Oil Fueled? The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Abstract

Abstract: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 remains a deeply puzzling event. The action was uncharacteristic of Moscow's Third World policy and extremely self-destructive. Moreover, archival sources reveal that, just nine months earlier, the Politburo was strongly opposed to such an undertaking. Based on archival documents, this article examines what could have caused this sudden, reckless shift in policy, and attention is drawn to a hitherto overlooked factor. Guided by the “resource curse” literature, the possibility that the Soviet leadership may have been radically emboldened in their contemporary external outlook by the extraordinary surge in energy wealth that occurred during 1979 is analyzed.

On the evening of December 27, 1979, Soviet special forces launched an attack on the Tadzh-Bek Palace on the southern outskirts of Kabul. Their objective was the elimination of the Afghan President, Hafizullah Amin. Taking the presidential security forces unawares, the elite Spetsnaz units quickly overcame the defenders. In less than an hour Amin was dead, his body left crudely wrapped in a carpet (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 63). The invasion of Afghanistan had begun. Within days the deployment of as many as 50,000 Soviet troops had been authorized (Ob uvelichenii, Bukovsky Archive, January 2, 1980), a commitment that was to swell to 105,000 by the end of January (Limberg, 1990, p. 93). It was to prove one of the most ill-judged foreign policy decisions in all Soviet history.

Over three decades since the first shots were fired, the reverberations of the Soviet invasion are still clearly discernible. The profound consequences continue to be felt, not only in the former Soviet republics and Afghanistan itself, but across the broader Islamic world and the West. For example, no serious analysis of the “9/11” attacks and the United States' subsequent “War on Terror” can be considered complete without reference to the Soviet-Afghan conflict. However, while this important war has consistently commanded academic attention, there has recently been a particular resurgence in interest. With NATO's own costly operations in Afghanistan reaching their tenth anniversary, scholars have been redrawn to the Soviet experience (e.g., Braithwaite, 2011; Feifer, 2009; Kalinovsky, 2011). And yet, despite the salience of the subject matter, there remains no consensus on the most fundamental of questions: why did the Soviets invade? This is the debate revisited in this article.

To begin with, it is necessary to stress the extraordinary nature of the Soviet decision. To this end, the first section demonstrates that the invasion was strikingly divergent from the pattern of Soviet policy in the Third World, a policy that had largely been defined by caution and a reluctance to commit Red Army units directly. It is also explained that this incredibly damaging undertaking was launched with remarkable disregard for the likely consequences in terms of world opinion, détente, and the long-term stability of the Soviet system. Most surprisingly of all, by drawing upon archival material it is revealed that, just nine months earlier, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was strongly opposed to the deployment of forces in Afghanistan and keenly aware of the predictable dangers.2 These observations beg the question: what can have suddenly induced such a radical shift and caused the Soviet leadership to embark upon this exceptional exercise in self-harm?

Making use of the existing literature, possible solutions to this problem are discussed in section two. First, I address the oft-cited argument that the Soviet intervention, while uncharacteristic and risky, was an urgently required defensive measure to prevent a rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan from spiraling out of control and jeopardizing core Soviet interests. Although entirely plausible, this case is shown to have a number of weaknesses. Most importantly, the external threat to Afghanistan was much exaggerated by the Soviets to justify their action. Prior to the invasion, the mujahidin was weak, divided, and in no position to seize control of the country, let alone expand its activities to the Soviet Central Asian republics. The suggestion that Amin was on the verge of reorienting his country towards the West is also found to be without foundation. The intervention must therefore be seen as a matter of strategic choice, and not necessity. This being so, one is left seeking a cause for a sudden emboldening in elite thinking about foreign policy. In the absence of any significant change in the composition of the Soviet leadership, other factors are considered, namely the contemporary perception of US weakness and the possibility that Moscow's international ambitions had been enhanced by earlier successes. Each argument is not without merit, yet neither, whether alone or combined, is found sufficient as an explanation for so dramatic a shift in outlook amongst Moscow's sclerotic leadership.

Responding to this need for supplementary explanations, section three presents an alternative model. Scanning the international context for other causes of the assertive swing in Soviet foreign policy in late 1979, one is struck by the extraordinary surge in oil prices that occurred that year as a result of turmoil in the Middle East. From $17.50 in January 1979, the price of a barrel of oil more than doubled to $40 by November (Jenkins, 1989, p. 3). Comparable surges in energy wealth are popularly assumed to have had a significant effect on recent Russian foreign policy. Why not therefore for a Soviet Union that produced almost 12 million barrels of oil a day in 1979, just under 18 percent of the global total (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2011)? As well as seeming superficially credible, it is explained that this contention chimes with the academic literature on the “resource curse,” a theory that posits that large infusions of energy wealth can have a transformative effect on the functioning of resource-rich states. Further to negatively impinging upon their economic performance, this energy wealth is held to have major political implications, including eroding the quality of policymaking and increasing the frequency and intensity of conflicts. In particular, attention is drawn to the work of Terry Lynn Karl (1997) whose research focuses on the propensity for oil booms to encourage leaders to pursue unconstrained, overly ambitious, and ultimately wasteful policies of which they would have thought better had their judgment not been clouded by the influx of easy money. Karl specifically has domestic politics in mind, yet there seems no reason why her concepts of “petromania” and oil-induced “politics without limits” may not be requisitioned to aid analysis of foreign policy. The details of this proposed model having been presented, it is examined using primary evidence about the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan in December 1979. In so doing, it is highlighted that many of the facts of the case do indeed bear a striking resemblance to the model's predictions.

The Exceptional Nature Of The Decision

Firstly then, it is necessary to be certain that there is truly a puzzle here worthy of our attention. This first section therefore concentrates on understanding the surprising nature of the Soviet decision to invade. In so doing, it is explained that the invasion was by no means characteristic of the established pattern of Soviet involvement in the Third World. The action is also shown to have possessed little immediately understandable logic in the context of Moscow's dealings with the Afghan regime, while simultaneously presenting several predictable costs to both the Soviet Union's international standing and domestic affairs. Even more interesting is the finding from archival research that earlier in 1979 the CPSU Politburo had, in no uncertain terms, dismissed the option of a major deployment of Soviet troops to Afghanistan, having shown themselves to be very much alive to the high risks involved. There can be little doubt therefore that the Soviet decision to launch the invasion must be considered an extraordinary undertaking and an event meriting close study.

It should be noted from the outset that not all observers agree with this account. In some quarters there is thought to be nothing particularly remarkable about the 1979 intervention. Invasions were simply something the Soviet Union did, a logical consequence of its historically embedded militancy and insatiable expansionism (Brzezinski, 1984; Pipes, 1980). However, more detailed studies reveal this image of the USSR to be caricatured and show that the invasion of Afghanistan was actually a considerable divergence from the broader pattern of Soviet activity in the Third World. For example, Neil MacFarlane's survey demonstrates that, prior to 1970, Soviet policy towards Marxist revolutions in the Third World was defined by caution. Aware of the limitations of its resources, the Kremlin primarily sought to contribute to world revolution by building socialism at home and thus setting an attractive example. As such, Moscow instigated few of the left-wing uprisings to occur in the Third World between World War II and 1970 and, on many occasions, actually discouraged such attempts (MacFarlane, 1990, pp. 17-31). Those revolutions that arose spontaneously were certainly lavished with praise, but Moscow generally sought to avoid direct involvement. On those few occasions when the Soviets did take a more active role, the support tended to lack full commitment, as was the case in China, or was restricted to economic aid, arms transfers, and covert military action, such as in Korea (Hammond, 1984, p. 137). Above all, the Kremlin was careful to avoid overt participation of Red Army forces in Third World conflicts. What is more, even when radical regimes began to falter, the Soviet Union remained restrained, offering little reaction to the fall of prominent clients such as Sukarno in Indonesia, Ben Bella in Algeria, Nkrumah in Ghana, and Keita in Mali (MacFarlane, 1990, pp. 19-46). Likewise, the US occupation of the Dominican Republic in April 1965 to prevent a leftist regime from taking power was accepted with equanimity (Steele, 1983, p. 212).

After 1970 there can be no question that the Soviets adopted a more assertive stance (MacFarlane, 1990, p. 48). As the decade progressed, Moscow became more active in supporting African revolutionaries, especially in Angola where Soviet involvement was condemned as a “blatant power play” by the US Secretary of State (Steele, 1983, p. 228). A less compromising approach was also taken towards the war in Vietnam where “[b]y the end of 1974 the Russians were also more willing to see the United States humiliated” (Steele, 1983, p. 149). To some in the West, these moves marked a “notable deviation from the caution that had traditionally marked Soviet involvement in the Third World” (Nogee & Donaldson, 1981, p. 274). And yet, despite a gradual increase in ambition, the scale of Moscow's activities remained fundamentally restrained until 1979. Although providing material support to Marxist revolutionaries in several countries during the 1970s, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan Moscow had been careful not to overreach. Most notably, the Soviets favored airlifting Cuban proxies to African conflict zones rather than directly involving their own forces. As such, the Afghan intervention remains a conspicuous outlier, representing the Red Army's first large-scale, long-term military operation since 1945.

In the years preceding 1979, Moscow also demonstrated that it was still not unequivocally averse to allowing fledgling Marxist revolutions to fail. For instance, despite urgent appeals for assistance, in July 1971 Moscow refused to provide the short-lived communist coup in Sudan with anything more than verbal support (Limberg, 1990, p. 70). Even more salient is the case of Chile where Marxist leader Salvador Allende was elected president in September 1970. Despite seemingly presenting the Soviet Union with a promising opening through which to expand its influence in Latin America, Moscow proceeded exceedingly tentatively. No major aid or investment programs were offered and only one high-level visit was made by a Politburo member (Edmonds, 1975, p. 101). This “distant attitude” continued throughout Allende's three years in office and, in the course of his presidency, the Chilean government actually received more financial assistance from Western Europe and other Latin American states than it did from the Soviet bloc (Steele, 1983, p. 218). Moreover, when the Chilean regime was overthrown in September 1973, resulting in Allende's suicide, the Soviet Central Committee did no more than offer a brief expression of sympathy. Overall, the refusal to make more of this highly favorable opportunity suggests that the scope and ambition of Soviet Third World policy continued to remain carefully controlled well into the 1970s.

