The Second World's Third World‪.‬

For historians of Soviet foreign policy, the Third World in the Cold War has long been something of an afterthought--or, in the words of one leading practitioner, "a sideshow to the main drama of the Cold War." (1) Indeed, the very term "Cold War" reflects a focus on Europe. First used in reference to the Nazi "phony war" (Sitzkrieg) in 1938, the term described opposing troops facing each other but not exchanging tire. (2) That applied well enough to post-World War II Europe, where the war remained "cold" in that no direct military engagements took place. But the term hardly fit the Third World, where many if not most countries found themselves embroiled in genuine military conflict with global implications at some point during the "Cold" War. When the Third World did come to scholars' attention, it was usually during moments of crisis involving superpower showdown. In these conflicts, Third World leaders seeking help from the USSR were typically considered Soviet puppets, and Third World countries themselves functioned only as a backdrop to Soviet-American confrontation. This view of Soviet-Third World relations in the Cold War could be crudely summed up in an anecdote from June 1950. When reporters asked the State Department spokesman which individual bore responsibility for the North Korean offensive, he blamed Iosif Stalin. He posed the rhetorical question, "Can you imagine Donald Duck going on a rampage without Walt Disney knowing about it?" (3) Third World leaders like Kim II-Sung, in this construction, were Stalin's puppets of his creations.