The Reds Invade Afghanistan

Theoretically, it holds that the United States (US) invaded Afghanistan as a self-defense strategy following the 9/11 attacks. Practically, however, as US foreign policy is about conquest, self-protection and resource-extraction, it seeks strategic dominance of geographical space to sustain its global relevance. The rationality of the US suggests the need to continuously accumulate capital, resources and military proficiency to ensure autonomy. Therefore, a pragmatic reading into the motivation behind the invasion of Afghanistan negates the self-defense theory. Rather, the shifting coordinates of power within central and southern Asia crafted the perfect criteria for US intervention. This work explores the motivations and systemic cover-ups designed by the Bush administration in ordering military troops into Afghanistan in 2001. It will hold that this invasion was not just a War on Terror, but rather a tactic to ensure US prevalence within the region, and henceforth, the rest of the world. Thus, why did the US invade Afghanistan?

Iran was a major supplier of oil and in 1977, President Carter went there to celebrate the shah’s rule. This caused internal opposition against America and in 1979, a revolution ensued, over-throwing the shah and declaring Iran an Islamic republic. Because of Carter’s close relationship with the shah, he allowed him to seek medical treatment in the US. As a result of this, Khomeini, Muslim cleric who over-threw the shah, followers attacked and invaded the American embassy in Tehran, seizing 66 hostages. This directly shows that Carter’s bleeding heart policy was not always successful and led to a rapid fall in this popularity. Another failure, sometimes referred to as a greater crisis than WWII, of Carter’s foreign policy also began in 1979 and was initially seen more as America losing power because of Carter’s policy, not a direct result of anything he did. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan to support a government threatened by an Islamic republic. In the end, Afghanistan became Soviet Vietnam, “an unwinnable conflict whose mounting causalities seriously weakened the government at home.” However, when Carter funneled aid to Muslims in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union, an alliance formed that had unexpected consequences. This aid essentially helped Islamic fundamentalists, also known as the Taliban, rise to power in Afghanistan and America has been fighting them ever

The Cuban Missile Crisis or Operation Anadyr marked an occasion in US intelligence history where, the analysis became a shortfall. In the case of the Soviet Union and Cuba employing Maskirovka (deception and denial techniques), the analysis seen in the US was not able to detect the movement of the Missiles to Cuba or even the military buildup. What were these biases? In this paper, the aim will be to explore how these biases led to mistaken identifiers of the Soviet Union movement of missiles to Cuba, as well as how deception and denial operations were able to fool the US. Along with the bias being discussed, the missed identifiers that could have prevented the Soviet build up as well as the emplacement of the missile will also be explored.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan just to see themselves as the big “Losers” of the war. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was a serious blow to the prestige of the Army, to national pride and faith in the soviet political leaders. The scars it left on many of the remaining soldiers created social and political problems. A reform of the military was necessary. In the midst of all these turmoil, “there was also corruption and inefficiency within the states bureaucracy” (p.3 smitha.com) and nothing seemed to get done. The soviet people and some Eastern European countries were fed up of all these ongoing problems the Soviet Union was facing. The soviet people were fed up with the high communist party which stood ground and dominated the entire soviet politics, as this was the only party in the states since Stalin’s regime. The party had become rigid and corrupt which discouraged younger party members who saw little chance of advancement. At this stage corruption was the order of the soviet system of government which buoyed lack of commitment to the government.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 1979, the goal was to help Afghan communist forces set up a communist government. The Soviet Union felt Afghanistan had key resources and a foothold in the Middle East to spread communist ideas. The result would be a war that the Soviet Union wishes it never got involved in and likened to their “Vietnam War”, meaning winning a number of battles but not the war like what happened to the U.S. in Vietnam. The background of the war, outcome of the war, and impact on the United States are key to understanding the Soviet-Afghan War.

When fighting the Vietnam War many did not think it possible for the United States to loose. Those fighting underestimated the power of the Viet Cong. With a foreign land and foreign customs Marines struggled to get accustomed to the way the war was fought. Philip Caputo addresses these learned lessons in A Rumor of War. Lessons that were learned in Vietnam also have relevance to the current war in Afghanistan. The men in both wars fought against an enemy that blends in with the locals. Philip Caputo’s first hand account of the Vietnam War shows the mistakes that were made and how those lessons taught the United States not to make the same mistakes in Afghanistan.