In response to this argument that the Afghan case represents a radical departure from the Soviets' preceding circumspection, it might be countered that the USSR acted similarly with regard to the interventions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Such a suggestion is fully understandable, not least because the operations in Prague and Afghanistan were coordinated by many of the same commanders. However the comparison is inexact. Soviet foreign policy towards Third World countries was formulated on a completely different basis from that which was applied to established socialist states; in fact, they were not even handled by the same departments. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were industrialized economies, theoretically suitable for the application of scientific socialism and fully incorporated into the Soviet-led bloc. Their location in Europe, the Soviet Union's most strategically important region, also made their loss unthinkable. By contrast, as well as being geographically more peripheral to the Soviet Union's strategic interests, Afghanistan was, in Moscow's own words, “an economically still feudal country with extremely primitive forms of economic activity and limited internal resources” (Zapiska, CWIHP Archive, April 12, 1979).3 Lacking a proletariat of any significance, the country could not be considered ready for the building of communism and was consequently never formally a member of the socialist camp. The Brezhnev doctrine was not, therefore, overtly applicable (Roy, 1991, p. 13).

A closer look at the political situation within pre-invasion Afghanistan only confuses matters further. At the time, the deployment of Soviet forces was justified to fellow communist parties as a vital step to support the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and thereby protect the gains of the April Revolution which had brought it to power in 1978 (Tekst pis'ma, Bukovsky Archive, December 27, 1979). However, it is deeply questionable whether the PDPA was really worth saving. To start with, as was not infrequently the case with Moscow's Third World allies, the depth of the party's ideological commitment was open to doubt. In fact, in some quarters the revolution was never seen as having much to do with Marxism at all but was rather the revenge of Afghanistan's Ghilzays against the Durrani tribal confederation that had dominated central power since 1747 (Roy, 1991, p. 61). This is perhaps to state the case too strongly, but there is no question that, prior to the invasion, the Soviet Politburo was greatly disappointed by the weakness of the PDPA's political work and frustrated at its leadership (Zapiska, CWIHP Archive, April 12, 1979). As Andrey Kirilenko declared in exasperation to his colleagues: “So you see what kind of Marxists we have found” (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, p. 17). After the Soviet occupation, the PDPA's socialist credentials became even more dubious. Indeed, immediately following the coup to remove Amin, Babrak Karmal, the new PDPA leader, spoke of “rais[ing] the banner of national jihad” (Nyrop & Seekins, 1986, p. 243), hardly textbook Marxism. As the 1980s progressed, this superficial ideological commitment became ever more wafer thin and the party proceeded with a “deconstruction of socialism.” This process culminated in October 1987 with the party leader's declaration to the PDPA conference that the party had never been communist. Soon after Soviet withdrawal in February 1989, the PDPA changed its name to Hezb-i Watan (the Fatherland Party) and recognized Islam as Afghanistan's state religion (Roy, 1991, pp. 28–30, p. 68).

As well as being undermined by its doubtful ideological purity, the PDPA's value as a Soviet ally was further reduced by its highly damaging factionalism. Afghanistan, as a whole, is a famously fragmented country in which narrow qawm, tribal, and ethnic affiliations take precedence over more inclusive identity constructs (Roy, 1989, pp. 70–71).4 Such was also a key feature of the PDPA whose two major factions were the Khalq (the Masses) and Parcham (Banner), named after their respective newspapers. Often the Khalq is presented as the radical left wing of the party, whilst the Parcham is considered more moderate (Nyrop & Seekins, 1986, p. 211). However this is perhaps to impose an inappropriate Western conception of political parties on the Afghan context. According to Olivier Roy, the bitter divide actually had much more to do with ethnicity and clientelism than ideological differences (1991, pp. 10–11). The Khalq, much the larger of the two groupings, was dominated by Ghilzays from the eastern tribal belt. Parcham, by contrast, mainly consisted of members of Kabul's Persian-speaking elite. These factions were never at ease with one another and, shortly after the Revolution, the PDPA's Khalq-dominated leadership bloodily repressed Parcham members. This was a major cause of concern in Moscow where it was judged that the deep divide seriously weakened the influence and authority of a party that had still not developed into a mass political organization and could scarcely afford to lose supporters (Zapiska, CWIHP Archive, April 12, 1979).

It is also worth noting that the Soviets had not actually backed the April Revolution at its inception and were apparently not altogether pleased by its occurrence (Feifer, 2009, p. 21; Hauner, 1991, p. 92; Limberg, 1990, p. 90). Indeed, Nur Muhammad Taraki, leader of the PDPA until his removal by Amin in September 1979, complained to the Soviets that “[w]e carried out our revolution while you were trying to talk us out of it” (quoted in Feifer, 2009, p. 27, emphasis in original). In part, this reluctance to support the party was due to the unappealing features of the PDPA described above, yet it was also because Moscow had nurtured a strong relationship with Afghanistan over the preceding three decades and its influence was not dependent upon the PDPA seizing power. In fact, so comfortable had the Soviet Union become with a friendly but non-Marxist Afghanistan that, prior to 1965, it had not even taken the trouble to encourage the founding of an Afghan Communist Party (Roy, 1991, p. 9).

The reason why Moscow was able to take such a relaxed attitude was primarily because of Afghanistan's large-scale and growing economic dependence on its northern neighbor. Since the Second World War, Soviet economic penetration of Afghanistan had grown steadily. Moscow had taken the leading role in developing the country's physical infrastructure, building up its mining industry, gas pipelines, airfields, and road network, including the Salang Tunnel through the Hindu Kush, which served as the main artery connecting Afghanistan to the Soviet Union. In total, the Soviets had already completed 71 separate projects in Afghanistan by April 1978 and another 60 had been agreed upon; Soviet-Afghan trade had come to account for 70–80 percent of the Afghan total. As Milan Hauner summarizes: “Taken together, the Soviet aid program was a carefully calibrated Soviet economic penetration of a neighboring country: long before they sent a single soldier across the Afghan border, the Soviet presence in the country was already overpowering” (Hauner, 1991, p. 132). Further to this major physical presence, the Soviets were steadily building up a considerable human stake. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Moscow initiated a large-scale training program for Afghanistan and by 1979 some 10,000 Afghans, many of whom were military officers, had been educated in the USSR (Limberg, 1990, p. 90). At the same time, within Afghanistan, there had begun what Hauner describes as “the systematic sovietization of Afghan youth,” involving the introduction of a Soviet-style curriculum and Russian language teaching, as well as the dispatch of Afghan children to study in the USSR (1991, p. 126).

These factors, long before the occupation, “gave Moscow a near-proprietary view of the country,” a sentiment only strengthened by the rest of the world's neglect (Limberg, 1990, p. 90). After World War II, the United States had not taken up Britain's historical role in Afghan affairs and had largely conceded the country to the Soviet sphere of influence, recognizing that “Afghanistan has a natural political, economic, commercial and cultural relationship with Russia” (State Department Report quoted in Roy, 1991, p. 73). It was only after the invasion that all of this changed. Had the Soviet Union proceeded more cautiously and not subverted what had been a highly favorable situation for them, Moscow would almost certainly have retained a leading role in Afghanistan and, via its economic and personnel investments, continued to have exerted considerable influence over any regime in Kabul. As described above, the Soviets had previously resigned themselves to the fall of other nonviable socialist regimes in the Third World and it was also not unthinkable that Moscow should tactically support a non-Marxist group at the expense of a supposedly more socialist party; this is precisely what it did in both the Republic of China and Rhodesia (Limberg, 1990, pp. 70–71). However, instead of proceeding with its established policy of gradual integration and prudent maintenance of good relations with all Kabul regimes, Moscow adopted a bold and incredibly costly change in strategy, risking all of their slowly accumulated gains for an ally of seemingly little value. To look at it another way, having carefully consumed a sizeable piece of the Afghan cake, the Soviets attempted to gulp down the rest in a single, overzealous bite. The result, rather than the hoped for quick incorporation, was prolonged, painful choking, followed by the regurgitation of all that had been previously ingested.

As well as forfeiting the Soviet Union's privileged position in Afghanistan, the invasion generated several further costs both internationally and domestically, many of which were entirely predictable. To start with, another factor that makes the intervention all the more remarkable is that it so clearly lacked international support. Up until 1979, Moscow had tended only to intercede in Third World conflicts on behalf of sides favored by a considerable proportion of global opinion (Steele, 1983, p. 167). This was certainly not the case in Afghanistan where Soviet intervention immediately provoked censure from the UN General Assembly, a conference of 36 Islamic states, and even some fellow communist parties. What is more, the reckless venture seriously undermined the development of a potentially favorable international situation for the USSR. By the late 1970s, with or without Moscow's assistance, left-wing governments had taken power in a number of countries worldwide. Meanwhile, the United States was chastened by failure in Vietnam and in the process of losing its principal ally in the Gulf as a result of the Iranian Revolution. However, this promising hand was wastefully gambled away. The Afghan invasion immediately forfeited any prospect of a fruitful strategic relationship with Tehran, whose government condemned the intervention as “a hostile act, not only against the people of that country but against all the Moslems of the world” (quoted in Smith, 1980, p. 743). More broadly, the occupation of a neighboring state destroyed the image of the Soviet Union as a friend of the Third World in its struggle against imperialism, causing revolutionary movements to turn their backs on Moscow (MacFarlane, 1990, p. 41).

