How did the u. s. and the soviet union court third world countries?

Cold War fears of communism penetration prompted U.S. intervention, sometimes openly, and often secretly, in Iran, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, the Congo, and elsewhere, and in the process the U.S. supported anti-communist but corrupt and authoritarian regimes. Indonesia received large amounts of Soviet and Eastern European aid, but that didn't prevent it from destroying the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965, butchering half a million suspected communists in the process.

The answer is ethnic groups.