ABSTRACT
The standard Moscow foreign policy approach has been to search for soft-spot opportunities and, when found, to exploit them. The rule seems to be: Push where softness is found, and keep pushing until resistance hardens. The USSR appears not so much to be operating from some master plan as to be moving opportunistically to meet unfolding events. The USSR is seen as a continuation of empire that enjoyed the benefits of extraterritoriality, customs regimen, and residential concessions in Asia. Future Soviet behavior in Asia, if we are to use history as our guide, will be driven by a mission of empire. Moscow's ambitions may or may not have pre-Communist roots, but the recent record indicates that what it wants in the region is ideological dominance, to be achieved without Soviet participation in war. It is with these grand strategy considerations in mind that we begin to trace the many-colored threads woven into the fabric of relationship between Vietnam and USSR.