The decision also seems to have been taken with utter disregard for East-West relations. Détente had already been seriously undermined by the expansion of Soviet activity in the Third World after 1973, yet it would be wrong to suggest that the process was dead. Despite being beset by difficulties, arms limitation talks had continued into the late 1970s, eventually resulting in the SALT-2 agreement signed by the US and Soviet leaders at a low key summit in Vienna in June 1979. Moreover, further negotiations continued throughout the remainder of the year. Indeed, as late as the beginning of December, Zbigniew Brzezinski, US National Security adviser, informed Anatoliy Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to Washington, that he anticipated ratification of SALT-2 in March 1980. The two also discussed the prospects of a SALT-3 agreement, as well as a possible visit to the US by Brezhnev and potential bilateral reduction in medium-range missiles (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 15). As the Kremlin must surely have foreseen, the likelihood of any of these goals being realized in the short to medium term was immediately torpedoed by the Afghan invasion. President Carter himself was particularly stunned, revealing in an interview in January 1980 that, “My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week [more] than even in the previous 2½ years before that” (My opinion, 1980). Stung into action, Carter not only withdrew the SALT-2 treaty from consideration before the Senate but also recalled the US ambassador from Moscow, outlined a new doctrine for the defense of the Persian Gulf, curtailed grain sales to the Soviet Union, and suspended high-technology exports. With the Soviets having taken the highly irregular step of launching an invasion just months before hosting the Olympics, the US was also able to punish Moscow by leading the boycott of the games, thus dealing a painful blow to Soviet prestige. Longer term and more significantly, Moscow's aggression provoked a large-scale and damaging counter-offensive as the United States was prompted to engage in a massive rearmament program whilst also forging closer ties with a range of anti-communist forces worldwide (Hauner, 1991, p. 80; MacFarlane, 1990, pp. 42–43).5

Domestically, the occupation of Afghanistan was even more damaging. Most fundamentally, the official number of Soviet war dead is 13,833, though many believe the true figure to be closer to 75,000 (Feifer, 2009, p. 254).6 The financial cost was also an enormous burden for the unbalanced Soviet economy with Premier Ryzhkov conceding that the intervention was costing Moscow five billion rubles a year (Roy, 1991, p. 75). In political terms, the nine-year war also had major implications. In Central Asia, what was seen as an immoral action against fraternal peoples incited a reawakening of national-ethnic and Islamic identity (Roy, 1991, pp. 4–5). Popular opposition to “Moscow's war” also strengthened independence movements in other non-Russian republics, while throughout the USSR pacifist sentiments were spurred amongst the youth and nascent democratic groups were provided a popular rallying cause. In Moscow itself, the disastrous war unquestionably weakened hardliners, thus presenting Mikhail Gorbachev and his fellow reformers with the opportunity to assert their authority. Simultaneously, the Red Army's failure to defeat the mujahidin, combined with its ruthless tactics, widespread indiscipline, and racial divisions, destroyed the prestige of one of the country's pre-eminent unifying institutions (Reuveny and Prakash, 1999). These combined effects undoubtedly made a key contribution to the Soviet Union's ultimate collapse. As Olivier Roy puts it, the Soviet-Afghan war represents “a watershed in the twilight of the Soviet empire” (1991, p. 45). Overall, it is hard to conceive of a single endeavor that could have inflicted more damage on the USSR, even if it had been expressly designed to do so.

The invasion of Afghanistan was therefore an uncharacteristic and extremely damaging undertaking in support of a regime of doubtful value to the Soviets. Such factors make the decision to forcefully intervene worth studying in itself, yet the USSR would hardly be the first major power to engage in a conflict with such features. What makes the Soviet decision especially intriguing is that, just months previously, the same leaders who ultimately resolved to deploy large numbers of troops to Afghanistan are found to have been vehemently opposed to such a course of action and fully cognizant of the risks involved. Examining the documentary record, one finds very strong opposition in the Politburo at the beginning of 1979 and, despite 14 requests for military assistance from the Afghan leadership (Report, CWHIP Archive, February 29, 1980), this line remained consistent for much of the year. It was only in the final three months that the caution was dramatically eroded.

Detailed scrutiny reveals that there is one slight deviation from this trend. On March 15, 1979, an uprising broke out in Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city. The rebellion quickly gained strength and the protesters were soon joined by members of the 17^th Infantry Division of the Afghan Army, which was stationed in the area. The mob rampaged through the city, butchering local officials and PDPA members. What is more, according to Raymond Garthoff, “[s]everal dozen Russian military advisers and their families were hunted down and slaughtered cruelly, their impaled heads brandished on pikes carried through the streets” (1985, p. 900).7 Confronted by this alarming news, during a meeting on March 17 several Politburo members defiantly declare that Afghanistan must not be lost and seem to be favorably considering the possibility of dispatching troops (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, pp. 1–12). However, even faced with such provocation, prudence soon returns and opposition to military intervention reaffirmed. In the Politburo meetings of March 18 and 19, leading figure after leading figure unequivocally states that a deployment of Soviet forces to Afghanistan is out of the question and the negative implications of such an action are clearly articulated. To cite but a few examples, Yuriy Andropov, the KGB chairman who was ultimately central to the decision to invade, asserts:

Would our forces really help them here? In this case, tanks and armored vehicles cannot be of assistance. I think that we should say directly to Comrade Taraki that we support all of their actions and will render the help which we have agreed today and yesterday, but in no way can we move to an introduction of forces to Afghanistan. […] To bring in troops, this means to fight against the people, to suppress the people, to shoot the people. We will look like aggressors, and we cannot allow this (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, p. 16, p. 24).

Defense Minister Ustinov, Premier Kosygin, and General Secretary Brezhnev are equally forthright in their assessments, while Foreign Minister Gromyko explicitly predicts the deleterious consequences for the USSR's international standing:

In this way, we will create for ourselves an unbelievably difficult foreign policy situation. We would be greatly throwing away everything that we have achieved with such difficulty, and most of all, détente. The SALT-2 negotiations would fly by the wayside and the treaty would not be signed (and, as it is for us now, this is the biggest political priority). There would be no meeting of Leonid Il'ich with Carter, it would be doubtful if Giscard d'Estaing [the French president] would visit us, and relations with Western countries, particularly the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany], would be spoiled. As such, despite the difficult situation in Afghanistan, we cannot take such a step as to introduce troops (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, pp. 20–21).

Such sensible judgment continues to be shown by the Politburo for the next five months. For instance, in their report dated April 1, 1979, Gromyko, Andropov, Ustinov, and Boris Ponomarev (head of the International Department) write disapprovingly that, in failing to understand Moscow's reluctance to deploy troops, the Afghan leadership reveals its “lack of political experience.” They continue by emphasizing that “[t]his line should be stuck to even in the case of new anti-government actions in Afghanistan, the possibility of which cannot be excluded” (Zapiska, CWIHP Archive, April 12, 1979, p. 6). This is not to say, however, that Kabul was not provided with increasing volumes of military aid during this period. In addition to the 25 combat helicopters and associated ammunition supplied in March-April 1979 (Proyekt ukazaniy, CWIHP Archive, April 21, 1979), in May the Politburo approved the free-delivery of an arms package worth R53 million (Tekst ukazaniy, CWIHP Archive, May 24, 1979). By mid-summer, further measures were considered expedient and a senior general and 40–50 military advisers were dispatched, as well as one parachute battalion and a special detachment of the KGB; this small number of troops were sent with the agreement of the Afghan side and tasked with providing security for Bagram airbase and the Soviet embassy (Zapiska MID SSSR, Bukovsky Archive, June 28, 1979). And yet, accompanying each of these new commitments was the selfsame message that a major deployment could not be authorized and that Soviet troops would not participate in combat operations:

Such actions, we are deeply convinced, would entail major complications not only at the domestic political but also at the international level and would undoubtedly be exploited by hostile forces primarily to the detriment of the interests of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] and consolidation of the gains of the April revolution (Tekst ukazaniy, CWIHP Archive, May 24, 1979, p. 2).

The final instances I can find of the continued ascendancy of this restrained line of thinking are at the end of July when the Soviet ambassador to Kabul informs Amin (then still Taraki's prime minister) “that as the Soviet leaders had said repeatedly, and as B. N. Ponomarev had stressed during the most recent meetings in Kabul, the Soviet side cannot embark on the participation of Soviet personnel in combat operations” (Record of conversation, CWIHP Archive, July 21, 1979). Ustinov is also reported as reiterating at this time that “under no circumstances” would he agree to the deployment of Soviet troops (quoted in Westad, 1994, p. 60). It is after this point that evidence emerges of a shift towards a more belligerent mindset. The first clear stride in this direction is a report by Gromyko, Andropov, Ustinov, and Ponomarev that was approved by the Politburo on October 31, 1979. At this point, the leadership seems not to have finally made up its mind, but there are strong indications that preliminary preparations had begun. Most notably, the report stipulates that the Soviet Union should abstain from providing further supplies of heavy weaponry to the Afghan army, refrain from sending additional military advisers, and introduce more controls on the reporting of events in Afghanistan in the Soviet press (Zapiska t.t, Gromyko, Bukovsky Archive, October 31, 1979). Following on from this, the next significant step appears to have been a personal memorandum sent by Andropov to Brezhnev on December 1 in which the KGB chief explicitly advocates the use of Soviet troops in a forceful intervention in Afghanistan (Personal memorandum, CWIHP Archive, December 1, 1979). The actual decision came less than two weeks later at a meeting of Politburo members on December 12. Only a short, handwritten note, entitled “Concerning the situation in ‘A’,” testifies to what was discussed at that fateful meeting and the resolution itself, given its significance, is framed in remarkably unassuming language. It merely states: “Ratify evaluations and measures set forth by Andropov Yu. V., Ustinov, D. F., and Gromyko, A. A. Authorize them to introduce amendments of non-essential character in the course of the execution of these measures” (K polozheniyu, CWIHP Archive, December 12, 1979).8 This political decree was transformed into a more specific directive, signed by Ustinov and Nikolay Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff, on December 24 which declared: “The decision has been made to introduce several contingents of Soviet troops deployed in southern regions of the country to the territory of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in order to [give] international aid to the friendly Afghan people” (Directive No. 312/12/001, CWIHP Archive, December 24, 1979). With this, the die was well and truly cast.

