 between Ethiopia and Somalia represented the high point of Soviet-Cuban cooperation in Africa and therefore is a vision of the marriage of superpower capability and proletarian internationalism at its apex. Finally and perhaps most interesting to those engaged in understanding the processes of Soviet foreign policymaking, the case of the Horn of Africa saw the USSR torn between two potential allies and ultimately switching from one to the other in fairly short order. For all these reasons, Radoslav Yordanov’s book, as the ﬁrst monograph on the subject to make use of the currently available materials in the former Eastern bloc, represents a welcome addition to the literature and one that will be useful for scholars of Soviet foreign policy. Drawing on archival materials from all former Warsaw Pact states as well as the former Yugoslavia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Yor- danov tells the story of Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa from the early post-1945 years to the end of the Cold War. He describes Soviet attempts to contest Western inﬂuence at the state level in Ethiopia while simultaneously promoting Communist ideas, particularly among receptive university students, in part through the efforts of other East-bloc diplomats. In Somalia, Yordanov traces Soviet hesitation in the face of aggressive Somali demands for military and economic aid throughout the 1960s before the culmination of relations in the Soviet-Somali friendship treaty of 1974. One of the strongest parts of the book is Yordanov’s description of the gradual shifts in Soviet perception of the progress of the Ethiopian revolution from 1974 to 1977, setting the stage for the Soviet support for Ethiopia against its erstwhile ally Somalia, once the latter launched an aggressive war to conquer the Ogaden region in August 1977. Perhaps due to the limitations of available archival materials, the book’s analysis of the period of Soviet-Ethiopian alignment, particularly as it relates to the measures taken to transform the Ethiopian economy along socialist lines, is not as detailed. The book concludes with a chapter on So- viet policy toward Ethiopia in the wake of perestroika, where the argument is that the imperative to end the Cold War with the United States overrode any impulse to advance revolution, particularly because the Ethiopian approach

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to socialist revolution seemed to be harming socialism’s reputation around the world. Perhaps the most illuminating part of Yordanov’s analysis relates to the high-level decision-making process in Moscow that led to the Soviet Union’s support for Ethiopia against Somalia in the Ogaden War despite the USSR’s existing military relationship with Somalia centered on the naval base at Berbera. In the absence of access to archival sources, scholars during the Cold War speculated that the shift represented a political tug-of-war within the Soviet policy apparatus, pitting considerations of ideology against those of realpolitik.6 Yordanov weaves a more intricate, well-researched, and convincing story that describes how a combination of factors, including superpower maneuvering, Ethiopian domestic politics, and the imperatives of proletarian internationalism, gradually shifted the consensus in the Soviet Politburo. This part of the book is strongest in part because it takes account of the roles of competing officials within the Soviet leadership, an approach that is not always reflected in the literature. At many points elsewhere in the book the calculus of Soviet foreign policy is reduced to a collision between supposed “Com- internist” and “Narkomindel” approaches, terms that seem both anachronistic and not especially helpful in describing actual debates in Moscow. Yordanov’s treatment of the Soviet-Cuban relationship in Ethiopia provides a welcome addition to the growing literature on the role of Cuba in Africa. He contrasts the cooperative nature of this endeavor with the situation in Angola, where Yordanov, echoing the work of Piero Gleijeses, sees the Cubans as having taken the initiative with much less consultation with Moscow. Most intriguing is Yordanov’s description of Cuba’s unwillingness to employ its military in support of Mengistu’s domestic battles, particularly with the Eritrean insurgency, in contrast to the Soviet-bloc states, particularly East Germany, that played a role in building Mengistu’s security apparatus following Moscow’s lead. The book is particularly strong in its description of the military relationships between the USSR, Ethiopia, and Somalia, but it is not quite as strong on the economic relationships. In this respect, research in the files at the Russian State Archive of the Economy might have shed light on what role the Soviet Union played in Mengistu’s ultimately disastrous attempt to build socialism in Ethiopia. This will no doubt prove fruitful ground for future re- searchers. Yordanov’s book will provide a useful starting point as others go forward to fill in a crucial, yet still understudied part of the Cold War.

6. See, for example, David E. Albright, “Moscow’s African Policy of the 1970s,” in David E Albright, ed. Communism in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 57–60.

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Commentary by Edward A. Kolodziej

This exhaustive narrative of the efforts of the Soviet Union to promote its ideological and geostrategic interests in the Horn of Africa is almost certain to be the last word on the subject. In excruciating detail Yordanov traces the tortuous and ultimately futile steps taken by successive Soviet regimes to exploit shifting clients in the Horn, notably Ethiopia and Somalia. Displaying a tenacious resourcefulness, Radoslav Yordanov not only consulted Western archives but also, by his own account, extensively reviewed “an avalanche of documents, written in languages spoken from Alexanderplatz through Piata Victoriel to Gorki-2” (p. xviii). The added work paid off. Yordanov ably demonstrates the complicity of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact surrogates, specifically Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, in supporting Soviet endeavors to gain major influence in the Horn. The East European countries largely provided non-military and diplomatic support to advance the Marxist-Leninist cause and furnished Moscow with useful intelligence about its fickle African clients. Numerous other interesting and even surprising findings can be gleaned from Yordanov’s recounting of Soviet policy. When the Soviet Union was pursuing its interests, pragmatic opportunism typically trumped ideological aspirations. The latter provided a thin veneer of justification for wasting precious resources—in short supply in the Soviet Union—on what in retrospect were quixotic attempts to gain lasting influence in the Horn. During the Cold War, some analysts depicted Soviet actions in the Horn as aggressive and malign, but Yordanov offers a more cautious assessment. Throughout the long history of Soviet involvement in the region from World War II to the implosion of the USSR in 1991, Soviet behavior in the region emphasized stability. Moscow’s caution was demonstrated in its sustained attempts to moderate the enduring conflicts between Ethiopia and Somalia and other minor regional actors. Repeatedly, Soviet officials rebuffed the demands, alternately pressed by local actors in Addis Ababa or Mogadishu, for arms to combat their adversaries. Even when arms were sent, they were invariably less than would have been necessary to tip the scales decisively in favor of one temporary (and rented) client over another. Yordanov helpfully reminds readers of Cuban involvement in the Horn and Angola. The Soviet Union provided significant logistical support for Cuban military intervention in the Horn, principally in supporting the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian faux-Communist reformer who proved more appealing to the Cubans than to the Soviet Union. To prevent Horn conflicts from getting out of hand at the expense of Soviet interests,

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Moscow had to restrain the Cubans, who were more ideologically motivated and accepting of risks than Soviet leaders were. Until 1991, the Soviet Union gave less priority to involvement in the Horn than to its interests in the Middle East and, especially, to its relations with the United States. Yordanov shows that the Soviet Union tried to en- sure that Soviet and Cuban involvement in the Horn would not preclude damage to its management of the global Cold War struggle with the United States. The major conclusion to be drawn from Soviet intervention in the Horn is that Soviet leaders were unable to advance their ideological and geostrategic objectives. More often than not, the locals successfully played both the Soviet Union and the United States for their own competing ends. A point made by a critic of a Mozart symphony prompts my chief reserva- tion about this bulky volume: “Too many notes!” In developing his principal themes, Yordanov might well have taken note of the aphorism that less is often more in keeping a reader’s attention from occasionally ﬂagging.

