ABSTRACT
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, Soviet policy in the Middle East was in crisis, first and foremost because of the USSR's intervention in Afghanistan, and then because of the internal decay of Soviet society, and finally because of the USSR's flagging military and strategic competition with the West. The task of Soviet policy in the Middle East was still determined by the need to prevent or at least reduce any military or strategic threat from the south and to weaken Western positions in the region. The framework of this task encompassed support for those governments opposing the United States or at least striving to strengthen their political independence from the West. The idea of supporting "revolutionary-democratic" regimes or "socialist-oriented" states was beginning to shrivel like shagreen leather. During the 1980s it was rare for serious analysts in the West to use the terms "imperial", "calculatedly aggressive" or "offensive" when describing Soviet policy in the region.