Existing Explanations For The Major Policy Shift

On the basis of the factors discussed above, the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan seems bewildering. In addition to being atypical of Moscow's established Third World policy and offering few apparent benefits and several obvious costs, the deployment of troops has been shown to have been firmly and repeatedly opposed by the Politburo just a matter of months earlier. One is therefore left to ponder, what could possibly have induced the Soviet leaders to perform so rapid a volte-face? This second section begins to analyze possible answers. To start with, attention is drawn to the argument that the action was provoked by a sudden deterioration in the situation in Afghanistan and that the invasion was therefore a vital defensive step to protect core Soviet interests. Focusing on the threat of external interference, the mujahidin resistance, and Amin's supposed duplicity, it is demonstrated that, while these were genuine concerns for Moscow, there are weaknesses to each claim and they cannot satisfactorily account for the extraordinary scale and boldness of the Soviet action. As such, rather than being a matter of defensive necessity, it is argued that the Soviet invasion is more appropriately understood as an aggressive strategic gamble, suggestive of an offensive mindset on the part of the Soviet elite at this time and a contemporary willingness to endorse a risky endeavor. Several factors are considered as potential explanations for why, in the course of 1979, the very same Politburo members should suddenly adopt a significantly more ambitious international agenda. The perception of US weakness and recent successes in Moscow's foreign policy are two possible factors and each no doubt made some contribution. Overall, however, it is found that the existing literature is insufficient in its account of so rapid a change in Soviet outlook and that room remains for supplementary explanations.

We begin therefore with an evaluation of the claim that “the Soviet decision was a reluctant recourse to defend vital interests,” which had come under imminent threat (Garthoff, 1985, p. 964). The first facet of this argument is the assertion that the Soviet intervention was urgently required to protect Afghanistan from gross interference by other regional and global powers. This was what many Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan were led to believe (Feifer, 2009, p. 162) and it is certainly the line emphasized in Moscow's public pronouncements. The specific countries supposedly engaged in this gross “interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, including the direct use of armed force” (Cable, CWIHP Archive, December 27, 1979a) are said to have been Pakistan, Iran, China, and, above all, the United States (Circular Cable, CWIHP Archive, December 27, 1979b). There were even rumors that, had the Soviets not beaten them to it, Washington would have launched its own invasion (Feifer, 2009, p. 89). Such a situation does indeed seem a likely trigger for Soviet intervention for, as Brezhnev warned, had Afghanistan successfully been “turned into an imperialist military bridgehead on our southern border” (quoted in Garthoff, 1985, p. 928), it would certainly have constituted a major strategic threat to the USSR's “soft underbelly” (Zwick, 1990, p. 312).

The only problem with this argument is that the external aggression was largely fictitious, invented by the Soviets to justify their intervention under the UN Charter and for propaganda purposes. The truth is that, in the months preceding the Soviet invasion, there was limited great power interference in Afghan affairs, other than that conducted by the Soviets themselves. First of all, as mentioned above, the United States had essentially accepted Moscow's leading role in Afghanistan and opted to concentrate its attentions elsewhere. Little changed following the April Revolution and the United States showed itself willing to recognize the new PDPA government (Halliday, 1986, pp. 96–97; Hammond, 1984, p. 139). Between May 1978 and March 1979 Washington did supply a modest amount of economic assistance but, after the abduction and death of US Ambassador Dubs, this aid was seriously curtailed and no new ambassador dispatched (Garthoff, 1985, p. 924). More recently it has been revealed that in July 1979 President Carter did secretly authorize the provision of propaganda support for the insurgents, as well as the delivery of some nonmilitary supplies, yet this was a small program to which only around half a million dollars was allocated (Gates, 2007, p. 146). In other ways, the US was actually reducing its commitment at this time. Indeed, prior to the invasion Washington downgraded its Afghan embassy to the status of a mission, a category usually reserved for countries of least significance to US interests (Hauner, 1991, pp. 141–142).

Despite the US's limited involvement in Afghanistan in the lead up to December 1979, it might reasonably be suggested that the Soviet intervention was a response to a broader increase in Washington's regional activities. Here again, however, the evidence does not favor a defensive explanation. Perhaps suffering the effects of the Vietnam Syndrome, in 1977 the US had actually cut military aid to Pakistan, the country considered Washington's strategic priority in the region (Roy, 1991, p. 39). It was only after the invasion that this funding was re-initiated and the US moved to operationalize other plans, including the provision of major funding for the mujahidin and creation of a Rapid Deployment Force in the Indian Ocean (Hauner, 1991, p. 143). In short, US involvement in and around Afghanistan was more a consequence than a cause of the Soviet invasion.

The case against other regional powers is similarly weak. According to Milan Hauner, Afghanistan was never a strategic priority for either China or India (1991, pp. 14–16). Prior to the Soviet intervention, Pakistan is also found to have “had no real commitment to overthrowing the Kabul regime and the weapons it gave to the Mujaheddin were few and old” (Roy, 1991, p. 14). What is more, in 1979 Iran was heavily preoccupied by the Islamic Revolution and its growing confrontation with the United States (Westad, 1994, p. 58). Tehran was therefore not eager to assist Washington by helping unsettle the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. It is also worth considering that the Shi'ite-dominated revolutionary movement in Iran did not hold much appeal in Sunni-majority Afghanistan and, even at the height of the war, Tehran never supplied much military support (Roy, 1991, pp. 42–43). All in all then, in the run-up to the invasion, Afghanistan was not subject to some fiercely competitive Great Game between the major powers and, as Gromyko admitted to his colleagues, “has not been subject to any [external] aggression. It is their internal affair, a revolutionary civil conflict, the battle of one group of the population against another” (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, p. 16).

If external interference was not the proximate cause for the change in Politburo attitudes during the latter half of 1979, perhaps a more likely explanation is, as the Soviet foreign minister implies, the state of affairs with regard to the Afghan insurgency. This is an argument presented by Wayne Limberg, who writes that Moscow judged that the Kabul regime was in imminent danger of defeat towards the end of 1979. This represented an unacceptable security threat to the Soviet Union since it could have led to the coming to power of an anti-Soviet party in Afghanistan or intervention by another state (1990, pp. 91–92). Faced with this escalating threat, Moscow had no option but to invade.

This defensively-oriented argument also has considerable initial appeal, especially when viewed through the lens of our knowledge about the subsequent strength of the Afghan mujahidin. However, an objective examination of pre-invasion Afghanistan suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that the state of the insurgency is not actually central to understanding the Soviet decision.9 This is firstly because the rebel movement in 1979 was a pale shadow of the force it was ultimately to become. This is not to imply that the situation was not serious for Kabul; the central government lacked public support and exercised little control over as much as 70 percent of the country (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 16). And yet, despite this, the mujahidin was still only considered a limited threat by Moscow (Roy, 1991, p. 14). Before the invasion, the rebellion was disunited, lacked funding, and was largely confined to rural areas. The insurgents were also poorly armed with old British Lee-Enfield rifles and the non-Pashtun groups lacked weapons experience (Roy, 1991, p. 16, p. 62). What is more, the rebels often had limited commitment to the cause. As Gregory Feifer describes: “Many of the first groups were made up of criminals who were less interested in fighting than robbing travelers” (2009, p. 111).

As the year progressed, there were even tentative signs that Moscow's allies in Kabul were beginning to gain the upper hand. The most serious uprising, and that which created the greatest stir in Moscow (Ob obostrenii, Bukovsky Archive, March 17–19, 1979, pp. 1–12), had occurred in Herat back in March. After this, the PDPA was still troubled by mutinies by government troops, especially that which occurred at the Bala Hissar fortress in early August, but there is evidence that the Soviets believed that a degree of stability was returning. For example, at the beginning of October, Brezhnev informed Erich Honecker, leader of the German Democratic Republic, that the state of affairs in the country had improved (Transcript, CWIHP Archive, October 4, 1979). Although continuing to express caution, the report by Gromyko, Andropov, Ustinov, and Ponomarev at the end of that month also affirmed that “the military situation in Afghanistan has somewhat stabilized recently” (Zapiska t.t. Gromyko, Bukovsky Archive, October 31, 1979, p. 1). Lastly, having been dispatched to Kabul in August 1979, Army General Ivan Pavlovskiy, Soviet Deputy Defense Minister, returned to report in November that:

The provision of comprehensive practical assistance by our side to the People's Armed Forces of Afghanistan enabled them to make a transition between August and October. Rather than continuing to rely on a passive defense and faltering operations by small units against the rebels, they were able to launch coordinated and active operations by larger groupings. This allowed them to gain the initiative in combat and to destroy the most dangerous forces of counterrevolution in the provinces of Paktia, Ghazni, Parvan, Bamian, and several other areas (Soviet Defense Minister Ustinov, CWIHP Archive, November 5, 1979).

Such apparent gains, however, were soon undermined by the invasion.

