Afghanistan and the USSR: How a Third World Country Killed a Giant Paperback – Jan. 11 2023
by Robert Makuch (Author)
TO BUY THE BOOK PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING LINK: https://amzn.to/3muGdwq
SUMMARY OF THE BOOK: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, according to most scholars, did not have a profound effect on the outcome of the Cold War as a whole. I challenge that stance. It is true that the costs monetarily and in loss of life paled in comparison to those of previous wars fought by Russia/the Soviet Union. However, the decision by the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan led to drastic changes in foreign policy by the United States and its NATO allies. These shifts in policy made the Soviet Union’s efforts in Afghanistan futile from the beginning. Although the decade-long war in Afghanistan cannot, technically, be called a military loss by the Soviet Union since the Soviet-backed regime there lasted for a short time after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the embarrassment felt by the Soviet Union and the social pressure felt by Soviet leaders led to the election of Mikhail Gorbachev and the domestic policy changes that his regime would make. Gorbachev did not want to destroy the Soviet Union, but the experience of Afghanistan and changing sentiment within the USSR because of the relatively secret war there proved too much for to bear. In trying to preserve the Soviet Union by giving more freedom to Soviet states, Gorbachev inadvertently engendered the collapse of the Soviet Union. This short book examines how the decision to invade Afghanistan directly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
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