Commentary by Margot Light

No single aspect of policy contributed more to the decline of détente after 1975 than Soviet activity in the Third World, particularly in Africa. Whereas Soviet leaders interpreted détente to apply only to Europe, Western policymakers thought it should extend to global East-West relations. Most West- ern policy commentators therefore believed that, under cover of détente, the Soviet Union had adopted an unprecedented, active policy and was making incursions into areas traditionally considered at least neutral or even firmly within the Western sphere of influence. Radoslav Yordanov analyses Soviet policy in one of these contentious areas—the Horn of Africa—from 1960 until the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It is a complex story. Apart from the East-West competition in the region (and Yordanov demonstrates convincingly how strategically important Ethiopia and Somalia were to the United States and the Soviet Union), the USSR also faced competition from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the two countries bitterly split at the end of the 1950s. Soviet leaders also found themselves—not quite in- advertently, but without proper consideration of the likely costs—supporting neighboring states involved in seemingly intractable territorial conflicts. To make the situation on the ground even more complicated, the Soviet Union made extensive use of its East European allies to deliver assistance and,

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according to Yordanov, to analyze the local situation. Moreover, from 1977 onward, Cuban troops were active in the Horn. Yordanov uses Soviet, Western, and East European archives to offer a detailed chronological overview of Soviet intervention in the region, concentrating particularly on the second half of the 1970s. He concludes that Moscow’s approach to the region, “locked between pragmatism and ideology, ultimately gave priority to realpolitik considerations, while ideological factors acted as a motivating trigger that helped the Kremlin leaders justify their ac- tion” (p. 253). Rather than seeing Ethiopian and Somali leaders as passive recipients of Soviet prescriptions (as they are sometimes portrayed in analyses that pay less attention to the importance of local factors), Yordanov recognizes them as active agents who attempted to use the East-West rivalry to further their aims. He also accords more importance to superpower competi- tive behavior as a driver of policy. Soviet and Western leaders were receptive, he argues, to “the local strong men’s pulling strategies” because it served their political and strategic aims (p. 254). The advantage of using a wide range of archival sources is that Yordanov’s assessment is richer and more nuanced than most previous accounts. The cost, however, is that the narrative sometimes loses clarity. His use of East European documents is particularly original. However, interesting though the views of East European diplomats are, Yordanov’s account does not make clear the extent to which Soviet decision-makers paid attention to their analyses. His argument that Moscow’s East European associates “made Moscow’s experience a truly ‘international’ one” (p. xviiii) seems a little overblown. Alternating chapters deal with Soviet policy in Ethiopia and Somalia. The strength of this approach is that it enables Yordanov to demonstrate how complex the situation was on the ground and to reveal how important local factors were. The disadvantage is that the narrative goes backward and forward in time, and it sometimes becomes chronologically confusing. It also makes the account somewhat repetitive, since the years overlap (chapter 4, “Engaging Mogadishu: October 1969–March 1976,” for example, is followed by a chapter covering “Ethiopia in Turmoil: February 1974–December 1976”) and, inevitably, the same external events have to be mentioned in multiple chapters. The immersion in local factors is also at the cost of giving due consideration to the larger context of the evolution of Soviet foreign policy and of East-West relations. The change in Soviet Third World policy from Nikita Khrushchev’s optimistic and idealistic (rather than ideological) approach to the more pragmatic policy followed by his successors after his removal from power is not really accorded any signiﬁcance until the concluding chapter. Nor does Yor- danov pay much attention to the effect of the changing context of East-West

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relations on Soviet foreign policy in general—and policy toward the Third World in particular. Yordanov uses the terms “Narkomindel” and “Comintern” as shorthand for foreign policy dictated by realpolitik and policy based on ideology. Why he ﬁnds these anachronistic terms applicable to Soviet policy during decolonization is unclear. His explanation of what the terms mean is sketchy. They refer, he writes, to “Lenin’s dualist foreign policy furthering ideological (‘Cominternist’) and statist (‘Narkomindel’) lines” (p. xxv). The book’s “List of Abbreviations and Acronyms” indicates that “Narkomindel” is short for “Narodnÿï Kommissariat po Inostrannym Delam” but does not explain that this means the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, which is what the Ministry of Foreignl Affairs was called until 1946. The list also explains that “Comintern” is the “Communist International” but does not describe what the Comintern was or note that it was dissolved in 1943. So the terms are meaningful really only to readers who know the history of the dual foreign policy practiced by the Soviet Union soon after the Bolshevik revolution. Such readers will be aware that the implied dichotomy between the two terms is misleading. After all, the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 debated the appropriate forces to support in the European colonies. The proposal by the Indian Communist N. M. Roy that the Comintern ought to create Communist organizations of workers and peasants was defeated by Vladimir Lenin’s insistence that bourgeois democratic and peasant movements should be aided because the national bourgeoisie would lead independence movements that would weaken European countries. This was as much a policy based on Soviet national interest as it was an ideological policy. Thus, even in the early years, the pursuit of national interest and the aims of ideology were not entirely mutually exclusive. In the era of decolonization, supporting revolutionary forces was as much in the Soviet national interest as it was ideologically important. Given that by then the Soviet Union was competing with the PRC for inﬂuence in the Third World and that the Chinese leadership accused Soviet leaders of being “revisionist,” aiding revolutionary forces in former colonies was squarely in the Soviet national interest. Soviet leaders would have lost face in the international Communist movement if they had refused to support states that declared they had embarked on a “socialist orientated” path of development, and reputation is as much a matter of national interest as it is of proving revolutionary credentials. Even after the end of the Cold War, encouraging other states to adopt similar values has remained an important aim of foreign policy. Democratic peace theory and the efforts made by the United States and the European Union to export democracy to the former Communist countries

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illustrate how pursuing ideological aims is now considered central to serving the national interest. One reason that Yordanov insists on the distinction between realpolitik and ideology is that he intends to show that different parts of the So- viet decision-making apparatus promoted different policies. He suggests in his introduction that the military leadership, military-minded members of the Politburo and the International Department, as well as the KGB State Security organs, favored a Cominternist policy, whereas the more pragmatic Foreign Ministry maintained a statist line. But the subsequent chapters offer little evidence to support the argument that different Soviet bureaucracies competed for influence over Soviet decision-making in the Horn. Moreover, in the book’s conclusion, Yordanov argues that “the two lines did not conflict with one another but, consulted together [sic], added up to a flexible tactical approach aimed at maximizing influence with whatever means were available—ideological, military, diplomatic” (p. 256). Notwithstanding the unnecessary complication of suggesting a dichotomy between Soviet national and ideological interests, Yordanov uses sources ignored by most others to give readers a rich, nuanced account of Soviet intervention in the Horn that is an original and valuable contribution to our understanding of Soviet foreign policy and also of the factors that led to both superpowers exiting the Horn.

Commentary by Robert G. Patman

In some ways, The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War is a signiﬁcant piece of scholarship. Drawing on a wide range of research materials that include formerly secret documents from the countries of the former War- saw Pact, Radoslav Yordanov’s book provides new information and insights on the rise and decline of Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa, a key Cold War battleground for the superpowers and their allies. But the book’s analytical rigor does not always match its detailed narrative, and Yordanov struggles to sustain claims of exceptionalism in relation to the previous literature on the subject. The book seeks to address a central question: “What possessed Moscow to pour tons of military material in such remote geographic expanses and to scramble its junior East European partners in the process?” (p. xvii). To answer this question, Yordanov explores “what factors shaped Moscow’s policies in the Horn” (p. xxii) and approaches the subject in a chronological fashion. The book is divided into nine chapters. These cover the early postwar Soviet

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policy toward the Horn; the landmark Soviet-Somalia arms deal of November 1963; friendly but measured relations between Moscow and Ethiopia in the 1960s; the deepening alliance between the Soviet Union and Somalia after the 1969 military coup; the Soviet displacement of the United States following Mengistu Haile Mariam’s brutal seizure of power in 1977; the doomed attempt to establish a Marxist-Leninist confederation in the Horn; the expulsion of Soviet advisers from Somalia and massive Soviet-Cuban military intervention in support of Ethiopia during the 1977–1978 Ogaden War; the exor- bitant costs of the Soviet alliance with Mengistu’s Ethiopia after 1978; Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to terminate support for Mengistu’s collapsing regime in 1990; and a conclusion that, among other things, claims Moscow’s Horn of Africa approach was “locked between pragmatism and ideology” (p. 253). The central argument that emerges from the book is the claim that “the KremlinfavoredstabilityintheHorn...andgenerally perceived the esca- lation of local tensions in the Horn as detrimental to [Soviet] high-priority global interests” (p. xxiii). Contrary “to the notion that Moscow pursued an expansionist strategy against the West” (p. xxiii) in Cold War hotspots like the Horn, Yordanov maintains that “Moscow usually tended to adopt a respon- sive, rather than proactive, policy stance toward events of local significance [in the Horn of Africa] such as regime changes” (p. xxiv). Although Yordanov recognizes that “the massive Soviet-Cuban [military] operation in Ethiopia [in 1977–1978) played a decisive role in worsening the relations between Moscow and Washington” (p. 206), he maintains that Soviet intervention was prompted above all by “ideological affinity” with the Mengistu regime (p. 213) and that Moscow did not intend “to wage a struggle for achieving predominant influence in Africa” (p. 206). On this view, Moscow’s involvement in Ethiopia shows it was “almost impossible to separate the Narkomin- del [statist] and the Comintern [ideological] line in Soviet foreign policy.” (p. 199). That is, Yordanov sees Soviet realignment and intervention in the Horn in 1977 as an energetic and somewhat “blind” response to a forced exit from Somalia and to a plea for assistance from “a potentially bona fide Marxist regime” (p. 257) in Addis Ababa. The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War builds on the existing literature and deepens our knowledge of Moscow’s Cold War involvement in the Horn in at least three ways. First, the book highlights the importance of Moscow’s East European allies in providing all-round assistance to Somalia and Ethiopia. Soviet-bloc states, notably the German Demo- cratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland, developed trade with the Horn countries and accepted students from the region in their universi- ties. East European states also provided military training and arms to Somalia