By rashly committing large numbers of troops to Afghan soil, the Soviets only succeeded in galvanizing the opposition, transforming it into a larger, more cohesive, and zealous force. Many soldiers previously loyal to the government defected to the mujahidin (Roy, 1991, p. 17). The movement's debilitating factionalism was also significantly reduced and the insurgents united in the common cause of defending their country from foreign invasion. For instance, it was only in January 1980 that the Islamic Alliance for the Liberation of Afghanistan was formed, banding together six Sunni resistance groups (Feifer, 2009, p. 98). Self-defeatingly, Moscow's action also transformed the mujahidin's funding situation. Afghan national liberation became a cause célèbre, attracting exactly the sort of international backing that the Soviets had long complained about but which had previously been largely absent. Financial assistance is said to have come from China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, and perhaps even Israel (Hauner, 1991, p. 144; Roy, 1991, p. 38). The biggest contributor, however, was the United States, albeit that the scale of its funding was moderate until 1984 and it was only in 1985 that Washington decided to supply the rebels with the advanced, shoulder-launched Stinger missiles, which seriously impeded Soviet helicopter use (Feifer, 2009, p. 160, p. 208; Roy, 1991, p. 35, p. 5).

All considered, were it not for the invasion, there was little danger of the mujahidin developing into a force capable of achieving full control over Afghanistan, a feat that has been beyond most in a country so fragmented and lacking in national institutions. Had the Soviets persisted in pulling the strings from behind the scene, maintained their funding, and continued with the building of infrastructure and gradual sovietization of the population, they would likely have achieved greater success in exercising control. This is testified to by the fact that, after Soviet withdrawal, the mujahid movement was weakened, “the jihad spirit evaporated and the old social forces of segmentation returned” (Roy, 1991, p. 56). This made it possible for Najibullah, the PDPA's final leader, to retain power for over three years after the Soviets departed. His regime only finally collapsed in April 1992 following the end, not only of Soviet financing, but of the USSR itself. Consequently, as with the argument about external interference, we find that intensification of the insurgent threat is also more a result of than a reason for the invasion.

Perhaps, however, Moscow became anxious in 1979, not so much about the mujahidin's threat to Afghanistan, but the prospects of its Islamic radicalism spreading to the Soviet Central Asian Republics. Although this possibility is discussed in the literature (Feifer, 2009, p. 3; Hammond, 1984, p. 134; Hauner, 1991, p. 88) and seems reasonable given the subsequent proliferation of Islamic fundamentalism, the argument is actually a nonstarter. There is nothing in the primary documentation to indicate that the Politburo was in the least concerned about the loyalty of its Muslim citizens. In fact, even if the Soviet authorities had been worried about a rise of domestic Muslim dissidence, one would have thought that the last thing they would have wished to do would be to encourage it by invading a neighboring Islamic country, employing Central Asian troops as a large proportion of the initial occupying force (Garthoff, 1985, p. 913).10 It is also worth noting that ethnic nationalism has always been much more important in Central Asia than broader Islamic identity, meaning that most Soviet Muslims had little instinctive sympathy for Afghanistan's Pashtuns (Roy, 1991, p. 49). Late in the war, some trouble did spread. In September 1985, there was a mutiny by Central Asian troops stationed near Kunduz, and in spring 1987 the Afghan mujahidin launched a number of brief forays onto Soviet territory (Roy, 1991, p. 44, p. 75). However, clearly such developments could not have influenced Moscow's pre-invasion thinking. As Roy sums up: “Neither the decision to invade nor to withdraw were prompted by considerations of Soviet Muslims. In 1979, Moscow did not view Muslim fundamentalism as a threat” (1991, p. 48).

Further to the claims that the invasion was imperative to protect Afghanistan from the twin menace of external interference and the mujahidin, there is a third, defensively-oriented argument. This holds that the more assertive attitude adopted by the Politburo during the latter stages of 1979 was a necessary response by the Soviets to the forcible removal of Taraki by Amin in September. This is much the best of these arguments, especially as it more or less fits with the timing of the shift in Soviet outlook. However, it is also not without its limitations.

The basis of the argument is that Moscow deemed Amin to be an unreliable leader who was threatening to align Afghanistan with anti-Soviet forces. This claim receives some support from primary sources. Specifically, in the Politburo briefing document approved on October 31 it is reported:

Incoming signals have alerted us about the establishment by Amin of contacts with representatives of the right-wing Muslim opposition and leaders of tribes that are hostile to the government, in the process of which has been shown from his side a readiness to come to an agreement with them about a cessation in their armed struggle. […] Recently signs have been noted that the new leadership of Afghanistan intends to conduct a “more balanced policy” in relation with Western powers. […] the danger cannot be ruled out that for the sake of maintaining personal authority Amin may move to change the political orientation of the regime (Zapiska t.t. Gromyko, Bukovsky Archive, October 31, 1979, pp. 2–3).

Similar concerns are also expressed in Andropov's memorandum on December 1 (Personal memorandum, CWIPH Archive, December 1, 1979). Aggravating these strategic issues is said to have been Brezhnev's emotional outrage at the murder of Taraki, whom the General Secretary had welcomed to Moscow only a few days previous (Feifer, 2009, p. 48; Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 17). Therefore, according to Odd Arne Westad, “Amin was jettisoned primarily because of the personal antipathy felt towards him” (1994, p. 67).

From Moscow's perspective, the most serious of these notions was the possibility that Amin might lead Afghanistan out of the Soviet orbit and reorient the country towards the United States. Such an occurrence would unquestionably have had major security implications for the USSR, yet it is doubtful how likely the Politburo truly believed this to have been. To begin with, Amin's apparent opening of relations with the United States was obviously a tactical ploy to attract increased Soviet support. The same gambit had been used by the PDPA in November 1978 (Westad, 1994, p. 55). Indeed, in October 1979 Amin even went so far as to emphasize his contacts with the Americans to Vasiliy Safronchuk, special Soviet adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, clear in the knowledge that this would be reported back to Moscow (Westad, 1994, p. 63). There is nothing to suggest that there was anything more to Amin's actions than this. The more damning allegations that Amin was a CIA agent and had sought to cede Afghanistan's Pashtun areas to Pakistan were only produced after the invasion and were evidently designed to justify his brutal elimination (Feifer, 2009, p. 93).11 Furthermore, there can be nothing of substance to the claim that the Politburo was genuinely alarmed by Amin's attempts to negotiate with elements of the Islamist opposition since Soviet advisers, most notably Safronchuk, were simultaneously engaged in the same endeavor (Westad, 1994, p. 67).

Amin's behavior during the three months of his presidency is certainly that of a wily political operator but fundamentally it is suggestive of a leader who was strongly committed to the Soviet Union. For instance, on several occasions he asked to be granted a visit to Moscow to meet Brezhnev (Zapiska t.t. Gromyko, Bukovsky Archive, October 31, 1979, p. 4). Amin also requested no less than seven times that the Soviets send troops to Afghanistan, especially for his personal protection (Zapiska KGB SSSR i Minoborony, Bukovsky Archive, December 6, 1979) and told them they could have military garrisons wherever they wished (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 20, p. 23). Such are hardly the actions of a man attempting to reduce Soviet influence in his country. What is more, the Afghan president remained trusting of his Soviet allies to the end. On the day of his death, Amin is said to have been in fine spirits, delighted to have finally succeeding in having Soviet forces deployed in Afghanistan. At a grand dinner he held for the occasion, he confidently announced, “The Soviet divisions are already on the way here. Paratroopers have landed in Kabul. All is going well” (quoted in Grau, 2002, pp. 9–10). Even when the assault on his palace began, the president still failed to comprehend what was happening and ordered his aide-de-camp to call for Soviet assistance. When told that it was the Soviets themselves who were doing the shooting, Amin shouted in despair: “You are lying, it cannot be!” (quoted in Grau, 2002, p. 14). Of course, what matters more than the reality of Amin's actions is the Politburo's perception of them. And yet, here too we find that Moscow was well aware of the scale of Kabul's dependence on its northern neighbor and the consequent improbability of any Afghan leader being able to remove the country from the Soviet sphere. In fact, in the same Politburo report in which the rumors of Amin's dalliance with the United States are first raised, it is noted that:

At the same time, Amin, by all appearances, understands that the internal and external difficulties of developing the Afghan revolution, the geographic factor, and the dependence of Afghanistan for the provision of the army and national economy's daily needs dictate the objective interest of the Afghan leadership in maintaining and developing all sides of Afghan-Soviet relations. Amin's understanding of the fact that at present he cannot manage without Soviet support and help gives us the possibility to exert upon him a definite restraining influence (Zapiska t.t. Gromyko, Bukovsky Archive, October 31, 1979, p. 3).

In similar fashion, there are also significant doubts about the proposal that Politburo members were too incensed by the elimination of Taraki to be able to do business with his successor. Indeed, archive material reveals that the Soviet leadership was highly critical of Taraki, condemning his frequent mistakes and “groundless repressions” (Zapiska, CWIHP Archive, April 12, 1979, p. 5). Moreover, while Brezhnev was not overly pleased by the PDPA leader's removal, neither does he show himself to have been particularly troubled nor unwilling to deal with Amin. Rather, he simply tells Honecker:

Frankly, we are not pleased by all of Amin's methods and actions. He is very power-driven. In the past he repeatedly revealed disproportionate harshness. But with regard to his basic political platform, he has decidedly confirmed [sic] to the course of further development of the Revolution, of furthering cooperation with the Soviet Union and other countries of the Socialist community. It is a fact that many of Amin's followers and partisans are honorable people who are faithful to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and take a good attitude towards us (Transcript, CWIPH Archive, October 4, 1979).

