Imperialist powers manipulate Syrian peace plan to prepare for war

[RZM]

63. States almost always do that

Self-interest is usually why they are in the game. And ideology IS self-interest. That was especially true during the Cold War. The Soviets understood that a stable, Communist Afghanistan was a good thing for them. The US understood that it wasn't. Same story, different place.

We've now had over 20 years to assess the Soviet side of the Cold War by combing the Soviet archives (or at least the parts that the Russian government keeps open). And we've learned that ideology mattered a whole lot. The historians who used to argue that the USSR was just another power-player and that ideology was incidental haven't really fared all that well.

Now, there were always exceptions to that. The Soviets were always willing to hold back from strongly supporting Communist regimes when they didn't feel it was in their best interests. Yemen would be a case in point. When Yemen was split between the Communist south and the non-Communist north, the Soviets were careful to not appear too supportive of the PDRY (the Communists) and maintained good relations with the YAR (the non-Communists).

In a private moment, Reagan once asked the Soviet ambassador to the US whether he was 'really' a Communist or just going through the motions. He claimed that he really was. The ambassador also says that he brought up the same thing with Brezhnev and that Brezhnev admitted that ideology would sometimes get in the way of Soviet interests as a great power, but there was no way around it because it was important to have genuine belief in the system.