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and Ethiopia during the Cold War, but this assistance paled in comparison to the assistance provided by the Soviet Union.7 Although Yordanov exaggerates when he claims the East Europeans “became crucial in Moscow’s activities on the ground” (p. xxiii), he certainly shows that such assistance was highly supportive of Soviet policy in the region. Second, Yordanov’s study provides another illustration of the extraordi- nary sensitivity of Soviet leaders to the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Horn. In the early 1970s, the PRC’s economic aid to Somalia rose significantly, and in Ethiopia the PRC maintained relatively small but significant programs of non-military aid, some of which started under the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie I. Although the PRC’s unwillingness to provide sub- stantial quantities of military aid to either Mogadishu or Addis Ababa was a major limitation, the Soviet government said the PRC’s presence in these countries “played an active role in discrediting the assistance provided by the socialist countries” and also served to hinder Soviet attempts to ease international tensions (p. 137). Third, Yordanov’s study sheds new light on what is already known about the shadowy relationship between the Soviet government and Colonel Mengistu in the critical period between the Derg’s seizure of power in Ethiopia in 1974 and Mengistu’s bloody power grab in February 1977. Just two months after the overthrow of the emperor, the official Soviet media began to cham- pion Mengistu as “an influential leader of the Armed Forces Movement.”8 Yordanov reveals that the “proactive” Soviet ambassador to Ethiopia, Ana- tolii Ratanov, met with Mengistu and several other prominent figures in the Derg in February 1975 (pp. 125, 139). Thereafter, Ratanov and his deputy at the Soviet embassy, Sergei Sinitsyn, met regularly with Mengistu and his supporters in the Derg, and Yordanov quotes an adviser to former head of state Brigadier-General Teferi Bante—killed during Mengistu’s brutal acces- sion as undisputed leader of the Provisional Military Administrative Council in February 1977—as saying that Ratanov and Sinitsyn had advised Mengistu to eliminate all his rivals in the Derg (pp. 157–158). But Yordanov does not seem to share the belief that the Soviet Union played a key role in Mengistu’s rise to power (pp. 158, 190). However, the book is not without its limitations. For one thing, Yor- danov makes the inaccurate claim that his line of intellectual enquiry is wholly

7. Robert G. Patman, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa: The Diplomacy of Intervention and Dis- engagement (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 193–194. 8. K. Gerasimov, “Ethiopia without the Crown,” New Times, No. 51 (1974), pp. 26–28.

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distinctive and that the existing literature on Soviet involvement in the Horn “offered no answers” (xvii). He characterizes previous research on this subject as providing only a “fragmented, biased, one-sided story from either Moscow’s or Washington’s viewpoint” and says that his book aims to “bridge the gap in understanding” by “[re]writing the history of the Soviet Union’s involvement in Somalia and Ethiopia” (p. xviii). But such claims disregard 40 years of serious scholarship on this subject and falsely imply that other scholars have failed to bridge the explanatory divide between pragmatic Africanist and ideological globalist interpretations.9 In addition, the presentation of Yordanov’s central argument—that Moscow’s Horn approach was locked somewhere between “its far-reaching Cold War objectives and the Horn’s colonial heritage and local actors’ agenda” (p. xxii)—is not always convincing. The book’s argument is also weakened by the absence of a dedicated chapter spelling out the constellation of interests at the global, regional, and local levels that propelled Soviet policy toward the Horn of Africa in the 1970s. Instead, the reader has to rely on a ﬁve-page introduction to gain insight into Moscow’s Cold War goals in the Horn of Africa. Moreover, the introduction has little to say about the Soviet perception that the “correlation of forces” had fundamentally shifted in favor of Moscow after the United States became bogged down in Vietnam; that Moscow’s en- hanced consciousness of Soviet military power underpinned a new theory of

9. I demonstrated, for example, that although Moscow did not deliberately engineer the Ethiopian- Somali conflict in 1977–1978, it definitely had long-term political objectives in the Horn. “The fact that Moscow pursued these objectives in an opportunistic fashion did not mean they were non- existent. Rather, it meant that ‘calculated opportunism’ was perhaps a more appropriate description for Soviet activities in the Horn.” See Patman, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa, p. xiii. A selection of relevant secondary sources might include David A. Korn, Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Mulatu Wubneh and Yohannis Abate, Ethiopia: Transition and Development in the Horn of Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988); Dawit Wolde Giorgis, Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1989); Anatoly Gromyko, Afrika: Progress, trudnosti, perspekivy (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1981); Christopher Clapham, Trans- formation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Tareke Gebru, The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2009); Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution (London: Verso, 1981); David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in a Search of State (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987); Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: US Security Policy in Ethiopia and Soma- lia 1953–1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Rene Lefort, Ethiopia: An Heretical Revolution? (London: Zed Press, 1983); I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: James Curry, 2002); Samuel Makinda, Superpower Diplomacy in the Horn of Africa (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Bruce D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Con- flicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars, 1945–1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Teferra Haile-Selassie, The Ethiopian Revolution 1974–1991 (London: Kegan Paul Interna- tional, 1997); and Peter Woodward, US Foreign Policy and the Horn of Africa (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006).

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“states of socialist orientation” in the Third World in the late 1960s; and that reverses such as the Six-Day Mideast War of 1967 helped fuel a distinctly forward-leaning attitude toward the Horn of Africa. At the same time, Yordanov’s treatment of key developments in the Horn often seems inconsistent and contradictory. We are informed that Moscow as- sumed “a wait-and-see position” (p. 90) toward the military coup that brought General Mohamed Siad Barre to power in Somalia. Yet, we learn on the same page that the Soviet State Security (KGB) organs knew in advance about the coup, that the Soviet media quickly dubbed the military coup “progressive,” and that shortly after the coup Soviet leaders sent official congratulations to the new military regime in Mogadishu. A similar tendency can be detected in Yordanov’s analysis of the relationship between Moscow and Mengistu. Yor- danov chronicles the close relationship between the Soviet embassy in Ad- dis Ababa and Mengistu. Certainly, the Soviet media publicly applauded the bloody demise of rival figures in the Derg, such as General Aman Andom in November 1974 and Major Sisay Habte in July 1976 and quickly hailed Mengistu’s displacement of Brigadier General Teferi Bante as head of state in February. Meanwhile, supporters of Mengistu traveled to Moscow for political training in 1975 and 1976, and Ambassador Ratanov, previously the ambassador to “progressive” Guinea, dealt directly with Mengistu and bypassed the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry (p. 168). Yet, despite clear Soviet backing for Mengistu at a very early stage after the Derg came to power in 1974, Yordanov maintains that Soviet diplomats in Addis Ababa were acting without the au- thorization of Moscow, and he claims that direct Soviet influence on events in Ethiopia was “unlikely” (p. 189). Finally, the impact of the book is diminished by Yordanov’s periodic failure to exercise scholarly detachment in his writing, as well as by some factual errors. At certain stages of the book, Yordanov uses language that seems polemical or judgmental. He writes of “the support of the Arab reaction” (p. 126); refers to the “democratic development” of Ethiopia (p. 128) at a time when leaders in Addis Ababa were committing appalling human rights violations; describes Mengistu’s Derg faction as “progressive” (p. 160); characterizes Soviet military intervention as a “military re-supply mission” (pp. 181, 190); and refers to President Ronald Reagan’s “cowboy philosophy” (p. 210). Furthermore, the Somali invasion of the Ogaden in July 1977 invalidates Yordanov’s claim that Soviet arms played a “decisive role in restraining Mo- gadishu’s territorial ambitions” (p. 85). Nikolai Podgornyi was no longer serving as a member of the Soviet leadership team in August 1977 (p. 184), and Jimmy Carter had not yet been elected president (much less taken office) in September 1976 (p. 167).

