How does one assess the success of Soviet foreign policy tow ards Southeast Asia? If foreign policy is to be assessed in term s of i ts identifiable aims the question a rise s , which aims have p riority? This book has attem pted to estab lish several c r ite ria for an examination of Soviet policy tow ards the region which include the following. F irs t , in Soviet policy th ere has been a preference for socialist allies o r revolutionary demo­ cracies in the T hird World as a recognised means of securing durable gains in the global contest against the United S tates. This p refe ren ce , to re ite ra te , is not simply an ideological one as though ideology can exist solely in disembodied form in in ternational politics. Ideology can be a significator of common political and military links between the Soviet Union and its socialist or revolutionary democratic allies and certa in ly , for Soviet leaders, is a basis for ex erting control which would be absent in the case of former or c u rren t non-socialist allies such as Egypt or India. Secondly, th ere has been a search for s tra teg ic benefits in the T hird World which would entail naval facilities, anchorages, overflight and landing rig h ts which could be used to a ssist national liberation movements and u p risings or to promote Soviet naval s tra teg y against the United S ta tes. The experience of Soviet foreign policy has generally shown th a t such stra teg ic benefits can be made more durable in the context of a dependent political relation­ ship defined in ideological term s. S tra teg ic benefits , for the Soviet Union, can exist independently of an ideological or even an alliance re la tionsh ip , however, the problem from the Soviet perspective is to ensu re th e ir durab ility against political fluctuations in the T hird World.