ABSTRACT
Much of the Soviet literature on American foreign policy characterized the latter as inherently aggressive and as having experienced its apogee in the immediate post-war period. Especially in the 1970s, America's potential to act as the world's policeman declined due to several factors. Soviet statements about American motivations in the region attributed to Washington the aggressiveness the Soviets claim to be characteristic of American foreign policy in general. The Soviet view of the goal of American foreign policy is to prevent fundamental change in the international system, thereby maintaining neo-colonialist domination, which in turn insures capitalist profits. Moscow's perceptions of those losses elicited a Soviet reaction that must be taken into account in the formulation of American foreign policy. The chapter concludes that indeed there was genuine concern over those motivations, plans and actions, although its magnitude is impossible to measure with precision.