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Commentary by Sergey Radchenko

The purpose of historical writing is not just to describe events but to interpret them, to analyze the underlying causes and to show which causes led to which effects; in short, to make sense of the past. Historians of the Cold War are not unique in their predicament. The work of untangling causes from conse- quences, constructing causal hierarchies, and distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the true motives from convenient justifications, is often difficult, perhaps impossible. Cold War history is for the most part confined to a Cartesian system of coordinates, with one axis as ideology and the other, realpolitik. Most historians place their narrative somewhere between the two axes, sometimes giving primacy to one over the other but mostly maintaining careful equidistance. Radoslav Yordanov’s book on the Soviet Union’s involvement in the Horn of Africa fits well within this tradition. The subtitle of the book—“Between Ideology and Pragmatism”—encapsulates both the main dilemma and the main argument of this particular line of historical enquiry. The book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Soviet Union’s African adventures. Yordanov draws on an impressive array of archival sources, mostly in Eastern Europe and Russia, to explain how Moscow became involved in the Horn by building a relationship with Somalia’s Siad Barre and how in 1977 the Soviet Union abruptly switched its allegiance to Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia only to become progressively disillusioned with the latter’s militant, destructive policies. Yordanov recounts how Soviet support for Ethiopia continued, by the force of inertia if nothing else, until Mikhail Gorbachev cut Mengistu loose in 1987. Gorbachev’s new thinking did not leave much scope for fighting protracted wars in Africa. Nor did the Soviet Union have money to spare on propping up self-serving Marxist-Leninists in far-flung corners of the world. Yordanov’s narrative covers well-trodden ground and raises no serious ob- jections, though I wished in places to see greater clarity both in the style of the presentation and in the direction of the argument. When discussing the reasons for the Soviet arming of Somalia, Yordanov writes that Moscow was “motivated by the strategic interest of ensuring its military presence in the Horn” (p. 101), a “vital region in both the geopolitical and military sense” (p. 95). The same considerations probably underpinned the Soviet Union’s opportunistic embrace of Ethiopia. For both superpowers, Yordanov writes, the “primary objective seemed to be to deny the region to their adversary” (p. 254). But behind talk of the importance of sea lanes and strategic ports, there is, inevitably, the backdrop of Moscow’s ideological proclivities. Thus, the Soviet involvement in Somalia was “rooted in the Kremlin’s persistent

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implementation of the Leninist principles of foreign policy” (p. 97). The same persistent implementation evidently applied to the decision to shift from Siad Barre to Mengistu; to wit, “Undoubtedly, the most critical aspect of Soviet- Ethiopian rapprochement was rooted in the spirit of ‘ideological afﬁnity’ between the two states” (p. 213). Fine, one might say. But why can it not be both? There is no danger in multicausality. On the other hand, what happens when ideological and strategic considerations, far from overlapping, actually contradict each other? Yordanov has to take sides, and here is where he stands: “Moscow’s Horn approach, locked between pragmatism and ideology, ultimately gave priority to realpolitik considerations . . .” Ah! Realpolitik—1; Ideology—0. The game continues, “. . . while ideological factors acted as a motivating trigger that helped the Kremlin’s leaders justify their actions” (p. 253). A careful reader might ask at this point: how do we distinguish between true motivations and those that merely helped Soviet leaders to “justify their actions”?10 This is an old question that unfortunately does not have an answer either in Yordanov’s book or, for the most part, in the vast historiography of the Cold War. There is little left to do but to take solace in Yordanov’s useful observation that “it is almost impossible to separate the Narkomindel [realpolitik] and Comintern [ideological] line in Soviet foreign policy” (p. 199). It may be best not even to attempt it. One tantalizing aspect of the book—at least for me—is Yordanov’s (unfortunately tentative) attempt to explore the notion of superpower “prestige” as an underlying motivation for Moscow’s involvement in the Horn. For instance, Soviet advisers in Somalia deployed terms such as “international prestige” in discussing the “honorable task” of helping Siad on the road to socialism (p. 93). Yordanov suggests that having a presence in the Horn was part and parcel of what it meant to be a superpower: not just in geopolitical terms but also in terms of standing, status, recognition. Yet, he also documents the evolution of the Soviet understanding of “prestige,” so that by the late 1980s having an ally like Ethiopia “arguably caused great damage to Soviet prestige and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine” (p. 225). The changing perception of what exactly constitutes “prestige” in the context of the superpower confrontation in the Horn is one line of enquiry that could potentially take us beyond the tiresome and at times sterile juxtaposition of ideology and strategy. Finally, one note of caution. In discussing Soviet foreign policy, it is very important to understand whose policy we are talking about. Yordanov tries to

10. On this point, see Mark Kramer, “Ideology and the Cold War,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4 (October 1999), pp. 539–576.

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distinguish between rival centers of authority: the International Department of the Communist Party, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense. (The last of these, he convincingly argues, played the key role in defining Soviet priorities in the Horn.) However, he tends to conflate these different perspectives under the overall banner of Moscow’s policy: Moscow thought, Moscow felt, Moscow decided. . . In one case we even learn of something called “the Bloc’s analysis” (p. 67). This approach works sometimes, but it can also lead to simplifications. Can anyone really say that in 1977 “the Kremlin’s leaders appeared impressed by Mengistu’s resolve and the extent of revolutionary dedication”? A cursory perusal of the relevant memoir literature suggests that by 1977 most “Kremlin leaders” (especially Leonid Brezhnev) were far too ill to care about places like Ethiopia, which is why understanding Soviet foreign policymaking in the Brezhnev years requires a thorough institutional analysis. Overall, I enjoyed this interesting and engaging book, and I commend the author for bringing a new angle and important empirical data to help with our meandering journey to a better understanding of the still very recent past.

Reply by Radoslav A. Yordanov

As Oscar Wilde once noted, “the highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.”11 The Journal of Cold War Studies has gathered six well-known academics studying Soviet foreign policy from different perspectives to use their respective expertise and experience to comment on my book. Although some commentators mention shortcomings in the book, others ﬁnd it “interesting and engaging” (Radchenko) and “a welcome addition to the literature” (Friedman) that is “original and valuable” (Light) and is “almost certain to be the last word on this subject” (Kolodziej). I am deeply thankful for the considerable praise as well as for the thoughtful critiques offered by the participants in this roundtable. In an effort to address as many of their concerns as I can, I have organized the issues in three groups: analytical, structural, and factual. Let me start with several important analytical questions regarding the du- ality of Soviet policy, superpower prestige, and the role of the Eastern bloc. Margo Light offers a close reading of the portions of the text pertaining to the division of Soviet foreign policy along realpolitik and ideological lines, which

11. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (New York: Penguin Books, 2000 [orig. 1891]), p. 3.