The Invasion was destined to fail from the beginning due to the CIA’s plan being backed on false intelligence. From the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the mass exchange of communist ideas would begin, deepening the Cold War and attributing to the pressure and strain placed upon the United States and Russian foreign relations. Failure and doubt in the United States lead to the exploration of new policy and political ideology, as well as a new era in intelligence, political, and military fields, that continues to affect the domestic and foreign policy of today's

When the soviet union invaded afghanistan the war lasted for 9 years 1979-1989. Between 1 million to 1.5 million people were killed in that war and millions of people when to a diffrent countries such as pakistan or iran as refugees. The United States supported Afghanistan by supplying arms to the Mujahadeen. Ronald Reagan sent billions of dollars to the Mujahadeen so he can help Jihad against the Soviet Union. “Reagan believed this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible. Reagan deployed CIA special activities division paramilitary officers to train, equip and lend the Mujahideen battalion against the Soviet army”. Reagan’s objective was winning the Cold War and the rollback of communism. The United States also offered financial and

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the eventual civil war both effected America in many ways. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, they learned that their troops “were of little use in a place like Afghanistan” (Paul) because of the harsh terrain and environment. Using airstrikes, the Soviets began to decimate many of the villages within Afghanistan. It was because of this act of aggression that America started arming the resistance fighters with anti-aircraft missiles. With the assistance of the United States, the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, which led to internal fighting within the tribes for power.

This paper discusses the United States of America Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) counter to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Operation Cyclone was a multinational plan to defeat the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and halt the advancement of communism. Through the covert assistance of Operation Cyclone, the Mujahideen fighters managed over the ten year war to defeat the massive Soviet Army and re-establish their sovereignty. The lessons learned by the Mujahideen guerillas would later be taken to task following the al Qaeda attack on America on 11 September 2001. The subsequent decade plus war would eerily resemble the Russia-Afghanistan conflict but with different results.

The worst case scenario for the United States in the late 70s and early 80s was the threat of the Soviet invasion of Iran and subsequent control of the Saudi Oil fields. The best that could be done to counter a possible Soviet invasion would have been the deployment of parts of the 82nd Airborne Division to the Zagros Mountains of Iran, which would take at least a week with reinforcements arriving much later. This was not acceptable to the Carter Administration, which decided on another course of action - to actively support the anti-Soviet Mujahideen “freedom - fighters” in Afghanistan and help protect the Middle Eastern oil fields. This American involvement in the Soviet Afghan war has

This paper will be explaining the similarities, and differences, between the Vietnam War and the War in Afghanistan. There are many topics that bring these two wars together. However, I am only going to be talking about public support, policy objectives, military strategy, weapons, fighting spirit, links to home, and death totals. These topics have a lot of information about them, but there is too much to write about every little detail, so I will cover the broad overview of them. Each paragraph will be about one of the topics. There will also be a discussion about insurgencies and counter insurgency operations. These are two big topics in Vietnam and Afghanistan since almost all of the enemy in both wars were, and are, comprised of insurgents and different types of militia groups.

The General Secretary’s foreign policy adviser purportedly persuaded the General Secretary to initially reject his three key leader’s recommendation in March of 1979 to engage in a troop deployment to Afghanistan in response to the request from the Communist government of Afghanistan, however; this stance changed by December based upon the seven reasons listed earlier. Prior to the three key figures drafting the memorandum to deploy military troops there was dissent from numerous individuals; in addition to the Foreign Policy adviser, the Premier, various senior military Generals, and KGB personnel opposed the idea of sending troops to Afghanistan. I propose that the three

overthrew the Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan through covert actions, such as funding rebel groups and supplying weapons, rather than direct military involvement; these same weapons were later used in the Afghan civil war after the Soviet withdrawal, which was an unintended consequence of American aid. In his State of the Union address in January of 1980, Jimmy Carter, the U.S. president at the time, proclaimed, “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” This segment of the speech is known as the Carter Doctrine and shows how America became more open to involvement against the Russians to protect their national interests, which was a large shift away from detente, normalizing of relations, from the previous decade. Instead of deploying their own troops, America unleashed propaganda campaigns, funded, and sometimes even trained the Mujahideen groups fighting the USSR troops. These covert actions allowed America to fight the Soviet Union, while having plausible deniability in the international community. Initially, Reagan’s only goal in Afghanistan was to deal a crushing blow to the USSR, as he did not believe that the Mujahideen could defeat the powerful Red Army. Reagan used Pakistan as an intermediary for American

Then, on October 7th, President Bush announced operations in Afghanistan were underway. In his address to the nation, President Bush enumerated the demands given to Taliban leadership as, “close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the Al Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country.” It was clear “none of these demands were met,” as President Bush announced military strikes were underway in Afghanistan. This concludes the first element of contemporary evidence.