The USSR and Latin America (1989) is an authoritative analysis of the Soviet Union’s strategy and policy towards the region. The contributors cover a variety of topics, including Latin America’s place in Soviet strategy for the developing world, US perceptions of Soviet strategy in the region, Soviet–Cuban relations, and relations between Latin American communist parties and the USSR.

Tracing the reciprocal relationship between Africa and North America from the seventeenth-century slave trade onwards, two leading authorities in the field provide a major revision to traditional colonial African history as well as to US history. Departing from prior accounts that tended to emphasise only the role of the colonial metropoles in developing Africa, the authors show how American pioneers - missionaries, traders, prospectors, miners, engineers, scientists, and others - have helped to shape Africa. They also point to the equally important impact made by Africa on the United States through trade and immigration, and through the influence of Africans on the arts and agriculture, among other facets of American life. In a study of exceptionally broad scope, the authors devote particular attention to the development of United States policy regarding Africa, the impact of private enterprise, the operation of governmental lobbies, the administration of foreign aid, and the involvement of Africa in the Cold War.

Brazil’s soft power path to major power status. The largest country in South America by land mass and population, Brazil has been marked since its independence by a belief that it has the potential to play a major role on the global stage. Set apart from the rest of the hemisphere by culture, language, and history, Brazil has also been viewed by its neighbors as a potential great power and, at times, a threat. But even though domestic aspirations and foreign perceptions have held out the prospect for Brazil becoming a major power, the country has lacked the capabilities—particularly on the military and economic dimensions—to pursue a traditional path to greatness. Aspirational Power examines Brazil as an emerging power. It explains Brazil’s present emphasis on using soft power through a historical analysis of Brazil’s three past attempts to achieve major power status. Though these efforts have fallen short, this book suggests that Brazil will continue to try to emerge, but that it will only succeed when its domestic institutions provide a solid and attractive foundation for the deployment of its soft power abroad. Aspirational Power concludes with concrete recommendations for how Brazil might improve its strategy, and why the great powers, including the United States, should respond positively to Brazil’s emergence.

That Africa--one of the superpowers' crucial diplomatic and economic battlegrounds--now verges on political developments as dramatic as those of eastern Europe compels us to consider the tremendous influence that East and West have wielded in recent African political development. Drawing from American diplomatic archives, firsthand interviews, and the African and international press, Zaki Laidï presents a historical analysis of how the dialectical relationships of the United States, Soviet Union, and African actors evolved to their present state. The lapse of European influence in the 1960s left a diplomatic void, which the superpowers rushed to fill. Just as Dien Bien Phû and the Suez crisis thrust Asia and the Near East, respectively, into the diplomatic spotlight, so the Angolan crisis lent a multifaceted cast to Africa's international relations. The ebb and flow of African crises is now linked to the rhythm of superpower relations, but Laidï is quick to warn that Africa's internal political circumstances shape the boundaries for external influence and constrain any efforts of the superpowers to exert total control. Laidï's provocative study, here in its first English translation, addresses diplomatic strategy, often neglected economic considerations, the growing influence of the Bretton Woods institutions, and the decline of French influence in Africa.

African armies have undergone significant changes since African nations won independence from colonial rule. Once mainly small constabulary forces relegated to the maintenance of internal order, these armies have become larger, more modern institutions, largely in response to growing external security threats. Previous analyses have focused on African military units as political actors, with little or no attention paid to their actual abilities and desires to perform defense functions. This study examines the evolution of African armed forces, their impact on the societies in which they operate, and their current capabilities, with special attention to their effectiveness as military institutions.