Mr. Brezhnev is not to blame if he has come to be convinced that certain circles in the West are determined to damage the detente with the Soviet Union and revive the cold war. They have, indeed, launched a virulent anti-Soviet propaganda campaign the like of which has not been witnessed for some years. To what extent it is the result of the bad old Dullesian habit of viewing developments anywhere in the world in terms of the East-West competition for influence and to what extent it reflects genuine concern over the Soviet-Cuban successes in Africa and the communist coup in Afghanistan and their possible impact on West Asia, it is difficult to say. While, for example, it is well known that President Carter’s national security adviser, Mr. Brzezinski, remains essentially a cold warrior who regards it necessary for the West in general and the United States in particular to demonstrate its capacity and will to stand up the Russians as they continue their efforts to expand their political influence in the third world, others are differently inclined. Indeed, a number of leading Americans, among them the US secretary of state, Mr. Cyrus Vance, and President Carter’s envoy to the UN with special responsibility for Africa, Mr. Andrew Young, do not share Mr. Brzezinski’s alarmist view of Soviet intentions and capabilities on the one hand and recent developments in Africa on the other, President Carter himself is said to occupy a middle position between the two groups, though he is only too prone to extended fits of self-righteousness.
But differences within the US administration and the Western world apart, it is even otherwise just not possible for Mr. Brzezinski or anyone else to revive the cold war. A great deal has been said and written about America’s traumatic experience in Indo-China, as if this is the only obstacle to that country’s direct military involvement in faraway lands, say Africa in the present context. In fact, the experience in Vietnam is only one of the several factors which inhibit and must continue to inhibit America’s return to military adventurism of which Vietnam was only the culmination. Its over-readiness to intervene was the result of its justified confidence that its military prowess outside Europe was unchallengeable because the Soviet Union just did not possess the naval capability of making its power felt outside its immediate environs. And America’s military power was more than matched by economic power. Both have declined in comparative terms, the first partly because the Soviet Union has built in the last 1.5 years an impressive navy and the second because the United States has ceased to be competitive in a variety of fields. Till recently the Soviet Union was unable to use its power in the third world because it was unwilling to commit its own personnel in other than a training role and, unlike the Unite States, it did not have a proxy on which it could depend. Cuba has filled this gap in Angola and Ethiopia. This poses a problem for the West and the answer cannot be either direct US military intervention or return to cold war but something quite different – a combination of the use of French forces as in Zaire and the CIA’s subterranean activities. President Carter is still handicapped in using the CIA but he is seeking greater freedom from Congressional control and supervision.