Under Brezhnev's guidance, the Politburo even sent Amin a telegram congratulating him on his accession to power and signed a series of further trade and aid agreements with his government in September and October (Arnold, 1981, p. 87). The implication is that Amin was a leader with whom the Soviets could easily have continued to deal with had they chosen to. Furthermore, even if one is not convinced and concludes that Amin's leadership had indeed become unacceptable to the Soviets, this still does not provide a satisfactory explanation. Given the already considerable influence exerted by Moscow in Afghanistan and the lack of Amin's popularity, surely, had they so wished, the Soviets could have engineered the replacement of Amin by another PDPA figure in a manner falling short of full-scale occupation. Admittedly, it does appear that the Soviets did draw up plans to assassinate Amin (Feifer, 2009, p. 43), but, if the removal of the president was really the exclusive aim, it is not clear why Moscow could not have persisted with such attempts rather than opting for the overkill solution of seizing control of the entire country. As such, I find it difficult to accept Olivier Roy's proposal that the “prime purpose of the invasion was to replace Amin's regime with a more flexible one” (1991, p. 13). Instead, I am inclined to agree with Anthony Arnold that Amin was more of a “scapegoat” (1981, p. 82) and that the seemingly urgent need to remove him was actually a useful pretext upon which to launch the invasion.

In light of the weaknesses of each of the defensive arguments highlighted above, it is doubtful that the invasion can legitimately be judged a matter of strategic necessity. Instead, it appears that Moscow freely chose to act upon an apparent opportunity to entrench its already significant control over a vulnerable neighbor. As such, although defensive and offensive motivations inevitably overlap, the invasion can properly be considered to have been offensively-minded. This is certainly the view of Milan Hauner who is unequivocal in his opinion that “the Soviets elected to push their southern frontier outward in December 1979” (1991, pp. 4–5). Although exceptionally bold, such an action did not entirely lack strategic rationale. Had the Soviets been successful in establishing full control over Afghanistan—most likely by creating a “second Mongolia” rather than a new Soviet republic (Halliday, 1999, p. 678)—this would have represented the sudden culmination of all Moscow's longstanding efforts, via infrastructural and educational programs, to secure an integrated and subservient neighbor on its southern border. Additionally, Soviet dominion over Afghanistan would have provided Moscow with a permanent position in the strategically important “Indo-Persian corridor” (Hauner, 1991, p. 37). This would have enabled them to have more easily projected influence in the Indian Ocean and Middle East, and, in the event of conflict, to have used this bridgehead to disrupt international shipping and deny the West access to Gulf oil (Hauner, 1991, p. 88).

As well as possessing this degree of strategic logic, the Soviets' actual behavior upon intervening is also suggestive of expansionist ambitions. For example, Soviet troops were initially given no counterinsurgency training before being dispatched to Afghanistan and, upon arriving, were predominantly used to seize strategic infrastructure rather than to combat the mujahidin (Roy, 1991, p. 14, p. 74). Additionally, much of the equipment with which the Soviet forces were initially armed, including anti-aircraft battalions and anti-tank weaponry, was far more suitable for a long-term occupation than a short-term counter-insurgency; found to be useless against the growing insurrection, much of this heavy weaponry had to be later withdrawn (Feifer, 2009, p. 89). It is also notable that the Soviets placed major emphasis on building the Shindand military base in western Afghanistan, “which was to be of no use for fighting the insurgency, but constituted an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ close to the Persian Gulf” (Roy, 1991, p. 13). Hints of the Soviets' underlying intentions are similarly to be found in their post-invasion dealings with the Afghan government. Although Afghan ministers remained nominally in charge, in reality the Kabul regime was “reduced to a largely clerical function, with Soviet officials making all decisions and countersigning all orders” (Arnold, 1981, p. 97). Moscow also pushed forward plans for ambitious infrastructure projects to further integrate the Afghan economy with that of the USSR. These included a new bridge over the Amu Darya, a railway line extending from Termez in Soviet Uzbekistan, and a northern network of power lines, which presumably were to be connected to the Soviet grid (CPSU CC Politburo Decisions, CWIPH Archive, February 7, 1980). The Central Committee, moreover, authorized the launch of a propaganda campaign in Afghanistan which included the commissioning of a television series about the USSR, unsubtly entitled “Our Great Northern Neighbor” (Ob okazanii, Bukovsky Archive, February 19, 1979).

The evidence therefore points towards a highly assertive move by the Soviets to establish a lasting hold over Afghanistan. Although not entirely contrary to Moscow's preceding policy in the country, the invasion constituted a dramatic and high-risk upping of the stakes. Gregory Feifer therefore seems to have it right in describing the Soviet move as a “Great Gamble” (2009). And yet, unless one believes that Russians are uncommonly prone to such bursts of reckless aggression—something that is not supported by the historical record and smacks somewhat of orientalism (Brown, 2010)—we still have to establish what occurred in 1979 to prompt this uncharacteristic undertaking. The simplest explanation would be a change in personnel, but the composition of the top leadership remained the same over the course of that year. What is more, the five individuals central to the decision—Brezhnev, Andropov, Gromyko, Ustinov, and Pomomarev—were all old men. While advanced years are usually associated with caution (even over-caution) rather than cocksure adventurism, this gerontocracy was particularly known for stagnation, and rash conduct was not considered “in character” for most of its leading members (George Kennan quoted in Collins, 1986, p. 101). Consequently, it is logical to look for external factors that may have caused a sudden shift away from established ways of thinking and towards a more ambitious international agenda.

The existing literature offers two such possible influences. The first is the learning theory put forward by Andrew Bennett (1999). According to this argument, the Politburo's outlook was significantly emboldened at the end of the 1970s by the apparent success of Soviet Third World policies earlier in the decade, especially in Angola in 1975. The second claim is that the Soviet leadership was psychologically induced to look favorably upon the Afghan venture by a favorable shift in the international correlation of forces. This is judged to have been the result of an increase in Soviet military capabilities, in combination with the perception of contemporary US weakness (Limberg, 1990, pp. 77–80, p. 92; MacFarlane, 1990, p. 35, p. 48). The growth in confidence that this trend engendered is said to have reached “euphoric” levels following the overthrow of the US-friendly regime in Iran (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 27).

These are perceptive arguments and both factors are sure to have contributed to the change in Soviet cognition. Yet, despite this, these accounts still leave something to be desired. To start with, while the learning theory is valuable in explaining the gradual emboldening of Soviet foreign policy that occurred from 1973 onwards, it is at a loss when trying to analyze what compelled the Politburo to change their ideas so radically during 1979. Indeed, while the latter half of the 1970s was generally a favorable time for Soviet foreign policy, 1979 itself was far more mixed. That year saw strategic gains in many parts of the Third World, but it also featured the expiry of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, as well as NATO's impending decision to deploy medium-range cruise and Pershing-2 missiles in Western Europe (see Breslauer, 2002, pp. 199–201). In normal circumstances, such considerations might have been expected to check Soviet ambitions. Similarly, while Soviet military spending certainly did increase during the late 1960s and 1970s, this again is of little help in explaining the sudden emboldening in elite thinking. This is all the more so since there are doubts as to the true extent of the growth in Soviet military power. As Limberg acknowledges, “[i]n terms of spending and actual capabilities, the United States kept a significant edge throughout the 1970s” (1990, p. 77). Having said this, there is no question that Washington was in tentative mood in 1979 as a consequence of the revolution and unfolding hostage crisis in Iran, as well as the lingering effects of Vietnam. This hesitancy may have been interpreted by the Soviets as presenting an opportunity for foreign-policy expansionism. However, be this as it may, it is still necessary to explain Moscow's full-blooded eagerness to exploit this apparent opening, something that it had not always been intrepid enough to do in the past. All in all, taking these issues into account, there appears a considerable need for further elucidation of the causal factors driving the offensive shift in Soviet foreign policy in 1979.

A Case Of Oil-Fueled Over-Exuberance?

So far, we have seen that the invasion was an uncharacteristic and extremely damaging undertaking, made all the more surprising because it was strongly opposed by the Soviet Politburo just months before its initiation. Further to this, it has been demonstrated that claims that circumstances emerged during the course of 1979 which made the intervention a defensive imperative are not altogether convincing. The action has therefore been shown to be better categorized as an offensive operation. And yet, so far, we have not discovered any persuasive explanation for so dramatic and assertive a turn in Soviet thinking. In this final section, an attempt is made to correct for this by proposing a plausible theory that is still awaiting attention in this context.

Looking around the contemporary international scene for a possible explanation for the sudden shift in elite psychology, one is immediately struck by the extraordinary surge in oil prices that occurred in 1979 as a consequence of the unfolding revolution in Iran. From $17.50 in January, crude prices rose to $23 in February, $34 in May, $38 in October, and $40 in November (Jenkins, 1989, p. 3). Total Soviet oil production in 1979 was 11.805 million barrels a day and, while only just over two million barrels a day of this were exported beyond the USSR and Central Europe (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2011), this more than doubling of the oil price still had the effect of rapidly adding tens of billions of dollars to the otherwise stagnant Soviet economy. One would have thought that such a sizeable change in Soviet fortunes would have received considerable attention in the extensive literature on the Soviet-Afghan war, not least because the wide-ranging international effects of this transformational shift in energy prices are otherwise closely examined. And yet, any mention of the oil factor is conspicuously absent. This is particularly remarkable given that variation in energy wealth is often assumed to be a major determinant of assertiveness in Moscow's more recent foreign policy, inspiring talk of Russia's “intercontinental ambitions” being “puffed up by oil” (Friends, 2008) and of how record oil prices have inflated the hubris of the petro-czars (Foroohar, 2009). The likely relationship has also begun to attract serious academic attention with Robert Legvold attributing a considerable portion of Russia's increased international confidence since 2000 to the simultaneous rise in global oil prices (2007, p. 10). Admittedly, at the beginning of his recent book on the Soviet-Afghan conflict Gregory Feifer does describe Moscow's policymakers as having been “giddy from its massive oil wealth” (2009, p. 6). However, at this point the author is actually discussing the Kremlin's decision to invade Georgia in 2008. He curiously omits to consider whether oil-induced giddiness may also have been a factor in 1979. One possible reason for this longstanding oversight is the well-known 1977 CIA report which wildly misjudged the contemporary state of Soviet oil production and led Western observers to assume that the USSR was no longer a significant player in global oil markets and would soon become a major importer (Hewett, 1984, p. 193). Although the embarrassing inaccuracy of this report has long since been revealed, it seems nonetheless to have contributed to an enduring underestimation of the importance of oil wealth to the Soviet system in the late 1970s.

