The Bear in the Back Yard

by Timothy Ashby

First published 1987

Amazon

2.5(5)

Written during the final decade of the Cold War, The Bear in the Back Yard examines Soviet strategy in the Caribbean and Central America and the importance Moscow attached to the region as a pressure point close to the United States. Ashby traces the development of that strategy from the Cuban Revolution through the expansion of Soviet political, military and intelligence relationships in the 1970s and 1980s.

The study considers Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, insurgency and proxy relationships alongside the American response, arguing from the perspective of contemporary strategic-policy analysis rather than retrospective narrative history. It is therefore both a study of superpower competition in the Caribbean and a primary-period example of how US policy specialists interpreted Soviet regional ambitions during the 1980s.