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is not surprising in light of her important contributions to the study of So- viet foreign policy and, particularly, Soviet relations with the Third World. However, she asks why I find “anachronistic terms” such as “Narkomindel” and “Comintern” “applicable to Soviet policy during decolonization.” As she points out, these terms are used “as shorthand for foreign policy dictated by realpolitik and policy based on ideology.” According to the long-standing Soviet Foreign Ministry official Sergey Synitsyn, who spent most of his career dealing with the Horn of Africa, alternating between Moscow and Addis Ababa, the complex situation on the Horn is what prompted Soviet leaders to call for a flexible combination of the two major approaches in Soviet foreign policy— or what he calls the “Narkomindel” and the “Comintern” line.12 Both terms, anachronistic as they might seem nowadays, are used in my book to denote the consistency of Soviet foreign policy with Marxism-Leninism and specifically with Vladimir Lenin’s dualist foreign policy approach as outlined in the Decree on Peace and adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets in November 1917. Arguably, the decree set forth the dual nature of Soviet foreign policy, encompassing both proletarian internationalism and peaceful coexistence. These strands appeared to form the grounding principles of Soviet foreign policy even in the mid-1970s. On 3 July 1976, the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) decided to continue pursuing international cooperation and solidarity on the bases of the “great ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin,” with proletarian internationalism being one of the major tenets of socialist revolution and socialist construction.13 The two lines, regardless of their nomenclature, remained salient a decade later during the seminal 27th CPSU Congress in February–March 1986. According to the party program adopted at the congress, the main goals of the Soviet Union’s international policy were, in addition to peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries, solidarity with Communist and revolutionary-democratic parties, the international workers’ movement and the national liberation struggles. Even if these are invoked solely to verify or negate certain actions on the international scene, their practical value is highlighted not only in Sinytsin’s account but also in those of Karen Brutents, who served for many years as first deputy head of the CPSU International Department, and Georgii Kornienko, who had lengthy experience in both the party and the Foreign Ministry. As Kornienko noted when speaking at a conference in Lysebu, Norway, in 1994,

12. Sergei Sinitsyn, Missiya v Éﬁopii: Éﬁopii, Afrikanskii Rog i politika SSSR glazami sovetskogo diplomata, 1956–1982 gg (Moscow: Institut Afriki RAN, 2000), pp. 20–21. 13. V. A. Zorin, Osnovy diplomaticheskoi sluzhby, 2nd Ed. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1977), p. 60.

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The state line should take care of our state’s national interests and our “Com- intern” line as a party line. That was what we Communists should do to promote our ideas all over the world, but not necessarily with the help of the state, army and so on. And from what was said by Lenin, it was clear in the following years, as was mentioned already by Karen [Brutents], when those two lines were not in agreement, it was the state line, state policy line, which always prevailed.14

The two foreign policy strands found their place not only in the book’s title but also in its main argument, which is spelled out on page xxiv. The latter centers on the Soviet Union’s flexible approach in the Horn of Africa throughout the four decades from the reopening of the embassy in Addis Ababa in the late 1940s until the withdrawal of Soviet troops in the early 1990s. Soviet activism combined elements of both “aggressive opportunism in establishing a local presence and prudence in maintaining it.” On the ground, the two traditional strands of Moscow’s foreign policy, “the pragmatic statist line” and “the ideologically laden Cominternist approach,” appeared not to be in conflict and were instead complementary of each other in a “flexible tactical approach designed to maximize influence by whatever means available— ideological, military, diplomatic—along the path of least resistance.” This flexible approach showed continuity with Leninist formulas for the role of Soviet power on the international scene “and followed local political priorities that changed over time throughout the Cold War.” Finally, although Moscow aimed at maximizing its local presence, it also spared no effort in adjusting to other external factors, most notably the United States. Accordingly, the terms when construed only as thin descriptors of Soviet foreign policy indeed seem, as Jeremy Friedman points out, “anachronistic and not especially helpful in describing actual debates in Moscow.” But as used in the book, the terms are not descriptors but signifiers or labels with “thick” connotations rather than prescriptive value. This may be why Robert Donaldson sees them as “awkward and confusing.” Harking back to the world of the 1920s, they seem inadequate for the complexities of the latter half of the twentieth century. But if seen as mere political categories used by Soviet diplomatic agents, they provide a useful tool to explain Soviet responses to stimuli scattered on the “Cartesian system of coordinates,” to borrow Sergei Radchenko’s apt metaphor, which charts ideology and realpolitik impulses and reactions in the mind of the Soviet policymaker.

14. US-Soviet Relations and Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s work- shop held in Lysebu, 1–3 October 1994, transcr. G. A. Kvam, ed. by Odd Arne Westad (Oslo: Nor- wegian Nobel Institute, 1995).

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Light also finds it difficult to locate much evidence in the text to support the argument that “different Soviet bureaucracies competed for influence over Soviet decision making in the Horn.” She sees the “implied dichotomy between the two terms” as rather misleading, citing a well-known debate from the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1920 between Indian Communist N. M. Roy, who “believed that the Comintern should foster the nascent socialist movements in the colonies,” and Lenin, who thought it made better tactical sense “to support the nationalist movements that already existed, since they were more likely to succeed in the struggle for independence.”15 This was, as Light says, as much a “policy based on Soviet national interest as it was an ideological policy.” Still, this is also an example of tactical flexibility. Lenin’s “First Letter on Tactics” (1917) stresses that Marxism demands “an exact and objectively verifiable analysis of the relations of classes and of the concrete features peculiar to each historical situation.”16 This, he argues, is a tactical requirement necessitated in the struggle against the enemy and demands “the utmost effort . . . and even the smallest rift between the enemies.”17 In Moscow, different bureaucracies could have endorsed competing tactical approaches on the ground, but the ultimate decision was the Politburo’s. Therefore, as I conclude in the book, the two lines are almost impossible to separate (p. 199), and eventually they did not conflict with each other and instead generated a flexible tactical approach aimed at maximizing influence with any means available—ideological, military, diplomatic (p. 256). Simi- larly, this appears to have worked at a time when “most Soviet leaders were far too ill to care about places like Ethiopia,” as Radchenko says. He rightly notes that “understanding Soviet foreign policymaking in the era of stagnation requires a thorough institutional analysis.” Marshal Sergei Akhromeev and Georgii Kornienko offer a succinct account of the Soviet “decision making in the era of stagnation,” explaining the division of labor within the CPSU Politburo at the time of a notably missing central figure to coordinate the work of those responsible for Soviet foreign policy, defense, law and order, and

15. Margo Light, “Introduction: The Evolution of Soviet Policy in the Third World,” in Margo Light, ed., Troubled Friendships: Moscow’s Third World Ventures (London: British Academy Press, 1993), p. 3. 16. V. I. Lenin, “Pervoe pis’mo o taktike: Otsenka momenta,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,5thed. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1969), Vol. 31 (March–April 1917), p. 132. 17. V. I. Lenin, “Detskaya bolezn’ ‘levizny’ v kommunizme,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,Vol.41 (May–November 1920), p. 55.

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economic issues.18 Nevertheless, despite this, the dualist foreign policy offered a type of checks and balances à la soviétique, strange as that may sound. Thus, the use of terms like “Moscow’s policy,” “Moscow’s thought,” and “Moscow’s decision” conveys the unified policy decisions that eventually emerged after the CPSU Politburo’s deliberations. The clearest example in this regard is the Soviet civilian leaders’ ability to restrain the military in their plan to enter Somali territory after the Somali withdrawal (see pp. 192–194) and to appease Mengistu Haile Mariam’s aggressive plans vis-à-vis Eritrea (pp. 194– 197). However, similar policymaking maneuvering could be found in the early 1960s, when Nikita Khrushchev sought reconsideration of Moscow’s position regarding Somalia, thus reversing the initially enthusiastic course. In the mid- 1960s, this revised approach translated into slower military deliveries, despite Somali protestations (pp. 40–42). Soviet diplomats even engaged in direct ne- gotiations with U.S. diplomats in an attempt to curb the local arms race. The backchannel that the Soviet ambassador to Mogadishu arranged with his U.S. counterpart in Addis Ababa was a reflection of opinions within the Soviet For- eign Ministry that closely followed the Politburo’s path of moderation (p. 50). Similar arguments could be found in the rather timid first steps of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” on the Horn, where the more activist strands of the old thinking continued to play a role despite the fervent bilateral and multilateral diplomatic initiatives undertaken by Gorbachev and Eduard She- vardnadze (p. 244). Ultimately, the latter gave way to the former, culminating in the termination of Soviet military deliveries and the withdrawal of military and other professional advisers from Ethiopia. Radchenko also makes an insightful observation about the question of superpower prestige. As a motivating factor, it appeared on numerous occasions in the documents at various operational and decision-making levels. The dichotomy of ideology-realpolitik is the leitmotif of the book, but the question of international prestige is indeed the “thin red line” that appeared in numerous discussions of all major local turning points that required Moscow’s attention. In addition to the two cases mentioned by Radchenko, the narrative includes numerous others. For example, in the early 1960s, the Somalis attempted to exploit “Soviet prestige considerations” when Mogadishu’s ambassador to Moscow claimed that the failure of military cooperation between Somalia and the Soviet Union would benefit the imperialists and could seriously damage “the prestige of

18. S. F. Akhromeev and G. M Kornienko, Glazami marshala i diplomata: Kriticheskii vzglyad na vneshnyuyu politiku SSSR do i posle 1985 goda (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 1992), p. 15.

