Table Of ContentUNSPOKEN RULES AND SUPERPOWER DOMINANCE
UNSPOKEN RULES
AND SUPERPOWER
DOMINANCE
Paul Keal
© Paul Ernest Keal 1983
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1983
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1983 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-06226-3 ISBN 978-1-349-06224-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06224-9
To the memory o[ Ernest A Keal
Architect and Musician
and to my mother
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
PART I CONCEPTS
1. The Term and Its Use 15
2. Unilateral Declarations and Agreements
about Spheres of Influence 34
3. Tacit Understanding 45
PART II THE GROWTH OF UNDERSTANDING
4. World War 11 and Plans for Post- War Order 65
5. The Consolidation of Spheres of Influence 87
6. Action and Inaction 116
PART III LAW AND ORDER
7. Spheres of Inf1uence and International Law 161
8. International Order and Spheres of Inf1uence 194
9. Conc1usion 213
Notes and References 226
Index 257
Acknowledgements
This book was a long time in the making and in the process
accurnulated a number of intellectual and personal debts. My
primary debt is to Professor Hedley Bull and Dr John Vincent,
both of whom gave me vital encouragement, criticism and
guidance. Dr Chris Provis made a valuable contribution and
Mr Geoffrey Jukes, Dr Hugh Collins, Dr Len Hume and Dr Carsten
Holbraad read and commented on vari~us chapters. None of these
people be ar any responsibility for the pitfalls of the book.
Over many years I have been privileged with the support of
Professor J.L.Richardson, Professor J.D.B.Miller, Dr. R.J.O'Neill
and other members of the Department of Political Science, the
Department of International Relations and the Strategie and
Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University.
I am very grateful also to the Center for International Studies
at Princeton University and its members for the year I spent
there in which I was able to think about much more than the
manuscript of this book.
Dr David Plant of Flinders University deserves thanks for
encouraging me to study international relations in the first
place. Professor Ekkehart Krippendorf consolidated my interest.
Finally, but by no means least, a number of friends have
given inestimable support. Judy Rix, Marcia Murphy and Bonnie
Bauld all contributed generously to preparing the manuscript.
I would like to extend special thanks to Miss May McKenzie
and Ms Dorothy Hush and the School Services of the Australian
National University for their part in preparing the final
version. Daniel Connell, Greg Fry and Kathryn Cole all helped
in their own way at various times while Margareta and Onela Keal
did so all of the time.
Paul Keal
Canberra
August 1982
List of Abbreviations
ABC Ameriean Broadeasting Corporation
BBC British Broadeasting Corporation
CDSP Current Digest of Soviet Press
CPCz Communist Party of Czeehoslovakia
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
DSB Department of State Bulletin
EXCOM Exeeutive Committee of the National Seeurity Couneil
FRUS Foreign Relations of the Uni ted States
NATO North Atlantie Treaty Organization
OAS organization of American States
SALT Strategie Arms Limitations Talks
UN Uni ted Nations
US Uni ted States
USSR Union of Soviet Soeialist Republies
Introduction
The subject of spheres of influence in international politics
is a large one. In several respects it spans the entire scope
of the study of international politics and it is necessary to
begin by marking out the aspects of spheres of influence which
are the focus of what follows. This book is not a history of
spheres of influence and it does not aim at providing a defin
itive account of the place of spheres of influence in the
practice of international politics. Consequently there are a
number of aspects of spheres of influence which are not
included in this study and which would need to be dealt with
in one with a different focus. My principal aim here has been
to provide a systematic account of the place of tacit under
standing, which the Soviet Union and the Uni ted States each
have about spheres of influence, in international order.
Since the end of World War II the idea that there is a tacit
understanding about spheres of influence has cropped up when
one of the superpowers has resorted to armed intervention in a
state, in which it has an interest, and has done so without
being effectively challenged by its rival; the only power with
the capacity to do so. Because there has been this absence of
either armed resistance or the threat of it or other forms of
effective opposition, observers and students of international
affairs have speculated that there is a tacit understanding
about spheres of influence. It was because of such speculat
ions that after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968,
Mr Rusk, the Uni ted States Secretary of State, was obliged to
deny the Uni ted States had ever ente red into a tacit under
standing about spheres of influence. Soviet spokesmen have
similarly denied any such understanding. [IJ On at least one
occasion the chief representative of one of the superpowers
has spoken for both in disclaiming any joint intention to
establish spheres of influence which would, by implication,
mean an understanding or agreement about them. This was done
by President Nixon in the course of an address to the people
of the Soviet Union, broadcast at the conclusion of talks
between the Uni ted States and the Soviet Union, held in
Moscow during May 1972. President Nixon declared that neither
power had the aim of establishing spheres of influence or of
conspiring together against the interests of any other
1
2 Unspoken Rules and Superpower Dominance
nation. [2] Similarly the officials of a potential superpower,
the People's Republic of China, have decried Soviet and United
States spheres of influence and declared that China does not
have and will not seek any of its own. [3]
Such statements and the disavowal of there being any under
standing does not accord with what appears to many to be the
reality of the practices of international politics. It is
commonly believed and indeed this book argues both that there
are spheres of influence and tacit understanding about them.
Moreover that this understanding embodies some of what might
be called the 'rules of the game' in relations between great
powers. [4] What is understood is: (i) that the Uni ted States
will not intervene militarily in Soviet actions in eastern
Europe. Evidence for this can be found in the examples of
Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968: (ii) that the
Soviet Union will not intervene militarily in the Americas
and evidence for this is the outcome of the Cuban missile
crisis of 1962 and the intervention in the Dominican Republic
in 1965: (iii) it was suggested by D.W. Bowett that it has
been also understood that 'the Soviet Union will not intervene
in South-East Asia or the Far East to counteract US action but
will leave this area to China to act as she deems best'.T5]
While the Soviet Union might indeed not have been willing to
directly counteract Uni ted States action, the precise nature
of its involvement and aims in South-East Asia and the Far
East needs to be ascertained, particularly in light of reports
that Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces were involved in the
invasion, in January 1979, of Kampuchea.[6] An examination of
spheres of influence in South-East Asia and the Far East
deserves to be a study in its own right and it is not included
in this book. Principally because it is unlikely that discuss
ion of these regions would add anything to the argument of the
book and the general propositions it makes concerning the
place of tacit understanding about spheres of influence in
international order which I will now summarize.
The statements issued by spokesmen of the United States and
the Soviet Union which disavow spheres of influence and the
idea of tacit understanding about them, show that neither of
these two powers either publicly recognizes the sphere of the
other or uses the term 'sphere of influence' to describe its
relationship with states which are considered by other powers
to be under its influence. Nevertheless, spheres of influence
are part of the reality of international politics and the
Soviet Union and the Uni ted States have both behaved as though
they do recognize each other's sphere. Indeed, it is because
of the way they have behaved that i t may be inferred they
have reached a tacit and reciprocal understanding as to the
range of behaviour each will tolerate of the other with regard
