From Kremlin to Kabul

as well as capacity. The Soviet Union is now capable of using force as an instrument of foreign policy as much as the United States is or has been. Strategic parity could stabilise detente only if the Soviet Union had agreed to accept Kissinger's concept of linkage and observe 'restraint' in the third world. Instead, the Soviet Union has used the period of detente to change the political map of seven African-Asian countries with the willing help of Cuba and Vietnam. At the same time, detente has plunged world capitalism into a prolonged economic crisis and Soviet bloc communism into its worst internal crisis of the last three decades. The chronic crises of capitalism has sharpened American fear that the US may be deprived of its commanding position in the economy of the developing world. A recent Brookings institute study shows that the developing countries are the fastest growing market for US machinery, transportation equipment, high technology goods and agricultural products. Some two-fifths of total US exports are sold to these countries, more than to Eastern and Western Europe, the Soviet Union and China combined. The Soviet bloc is not only competing for these markets but is determined to detach the developing nations