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the Soviet Union in the eyes of the African states” (p. 42).19 Later, in the mid-1970s, as observed by the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu, the Soviet Union endorsed Somalia’s plans to enter the Arab League in a bid to reestablish So- viet prestige among Arab countries after the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War and the expulsion of Soviet personnel from Egypt (pp. 85–86, cf. p. 108).20 Only three years later, an East German–Bulgarian joint communiqué from mid- September 1977 (cited on p. 194) proclaimed that the Soviet-bloc states saw the success of the Ethiopian revolution as “closely linked to the increase in Soviet power and international prestige, and persistent foreign policy of the CPSU.”21 Following this line of analysis, Siad Barre’s expulsion of the So- viet advisers in mid-November 1977 damaged the “Kremlin’s prestige as a leader of the socialist commonwealth” and led to Moscow’s all-out support of Mengistu to save the endangered regime in Addis Ababa and “teach the So- mali president a lesson” (p. 257). Moreover, in the 1980s, Mengistu’s inability to bring Ethiopia’s political landscape further into line with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, along with the worsening economic situation, arguably caused significant damage to Soviet prestige as well (p. 258). Finally, some Soviet Foreign Ministry officials suggested in early 1989 that military assistance to Ethiopia’s fight against the Eritrean fronts “seemed futile and harmful to Moscow’s prestige” (p. 246).22 “Superpower prestige” is notably difficult to quantify and measure, and its role in superpowers’ calculations in the Horn would require a study of its own. I traced the evolution of this recurring theme, which is fascinating by being both illusory and potentially tangible insofar as it presupposes each side’s recognition of the other’s strength and therefore allows the stronger side to achieve its aims without having to use its superior strength, as E. H. Carr once claimed.23 Thus, prestige played an important role in Moscow’s flexible

19. Memorandum of conversation, Fomin-Adan, 12 December 1963, in Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (AVPRF), Moscow, Fond (F.) 0581, Opis’ (Op.) 7, Papka (Pap.) 6, Delo (D.) 3, Llisty (Ll.) 1–2 [129]. 20 “Úrovenˇ styku˚ Somálská demokratické republiky s arabskými zememi:ˇ Politická zpráva c.3,”ˇ 15 March 1974, in Archiv Ministerstva Zahranicníchˇ Veci, Prague, F. TO-T, 1970–74, Kr. Somálsko, 1, Sv. 239/111, 1, Ss. 3–4. 21. “Suvmestno˘ komyunike za oﬁtsialnoto priyatelsko poseshtenie na partiinodurzhavnata˘ delegatsia na Germanskata Demokratichna Republika v Narodna Republika Bulgariya,”˘ 14 September 1977, in DAMVnR, F. Ya., Op. 33, D. 41, Pr. 737, S. 15, l. 34. 22. “O negativnykh¯ tendentsiyakh v razvitii Éﬁopii,” 22 February 1989, in AVPRF, F. 143, Op. 52, D. 8 (T. 1), Pap. 58, Ll. 5–6 [5–6]. 23. See Carr’s Cust Foundation lecture of 19 November 1937: E. H. Carr, Great Britain as a Mediter- ranean Power (Nottingham: University College, 1937), p. 10, cited by Martin Wight, “Vital Interests and Prestige,” in Power Politics (1978; London: A&C Black, 2002), p. 98.

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tactical approach in the Horn, which was “designed to maximize influence by whatever means available—ideological, military, diplomatic—along the path of least resistance” (p. xxiv). Another special feature of the book is its scrutiny of the East European di- mension of the Soviet Union’s involvement in the Horn. Previous studies tend to overlook the importance of Moscow’s East European allies in the Third World, depicting their role as an insignificant sideshow.24 However, Light and Patman seem unconvinced with my major observations related to the East Europeans’ utility for the Soviet Union. I show that, as the story developed throughout the Cold War, the East European missions in both Somalia and Ethiopia, starting with the entry of Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria into Ethiopia in the late 1950s, acted as “front- line units,” actively engaged in political, economic, and cultural penetration aimed at preparing the scene for a future Communist takeover. As Kolodziej rightly notes, the narrative was aimed at demonstrating the “complicity” of the Soviet surrogates, which “provided non-military and diplomatic support to advance the Marxist-Leninist cause and furnished Moscow with useful intelligence about its fickle African clients.” Thus, the Soviet-bloc states had specific political mandates and objectives, and their modest economic abilities eventually had a disproportionately high symbolic value. The vast number of documents originating from various levels—from embassy and intelligence re- ports, to memoranda of conversations between embassy personnel of various East European embassies, to department-level analyses and recommendations, to Politburo protocols—demonstrate the East European countries’ high level of engagement and commitment. The Warsaw Pact ambassadors exchanged information and shared their planning initiatives at regular meetings, usually hosted by the Soviet Union. At ministry level, regional department heads (and often foreign ministers and their deputies) engaged in periodic bilateral consultations. Even at the top policy level, local issues occasionally occupied leaders’ agendas. This communication network resulted in periodic, systematic coordination and consultation and in the process internationalized the Soviet Union’s involvement in the Horn. By seeking the participation of East European War- saw Pact allies on the ground, Moscow was able to lower its profile in the region and avoid attracting the attention of local regimes and the United States. On the other hand, the East European diplomats’ interactions with local

24. Andrzej Korbonski, “Eastern Europe and the Third World; or, ‘Limited Regret Strategy’ Revised,” in Andrzej Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama, eds., The Soviet Union and the Third World: The Last Three Decades (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 101–119.

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political leaders and their interpretations of local developments provided ad- ditional information that filtered through a host of bureaucratic channels to the top, “actively shaping the Kremlin’s decision making” (p. 253). The pre- cise impact of local actors on Soviet decision-making is often hard to distinguish, but by tracing document collections from Addis Ababa and Mogadishu through East European capitals to Moscow we can understand that the Soviet Union was not alone in furthering the objectives of the socialist commonwealth in the Horn. Moscow’s goal from the outset seems to have been to enlist the East European allies in its global quest. With respect to factual inconsistencies, Patman and Donaldson offer a close reading of the book, with an eye to detail. According to Patman, my “treatment of key developments in the Horn often seems inconsistent and contradictory.” He uses two examples of regime change in Somalia and Ethiopia, finding in one instance that my observation of Moscow’s “wait-and- see position” (p. 90) toward Siad Barre’s military coup is at odds with the fact that the Soviet State Security (KGB) network had received “advance notice of the coup,” the Soviet media’s quick dubbing of the coup as “progressive,” and the Soviet Union’s transmission of official congratulations to the new military regime in Mogadishu. However, as the book demonstrates, the Soviet Union stepped up its tangible support for the regime not earlier than 1972. Two years of careful study of the local situation did not bring much by means of material support to the Somali leaders, who received little more from Moscow than diplomatic exchanges and gestures of moral support. The real turning point, resulting in the Soviet Union’s more comprehensive engagement with the new Somali regime, occurred only after Siad Barre’s trip to Beijing in May 1972 and the expulsion of Soviet military personnel from Egypt in July. Some- thing similar happened later with Moscow’s engagement with Ethiopia, which fully materialized following Siad Barre’s expulsion of Soviet specialists from Somalia. Patman also seems uneasy with the idea that Soviet diplomats could be involved in Addis Ababa’s activist role without Moscow’s approval, and he argues that direct Soviet influence on events in Ethiopia was “unlikely” (p. 189). As I outline earlier in the book (pp. 154–160), there was no concrete evidence of any direct orders from the Soviet Foreign Ministry or the CPSU for Soviet diplomatic personnel to meddle directly in Ethiopia’s affairs at the time. By contrast, Mengistu received sympathy from Anatolii Ratanov and Sergei Sinit- syn, as I have pointed out elsewhere.25 Scrutiny of relations between Mengistu

