Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.
To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.