ABSTRACT
The human costs of centralized power also affected Soviet foreign policy. As the Soviet Union became increasingly aware of Eastern Europe's limited usefulness for an activist foreign policy, the dismantling of Western empires offered growing temptations to increase Soviet global influence by an "indirect approach" through the Third World. The tendency of ideological empires to gradually assume a ring-like form has been increased by certain characteristics of the international system. The Eastern European clients of the Soviet Union were among the countries most shut off from the rest of the world. Mikhail Gorbachev has hastened the loss of his "vital" interests in Eastern Europe while clinging tenaciously to his vexing burdens in the Third World. The doughnut shape is the one being assumed by the Soviet bloc: it is falling in at the center, still fairly vigorous at the periphery in the Third World.