In addition to according with the commonsense notion that such a vast influx of wealth must surely have had at least some emboldening effect on the leadership's international outlook and finding support in studies of Moscow's more recent foreign policy, the proposal that rising oil revenues may have had a role in precipitating the Afghan invasion has the backing of a considerable weight of theoretical literature. In particular, it has long been argued that wealth derived from resource rents, especially those from oil, has a pronounced impact on the functioning of major commodity-producing states. This “resource curse” literature originated in the economic field where researchers sought to address the problem of why countries enjoying the proceeds of oil booms paradoxically went on to suffer poor economic performance (Auty, 1993; Gelb, 1988; Sachs and Warner, 1999, 2001; Ahrend, 2005; Gaddy and Ickes, 2005). It has since spread to the political sphere where scholars have assessed all manner of effects of resource abundance, ranging from lower levels of educational achievement to higher frequencies of civil wars (Gylfason, 2001; Ross, 2004). What is of greatest relevance to us, however, is the research suggesting a regular relationship between resource windfalls and poor-quality, recklessly overambitious policymaking.

The basis of this theory is the idea that revenues generated by a surge in international commodity prices have secondary effects different to those of other, more gradual forms of economic growth. This is because resource wealth customarily accrues directly to the central authorities, either via state firms or resource taxes, and can thereby almost instantly “magnify the ability of governments to do both good and bad things” (Ross, 2007, p. 237). Crucially, since the flow of these riches is largely divorced from the leadership's actions and is not the reward for prudent economic management, this wealth does not incentivize good policymaking. Instead, easy money provides leaders with a large margin for error with the result that “the importance of making the “right choices” seems somehow less important” (Stevens, 2003, p. 14). Added to this is the intriguing proposal that such sudden wealth grossly inflates the ambitions of leaders, encouraging them to pursue rash, overly grand policies. The suggestion is that a resource boom induces a psychological outlook not dissimilar to that of a lottery winner whose unexpected windfall leads to exuberant, often wasteful behavior. Most notable in this regard is the research of Terry Lynn Karl. As she describes it, an oil boom is liable to significantly inflate national confidence, producing delusions amongst the leadership about the possibility of practicing “politics without limits” (1997, p. 118). Boldly extrapolating from prevailing price and income levels, euphoric leaders overestimate national capabilities and engage in incautious policymaking, initiating impulsive schemes; as Libya's King Idris memorably cautioned, “oil makes men dream” (Siebens, 2011). With resource rents regarded as “manna from heaven” (Karl, 2008, p. 5), lavish spending programs are authorized and an atmosphere of “gigantismo” (Karl, 1997, p. 125) emerges as revenues are directed to ever grander “prestige projects ranging from palaces to international airports creating infrastructure that [is] quite inappropriate for the countries concerned” (Stevens, 2003, p. 15). Labeling the phenomenon “petromania” (1997, p. 67), Karl outlines how these oil riches “generate powerful and even overwhelming incentives to sustain existing trajectories but on a grander, more accelerated, and ultimately unmanageable scale.” Ignoring the dangers of overreach, policymakers are seduced by “the belief that all difficulties could be overcome, [and] that bigger and faster meant better” (Karl, 1997, pp. 16, 137). Using the example of Venezuela during the 1970s, Karl charts the impact of energy wealth on the ambitions of President Carlos Andrés Pérez:

The oil boom provided financial resources of a magnitude never before seen […]. His power apparently limitless, Pérez immediately embarked on the boldest and most ambitious development blueprint Latin America had ever seen. […] “We are going to change the world!” he was said to frequently exclaim (1997, p. 71).

When writing about this oil-induced over-ambition, Karl clearly has domestic politics in mind. However, it is entirely reasonable to assume that an influx of easy money would have a parallel impact on foreign policy. Indeed, Karl anticipates as much when drawing a comparison between the actions of modern energy-rich states and the foreign adventurism of a 16th-century Spain made rich by American silver and gold:

[T]he monarchy adopted a pattern of behavior later adopted by the oil exporters: its goals became inflated, and its time horizons shortened. Charles V, Philip II, and their successors used their portions of precious metals to achieve the expansion and defense of empire. In twenty years, the Spanish army grew to fifteen times its original size, utilizing enormous revenues and creating a permanent need for more. […] The expansion of the empire and the fateful series of European wars that followed were financially crippling […] regime goals soared beyond the normal royal ambitions and led to further spending. The monarchy began to overreach itself (1997, p. 36).12

Given the highlighted difficulties in explaining the sudden offensive lurch in Soviet foreign policy towards Afghanistan in 1979, the suggestion that that year's rapid influx of oil wealth may have played a role is particularly appealing, especially since the Afghan invasion has already been seen to bear many of the hallmarks of oil-fueled over-exuberance. For instance, as described above, Moscow's move to occupy Afghanistan represented a huge multiplication of the scale of Soviet activities in that country. The undertaking also reflected an uncharacteristically reckless shift in Politburo decision making as all of their previous caution was unceremoniously cast aside. What is more, looking again at the decision, we find yet more evidence of the impulsiveness, hubris, and over-optimism that resource riches are claimed to bring. For a start, such was the haste with which the leadership wished to proceed in December that the military was given less than a day for practical preparations, something that cannot have failed to have had negative consequences (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 40). Additionally, further to having discarded their own good sense, the Soviet leaders are found to have arrogantly ignored expert warnings. Senior military figures, including Nikolay Ogarkov, Valentin Varennikov, and Ivan Pavlovskiy, warned against invasion and communicated their foreboding. However, they were high-handedly slapped down by the Politburo with Marshal Ogarkov abruptly told, “Mind your own business! Politics will be taken care of by us” (Andropov quoted by Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 18). Instead, the national leadership preferred to abandon themselves to over-optimism. As unlikely as it seems in retrospect, the Politburo appears to have believed that the pacification of Afghanistan, a country whose difficulty to conquer is legendary, could be achieved in a matter of months, or a year or two at most (Halliday, 1999, pp. 679–680). Ustinov, for example, seems to have become so confident as to declare “that Soviet troops need only show up in Afghanistan and some rebels would drop their weapons right there and the others would simply flee” (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 27). As was the case with their Spanish predecessors, this hubristic adventurism was to prove extremely costly for the Soviet imperium.

The theory therefore appears to have explanatory potential in this context. By providing fresh insight into the factors shaping the milieu in which the decision to invade was made, the model may serve as a supplement to existing analyses and compensate for some of their highlighted weaknesses. However, before reaching any further conclusions about its merits, it must be noted that this explanation faces some significant challenges that demand attention.

Firstly, if energy wealth were indeed so important an underlying influence on contemporary Soviet thinking, its impact could not be expected to be limited to Moscow's policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Instead, one would anticipate a general upturn in ambition and boldness. Moreover, since global oil prices continued rising in 1980 then remained extremely high until 1985 (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2011), it would be predicted that this assertive trend would continue until the mid-1980s. Looking closely at Moscow's foreign-policy record during this period, it is debatable whether it meets this broader expectation. For instance, between 1980 and 1985 the Soviets cannot be said to have undertaken any foreign actions of a scale or recklessness remotely comparable to their Afghan folly. Even when the Solidarity trade union led a series of mass protests and strikes in Poland in 1980, creating a serious threat to Soviet control, Moscow refrained from intervening militarily. Given the sky-high oil price, this is a degree of passivity that the energy impact theory seems at a loss to explain. And yet, while no actions matched the overkill of the Afghan invasion, it is nonetheless clear that the first half of the 1980s remained a time of generally ambitious, belligerent, and unilateral Soviet foreign policy. This is after all the period of the “the Second Cold War” (Halliday, 1986) when, despite being checked by Reagan's efforts to “roll back” communism, Moscow was simultaneously engaged in an “unprecedented Soviet geo-political offensive all over the globe” (Kissinger, 1982, p. 88). In consequence, by the early 1980s the USSR was supporting self-declared Marxist-Leninist regimes across a vast swathe of the Third World, including in Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Benin, Congo, South Yemen, Afghanistan, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cambodia (Zwick, 1990, p. 289). The Soviet Union had also begun to invest heavily in the Syrian military and, in marked contrast to the hesitant approach taken towards Allende's Chile in 1970–1973, was also providing considerable support, including heavy weaponry, to the newly established Marxist regimes in Grenada and Nicaragua (Limberg, 1990, pp. 97–100; MacFarlane, 1990, p. 40). With regard to the West, the Soviets displayed no less assertiveness. In 1983, Soviet negotiators walked out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Strategic Arms Reduction talks with the United States. Soon after, Moscow moved rapidly to deploy SS-12 and SS-23 operational-tactical missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, while more launch sites for SS-20 ballistic missiles were constructed in 1984 than in any other year (Kennedy-Pipe, 1998, pp. 174–175). Superpower tensions were also considerably heightened by the Soviet shooting down of a Korean civilian airliner in September 1983, whilst, during NATO's Able Archer exercise in November, the Politburo placed the military on high alert and readied the nuclear forces for strikes on Western targets (Fischer, 1999). Additionally, it can be noted that, although no intervention in Poland was ultimately sanctioned, there are strong indications that the Soviets carefully considered such a move. In October 1980, a Soviet naval task force was dispatched to Gdansk, and the next month major military exercises were conducted close to the Polish frontier. It is even claimed that the authorities went so far as to set up field hospitals to treat the expected casualties. The threat was only finally lifted after Wojciech Jaruzelski preemptively imposed martial law in December 1981 (Kennedy-Pipe, 1998, pp. 169–170). This being so, one can speculate that had it not been for the launch of the Afghan mission months earlier, Moscow may have followed through with an invasion of Poland. Indeed, Andropov himself seems to hint at this, stating “the quota of interventions abroad has been exhausted” (Kalinovsky, 2011, p. 2). If this is indeed the case, it would suggest that even in the midst of oil-fueled extravagance there remain limits to the recklessness policymakers are willing to countenance.