25. See Radoslav Yordanov, “Addis Abeba, 1977: Brüderliche Militärhilfe und globale militärische Strategie Die sowjetische Verwicklung in den Konﬂikt zwischen Äthiopien und Somalia,” in Andreas

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and Moscow’s envoys prior to February 1977 demonstrates only the willing- ness of Soviet diplomats to help arrange a visit by Mengistu to Moscow so he could let Soviet leaders know about Ethiopia’s pressing needs. Whether the expectation of positive results from such a meeting could have constituted a sufﬁciently strong trigger for Mengistu to act as he did in February 1977 is a matter of speculation, but the logic of the events suggests he acted out of urgency after reportedly suffering repeated attempts on his life. His potential visit to Moscow, however, was postponed until May 1977 because of the February events. In the spring of 1977 the USSR continued its somewhat restrained course, providing only limited amounts of defensive arms while maintaining a stake in Somalia at the time. Patman claims I fail to “exercis[e] scholarly detachment” in my writing. The examples he adduces do not bear out the allegation. The West’s “support of the Arab reaction” (which actually appears on p. 128) is citing an assessment expressed in a KGB analytical note, as the text makes clear.26 The mention of “democratic development” at the bottom of page 128 is quoted from Ambassador Ratanov’s delivery of wishes from Nikolai Podgornyi and Aleksei Kosygin for “democratic development of the country and deepening of the friendly ties between the two states.” The source of this congratulation is also cited as originating from the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry (see p. 147 n. 46). The adjective “progressive” on p. 160 refers to the self-described “progressive changes” by Mengistu following his February 1977 showdown, aimed at attracting Moscow’s military support in the spring, and does not refer to his clique’s activities before the February coup, as Patman’s remark implies. Conversely, a sentence Patman quotes—“Taking into consideration the ex- tremely complicated domestic situation threatening the progressive changes in Ethiopia, the Mengistu-led military government began to focus its attention on attracting the support of the socialist countries” (p. 160)—does not seek to portray Mengistu and his military commanders as progressive or democratic. Rather, the sentence alludes to the new military leaders’ decision to support “progressive-minded” reforms in the way the Communist states understood them, in order to convince the Warsaw Pact states to provide Ethiopia with much-needed military assistance. As for a “military re-supply mission,” I outline the contents of this operation on pages 190–192. At the time, it was one of the largest military airlift maneuvers in Soviet history, involving the

Hilger, ed., Die Sowjetunion und die Dritte Welt UdSSR, Staatssozialismus und Antikolonialismus im Kalten Krieg 1945–1991 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2009). 26. KGB Reference No. 855, “O polozhenii v Éﬁopii,” 12 July 1974, in Arkhiv Ministerstva na Vun- shnite Raboti, Soﬁa, F. 1, Op. 10, a.e. 2083, Ss. 2–3.

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transport not only of vast amounts of military materiel but also of thousands of Cuban troops. Finally, the mention of President Ronald Reagan’s “cowboy philosophy” is a quotation from a statement made at a meeting of the East German embassy’s party organization (as cited on p. 227 n. 33). According to Patman, the “Somali invasion of the Ogaden in July 1977 invalidates the claim that Soviet arms played a ‘decisive role in restraining Mogadishu’s territorial ambitions’ (p. 85).” But this was in fact one of the objectives of the July 1974 friendship treaty signed by Podgornyi during a visit to Somalia. Contrary to Ethiopian leaders’ interpretation, the treaty did not offer any support for their expansionist aspirations. The changed political dynamics in the region following Mengistu’s coup in February 1977 and Fidel Castro’s shuttle diplomacy in the spring of 1977 markedly distanced Siad from Moscow. Buoyed by mixed signals from the Carter administration and promises of Saudi aid, Siad began openly supporting the Western Somali Liberation Front in the summer. At the time, Soviet ofﬁcials sensed that the idea of a federation in the Horn was futile. Because of Siad’s dismay at Soviet backing of Mengistu’s course, the Soviet Union’s ability to exert any control over the Somali leader’s actions reached its nadir. It is true, as Patman says, that Carter had not yet been elected in September 1976, but the full sentence reads “As a result, Carter agreed to Kagnew’s closure in September 1976 and to the reduction in the numbers of personnel of the Military Advisory Assistance Group (MAAG), informing Mengistu on 22 April 1977” (pp. 167–168). The phrasing should have been clearer, but the intended meaning is that Carter informed Mengistu on 22 April 1977 that he supported the closure of the U.S. Army’s Kagnew Station in Asmara. However, Patman is right that Podgornyi is erroneously mentioned as having taken part in high-level discussions on the Somali-Ethiopian question in late August 1977. Podgornyi’s name appeared in this portion of the text somewhat mysteriously between drafts, and it will be duly omitted in future printings. Donaldson claims that I “evidently attribute more signiﬁcance to the Is- lamic revolution in Iran in explaining Washington’s perception of a greater regional threat from Moscow.” However, on page 208 I discuss how the So- viet invasion of Afghanistan adversely affected U.S.-Soviet relations, refer- ring to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analysis, which is similar to the book by Dan Caldwell cited by Donaldson.27 The abdication of the Shah of Iran in early 1979 prompted Brzezinski and Pentagon analysts to consider alternative military options for the establishment of a permanent U.S. naval presence in the

27. Caldwell, Vortex of Conﬂict.

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Indian Ocean. Jeffery Lefebvre’s conclusion that the “White House percep- tionoftheentirenorthwestquadrantoftheIndianOcean...becamelinked perceptually to the Iranian crisis and the looming Soviet threat” is cited to this effect on page 210.28 Lefebvre highlights not only the Iran crisis but also the “looming Soviet threat” as shaping U.S. perceptions of the Western Indian Ocean littoral and the Horn, which, in the words of the East German envoy to Addis Ababa, “turned into a new international center of conflict.”29 The book acknowledges that the “the final nail in the coffin” of U.S.-Soviet arms control and ultimately of détente was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 (p. 208). Donaldson rightly points out that events in the Horn of Africa in the 1960s were viewed in Moscow and Washington in the larger context of their naval competition in the Indian Ocean. He insists that I have not paid “full consideration” to the “variety of motives ascribed” at the time to the Soviet Union’s expansion of its presence in Berbera. Conversely, the wider issue of Berbera and the Horn of Africa in the Soviet Union’s Indian Ocean involvement can be seen in my discussion of the so-called Berbera affair on pages 103–107 (see also p. 189). Donaldson maintains that “Moscow used its expanding naval capability for the purpose of ‘showing the flag’ and supporting its foreign policy objectives, including its foreign trade, in many of the littoral states.” Naval presence, therefore, was a useful element in a complex tactical approach that also included political, economic, subversive, and military aid instruments. As I note on page 88, the implementation of such an approach would have been a visible reminder that the Kremlin was capable of protecting its own interests and those of its Indian Ocean friends.30 Accordingly, in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment, Soviet leaders, starting in 1972 regarded Somalia as a replacement for Egypt in ensuring access to the Red Sea region and aimed to use the Berbera facilities to expand its naval and political presence in the Indian Ocean.31 However, none of the USSR’s advances in the Red Sea basin in general and in the Horn in particular would have been possible without the expansion and modernization of the Soviet Navy in the second half of the 1960s. Admiral Sergei Gorshkov posited in the mid-1960s

28. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn, p. 199; emphasis added. 29. Wolfgang Bayerlacher, “Zur Lage am Horn von Afrika—Schlußfolgerungen für die Außenpolitik der DDR,” ca. 1981, in Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin, MfAA, ZR 2602/85, p. 3. 30. “NATO Study on Implications of Reopening Suez Canal,” 12 May 1975, in National Archives and Records Administration Online, Record Group 59, DN: 1975NATO02642. 31. CIA National Intelligence Daily Cable, 16 November 1977, in CIA Records Research Tool, ESDN: CIA-RDP79T00975A0304000 10056-2.

