Policy Outside and Politics Inside
Résumé
A European power in 1945, the Soviet Union today is a global power. It has stretched its political influence and its military capability to remote corners of the globe. This relatively new development, which started after the Second World War, accelerated in the 1960s as a result of the general internationalisation of economic and political life. Decolonisation and the emergence of many new independent countries, rapid progress in information and communications techniques, the irresistible growth of economic interdependence, and the development of a community of socialist states, increasingly immersed the Soviet Union in international affairs. Furthermore, its military superpower status confers on the USSR — along with the United States — the role of ‘co-ruler’ of major world affairs.