A second important challenge is the argument that, far from being prompted by a sudden surge in strength, the Afghan invasion was rather a despairing attempt by Moscow to reverse a trend of deepening Soviet weakness. This argument is most clearly articulated by George W. Breslauer (2002, pp. 198–201). Concentrating on domestic political dynamics, Breslauer makes the case that 1979 is significant as a time when the unworkable nature of the Soviet leadership's plans and hollowness of their promises had been exposed by a series of international disappointments, leading to concerns about the leadership's continued credibility. Noting that “[l]eaders on the political defensive initiate or tolerate efforts to reverse a highly adverse trend by means of a dramatic show of force” (p. 201), Breslauer posits that the Afghan intervention was at least partly an attempt by an inner circle of the Politburo to utilize a bold foreign-policy action to recapture the initiative internationally and thereby reaffirm authority at home. This is an intriguing argument and provides a logical explanation for the timing and bold nature of the invasion, something which, as noted above, is all too often absent from analyses. That said, while Breslauer is undoubtedly correct to draw our attention to considerations of weakness, as well as those of strength, the argument would seem to have a significant limitation. Specifically, while weakness can undoubtedly cause a leadership to resort to a show of force, this is clearly not always the case. In fact, usually such weakness is expected to lead to concessions or at most limited confrontation designed for short-term gain. For the most part, it is not associated with imperialist bravado of the scale seen in Afghanistan. This being so, weakness alone is not a sufficient explanation. Perhaps, however, on this point the argument advanced in this article and that of Breslauer may be of assistance to each other. Namely, might it not be the sudden conjunction of strength and weakness that was responsible for so dramatic an outcome? Having been long limited in their scope for bold action by the debilitating weaknesses of the Soviet system, the leadership in Moscow must have found the influx of oil wealth in 1979 to have been all the more exhilarating. Reprieved from financial constraints, the Politburo suddenly seemed to have been granted the opportunity to seize the initiative internationally and realize foreign-policy ambitions that were previously far out of reach. In this way, the oil factor can supplement the weak-leader argument by providing an explanation for why it was at this particular time that Moscow opted to “come out fighting” in such dramatic style. Indeed, despite making a superficially opposed argument, much of the evidence cited by Breslauer is actually consistent with the proposal that the invasion was triggered by oil-fueled exuberance. In particular, he emphasizes the presence of widespread “wishful thinking” amongst Soviet policymakers and highlights Robert Legvold's contemporary observation that the dominant mood in Moscow in December 1979 was an assertive desire to “show the Americans” (Breslauer, 2002, pp. 199–201). As described above, such swaggering over-optimism is commonly observed in policymakers during oil booms. In short, Breslauer's important argument helps further illuminate the underlying rationale for the invasion by explaining the Soviet leadership's eagerness to find some way to forcefully stem the trend of long-term decline. Meanwhile, a focus on the surge in energy riches can assist our understanding of why this ill-conceived effort occurred when it did and why it took such an extreme form. Both arguments therefore appear to have merit and it was likely the unusual combination of sudden enrichment and long-term weakness that was instrumental in engendering so dramatic, self-defeating and uncharacteristic an action.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to re-examine the causes of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, an event that not only contributed to the collapse of the USSR but also engendered far-reaching international ramifications that continue to this day. To begin with, it has been stressed that, despite the abundance of excellent analyses of the causes and consequences of the conflict, there remains much to be explained about this most exceptional of Soviet actions. Specifically, in the first section, it has been demonstrated that the decision to commit large numbers of troops to combat operations in Afghanistan was significantly at odds with the established pattern of Soviet behavior in the Third World. The action has also been shown to have had little obvious logic when considered in the context of Moscow's dealings with previous Afghan regimes and the unappealing features of the PDPA. Most crucially, although most existing studies of the Soviet decision have overlooked this fact, it has been noted here that the archive material unequivocally shows the Politburo to have strongly opposed the deployment of Soviet troops to Afghanistan at the start of 1979 and only set aside their major reservations in the final quarter of that year. This surprising turnaround in thinking and sudden willingness to adopt such an uncharacteristic policy clearly requires explanation.

In section two, the effort to solve this puzzle was begun by analyzing the possibility that the Politburo's change of heart was enforced by a dramatic deterioration of the situation within Afghanistan, which is portrayed as having been in danger of spiraling out of control and threatening core Soviet interests. This proposition has a great deal of initial appeal. However, it has been revealed that each of the key premises of this defensive argument—the claims of external interference, intensification of the mujahidin threat, and danger of Afghanistan's reorientation towards the West under Amin's leadership—has significant shortcomings. Those scholars who assert a predominantly offensive rationale are instead found to be favored by the evidence. And yet, this still leaves one in need of an explanation for the radical emboldening of Moscow's foreign policy outlook during the course of 1979, something that the existing arguments about US weakness and Soviet learning are not sufficiently equipped to provide.

An attempt to fill this explanatory gap is made in the final section by drawing attention to the extraordinary increase in oil wealth that the Soviet Union experienced just prior to the highlighted shift in Politburo thinking. Having demonstrated that oil booms are indeed widely held to cause decision makers to pursue more ambitious policy agenda, and are even associated with reckless over-exuberance, it has been proposed that the influx of surplus energy riches may have been a factor in encouraging Moscow's damaging fit of empire in Afghanistan. This theory has been shown to be in line, not only with the sudden transformation in thinking about the deployment of troops, but also with contemporary Soviet foreign policy more broadly. Consequently, the theory that the Afghan invasion was to some extent oil-fueled seems to perform well and is an attractive candidate for the required role of explaining the surprising offensive shift in Soviet outlook. However, a serious note of caution is in order. Complex historical events cannot be explained with reference to one causal factor and correlation famously does not equal causation. As such, a change in oil wealth is obviously not a sufficient condition for the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan and there can be no doubt that many other factors were involved. Added to this is the fact that clear evidence for the link between the surge in energy wealth and shift in Soviet thinking is in short supply. This is always likely to be the case when examining an underlying influence on elite psychology of which even the decision makers themselves may not have been fully conscious. However, in this case it is made all the more difficult by the lack of transparency of the Soviet system and fragmentary nature of the documentary record around the time of the final decision. It is suggested by Fred Halliday that this particular gap is because many of the most damning documents were subsequently destroyed on Andropov's orders (1999, p. 677). It is apparent therefore that we must proceed tentatively and recognize that we are unlikely to be on the cusp of definitely explaining the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan. That said, the inability to generate certain answers does not mean that we should refrain from proposing plausible theories, and there is little doubt that the surge in oil wealth appears to be such. Indeed, it would be almost more remarkable if such a huge influx of easy money were to have had no effect on Soviet thinking at that time. In summary, the oil factor is a facet of the debate that has previously been overlooked. Its inclusion not only promises to add to the literature on the Soviet-Afghan war but also to provide an interesting further case study for theorists of the “resource curse.”

Notes

¹ Lecturer, Temple University, Japan

² This article primarily makes use of the Cold War International History Project Archive based at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (cited in the text as CWIHP Archive) as well as the primary source material assembled by Vladimir Bukovsky (cited in the text as Bukovsky Archive). Both are accessible online. The Bukovsky Archive can be accessed at http://www.bukovsky-archives.net/. The Cold War International History Project Archive is available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/digital-archive (see the “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” collection). The archival sources appear in chronological order in the References section.

³ All translations are the work of the author.

⁴ As Roy explains: “A qawm is the term used to describe any segment of [Afghan] society bound by solidarity ties, whether it be an extended family, clan, occupational group or village. Qawm is based on kinship and patron-client relationships” (1989, p. 71).

⁵ The invasion of Afghanistan is also deemed to have played a major role in the 1980 US election which removed Carter from power and elevated Ronald Reagan to the presidency, along with his doctrine of forcefully “rolling back” communism (Hauner, 1991, p. 1).

⁶ The cost to the Afghan people was considerably higher. Gregory Feifer estimates that as many as 1.3 million Afghans were killed during the conflict, while a third of the pre-war population fled abroad and another 2 million were internally displaced (2009, p. 255).

⁷ Rodric Braithwaite is skeptical of such accounts, contending that no more than three Soviet citizens were killed (2011, p. 45). Be this as it may, there is no question that the Politburo was shocked by the sudden, intense violence in Herat.

⁸ The handwritten note, which has been signed across by the attendees, is very difficult to read. Consequently, on this occasion, I have relied upon the Wilson Center's translation.

⁹ This version of events is supported by the work of Aleksandr A. Lyakhovskiy, Russia's leading historian of the Soviet-Afghan conflict, who concludes that: “the main reason for the deployment of Soviet troops was not due to the situation in the DRA. It was of a different nature” (Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 16).

¹⁰ Although some commentators have pointed to the replacement of these troops in early 1980 as a sign of Moscow's doubts about their loyalty, the real reason was that they had completed their scheduled 90-day deployment (Limberg, 1990, pp. 92–93).

¹¹ When asked in September 1995 whether Amin had been a US spy, former CIA director Stansfield Turner brushed aside the suggestion, stating that in 1978–1979 the US had turned its back on covert activity in Afghanistan and that the country “was not a first priority problem for us; we had many more other problems” (quoted in Lyakhovskiy, 2007, p. 5).

¹² The possibility of there being a reliable relationship between resource wealth and foreign-policy behavior is also discussed elsewhere in terms of a proposed “energy impact theory of foreign policy” (Brown, 2012).