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that the navy’s peacetime mission was to achieve Soviet political objectives, including assistance to “national liberation struggles” and deterring “imperialist powers” from threatening “progressive regimes,” which sought to reverse the prior doctrine of local wars, according to which the superpowers’ involvement in regional conflicts would “inevitably” escalate to a larger conflict.32 Several reviewers raise questions about the book’s structure. Light, Kolodziej, and Donaldson express reservations about the book’s dense and complex narrative. Kolodziej’s reference to Emperor Joseph II’s criticism of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail raises the question of the extensive endnotes (more than 1,000), most of which contain lengthy English-language transcriptions. I see little way to streamline the notes without leaving readers wondering about the sources of particular claims. Although Light finds merits in the multi-archival research approach, she worries that the narrative “sometimes loses clarity.” The original reason to consult as many East European archives as possible was to obtain information that was not readily available from Russian archives and triangulate and verify findings that have already been made available in secondary literature or found in other archives. The result was a more nuanced, richer, and more detailed picture. But, as the number of actors increased, a corresponding increase in complexity was an inevitable by-product. However, even if this approach seems perplexing, it is aimed at adding more credibility to the events that have been reconstructed. Usually these events involved multiple actors, im- plying international communication and coordination at various diplomatic and policymaking levels. Simplification for the sake of aiding understanding and explanation is often infeasible, as can be seen, for example, with the events portrayed in chapters 4 and 5, encompassing momentous changes in both So- malia and Ethiopia, as Light points out. I understand her point about the “chronologically confusing” narrative, but if I had covered developments in both countries simultaneously, I would have blurred their distinctive internal dynamics and the motivations for Soviet conduct both on the ground and in Moscow. Donaldson says that, when reading the book, he found it “hard to find the forest for all the trees.” The book uses declassified archival material from as many countries as possible to reconstruct events that helped shape Soviet

32. Sergei G. Gorshkov, Morskaya Moshch’ Gosudarstva (Moscow: Voennizdat, 1976); Sergei Gorshkov, “Voenno-morskie ﬂoty v voinakh i v mimoe vremya,” Morsko˘ısbornik, No. 3 (1972), pp. 20–32; and James M. McConnel and Bradford Dismukes, “Soviet Diplomacy of Force in the Third World,” Problems of Communism, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January–February 1977), pp. 24–29. See also Walter K. Anderson, “Soviets in the Indian Ocean: Much Ado about Something—But What?” Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No. 9 (September 1984), p. 914.

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policy in the Horn during the Cold War, but it also covers general themes of East-West and North-South interactions, especially in the introductory sec- tion of each chapter. Although Donaldson’s “forest for trees” criticism has some merit, the density of the prose is hard to avoid with the dramatically changing and vastly complicated local and global settings the book surveys. Donaldson also finds it “hard to understand” why the final chapter dealing with the “critical period December 1978 to March 1985” takes “about the same space allotted to the spotty Soviet involvement in Africa in the 1940s and 1950s.” The last chapter deals with the perestroika period and the momentous changes it brought to Soviet foreign policy and thus required special attention. That chapter alone took well over a year to complete. Scholars un- dertaking archival research will have felt the restrictive power of the 30-year- rule that usually precludes access to information produced within 30 years. However, this rule is more often just a guideline, and documents frequently remain closed well after the embargo period has expired. In my research, I tried to obtain as much relevant information as possible from East European archives related to this period, which was less easily researched in the Rus- sian archives at the time. Still, a lengthy stint at the Russian Foreign Ministry archive enabled me to enrich and expand on my findings from other archives. On the other hand, the book throughout seeks to draw on primary materials and secondary sources. The chapter that looks into the closing years of the Soviet presence in Ethiopia takes stock of the influence of the so-called new thinking in Moscow’s foreign policy, using a wide pool of previously un- used information. As for the “spotty Soviet involvement in Africa in the 1940s and 1950s,” the book is about the Horn of Africa and has no pretense to be applicable to Soviet involvement elsewhere. Soviet involvement in the Horn in the 1940s and 1950s was equally neglected in the literature, and by paying special attention to it I was able to look into the evolution of Soviet policy there throughout the Cold War. Light and Patman argue that I do not pay much attention to the changes in Soviet policy from “Khrushchev’s optimistic and idealistic (rather than ideological) approach to the more pragmatic policy followed by his successors” (Light) and “changes in the Soviet line that accompanied [its] leadership shifts” (Patman). Donaldson likewise chides me for “failing to point out clearly and precisely what [my] extensive archival research has added (or subtracted from) the more contemporaneous studies.” The death of Iosif Stalin and its repercussions on Soviet foreign policy are discussed on page 18 (con- tra Donaldson’s claim that I do not take account of Stalin’s death and the changes in the Soviet line that accompanied it), and the Horn of Africa’s story reveals more of Khrushchev’s foreign policy attitudes, especially in the

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closing years of his time as CPSU First Secretary. His conduct toward the Horn from 1963 until his removal from power in October 1964 was markedly flexible, nuanced, and pragmatic, as demonstrated in the case of the Somali military agreement and his treatment of the Ethiopian-Somali border clashes. The book discusses adjustments of Soviet foreign policy stemming from regional changes in Somalia in late 1969 and in the early to mid-1980s. Patman avers that “the book’s argument is also weakened by the absence of a dedicated chapter spelling out the constellation of interests at the global, regional, and local levels that propelled Soviet policy toward the Horn of Africa in the 1970s.” However, the book deals not just with the 1970s but with the whole period from September 1947 until March 1991, and each chapter offers an introductory analysis highlighting links between the “local pull” and the “global push.” Friedman is right to point out that the book’s coverage of measures taken by the Soviet Union to “transform the Ethiopian economy along socialist lines, is not as detailed” as the analysis of military and political issues. In chapters 5–7, which deal with this shift, I focus mainly on political and military questions because those issues were the most pertinent at the time and demanded the most attention from local actors and their Soviet and East European coun- terparts. In chapter 8 (pp. 221–223), I sketch the economic issues the Soviet bloc faced in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, but those issues, I agree, are in need of a separate study. The primary focus of my book is on political and military relations, though I acknowledge and discuss other forms of penetration, such as soft diplomacy and economic relations, wherever possible. Finally, I want to address Patman’s assertion that my book “struggles to sustain claims of exceptionalism in relation to the previous literature on the subject.” He maintains that I have taken insufficient account of the existing literature on the subject (p. xvii). Despite my acknowledgment of his own “seminal” contribution to the topic, he seems irked by my main complaint about previous accounts of Soviet policy in the Horn of Africa, namely, their limited primary source base. On this point I am taking account of Odd Arne Westad’s Global Cold War, the growing literature on the international history of the Cold War, and the newly accessible archives in Eastern Europe.33 My book, because of its source base, methodology, and language, differs from previous studies. As a survey of international history, it has no pretense of exclusivity, neither implied nor claimed. I am glad that Friedman recognized the rather modest task the book had all along, finding it “the first monograph

33. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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on the subject to make use of the currently available materials in the former Eastern Bloc.” Thus, after a nearly decade-long study of the Soviet Union’s engagement in the Horn of Africa in almost 30 archives from Austin to Moscow, and after consulting “seventeen pages’ worth” of secondary sources (as Donaldson notes), I could say in response to my original questions that the men “behind the Kremlin’s tall walls did know what they were doing in the Horn, but they earned that piece of knowledge as they went along, paradoxically un- doing their very own ideological fabric.” Finally, in response to Donaldson’s contention that the book does not “point out clearly and precisely” what my “extensive archival research has added to (or subtracted from) the more contemporaneous studies,” I point to page xxiv, which contains the most central and concise expression of the book’s argument. Unlike most previous studies dealing with the motivations and repercussions of Soviet intervention in the Horn of Africa, my book highlights the patterns of Moscow’s involvement. I write in the introduction that the “Kremlin’s incremental and ﬂexible behavior showed a more proactive approach toward those local developments that affected high-priority international issues concerning the strategic balance of power or relations with the United States” but “tended to adopt a respon- sive policy stance toward events of local signiﬁcance, such as regime changes” (p. xxiv).

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