ABSTRACT
The 1970s saw the culmination of some important processes at work within the post-1945 international system which have had major effects on super power relations with the Third World. The foremost among the processes at work within the post-World War II international system referred to above has been the closing of the strategic gap between the US and the USSR. The challenges to super power domination which preceded such intervention came from local forces, whether represented by Nasser, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Hafizullah Amin or Ayatollah Khomeini. In fact, US policies, because of their relative lack of responsiveness to Third World aspirations are unable to capitalize upon the more fundamental and in-built contradiction between the Soviet Union and important segments of the Third World, a contradiction for which the Afghanistan crisis merely performs the proverbial role of the tip of the iceberg.
