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Much has been written about the origins of the Cold War. In September 1944—only three months after the Allied invasion in Normandy and eight months before the capture of Berlin by the Red Army—the American diplomat and Kremlin watcher George Kennan predicted with great foresight not only the advent of the East-West conflict, but he also indicated its origin. Writing about “the Russian aims in Eastern and Central Europe,” Kennan wrote: “Russian efforts in this area are directed to only one goal: power. The form this power takes, the methods by which it is achieved: these are secondary questions.”^[1] And he continued:

For the smaller countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the issue is not one of communism or capitalism. It is one of the independence of national life or of domination by a big power which has never shown itself adept at making any permanent compromises with rival power groups. . . . Today, in the autumn of 1944, the Kremlin finds itself committed by its own inclination to the concrete task of becoming the dominant power of Eastern and Central Europe. At the same time, it also finds itself committed by past promises and by world opinion to a vague program which Western statesmen—always so fond of quaint terms agreeable to their electorates—call collaboration. The first of these programs implies taking. The second implies giving. No one can stop Russia from doing the taking, if she is determined to go through with it. No one can force Russia to do the giving, if she is determined not to go through with it. In these circumstances others may worry.^[2]

That there were, indeed, reasons to worry would soon become clear when Stalin’s Soviet Russia began to install grim communist dictatorships in the countries that fell into its sphere of influence. In July 1947, eight months before the communist coup d’état in Prague, George Kennan published in Foreign Affairs his famous anonymous article, signed “Mr. X,” on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”^[3] In this article he formulated the principles of what was to become the “containment” policy. This policy would be adopted by President Truman and would lead, two years later—on April 4, 1949—to the foundation of NATO. The origins of the Cold War were the unprecedented territorial expansionist greed of Soviet Russia, the undisguised, unfettered imperialism of Stalin’s totalitarian regime that refused to respect the right of national self-determination of its new “brother nations.” For forty years it led to a huge military buildup by the two superpowers. And it ended, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. This collapse was experienced by the Russians as a defeat and by many in the West as a victory (even if, for reasons of expediency, they did not always say so openly).

The War in Afghanistan: Andropov’s War?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, this was interpreted by the West as a new phase of Soviet imperialist expansion. It was considered a war of conquest with the aim to add new territory to the Soviet bloc. But, with hindsight, things were more complicated. Initially, there was not so much a push from the Russian side to intervene militarily, as a pull by Afghan communist factions to draw the Soviet Union into an internal, Afghan conflict. The Afghan Communist Party (PDPA) had seized power in April 1978. Although the plot had been directed and steered by the KGB, it soon became clear that for the Soviet Union the communist coup d’état was an ambiguous event. The Soviet government had always enjoyed a good relationship with the former, noncommunist Afghan governments—not only when Afghanistan was still a monarchy, but also after the king, Zahir Shah, had been deposed by General Mohammad Daoud in July 1973. Communist insurgents killed Daoud in April 1978, and it was the radical Khalq faction of the Afghan Communist Party—led by Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin—that came to power. Amin became prime minister, and Taraki became president. It was, however, the second faction in the Communist Party, the more moderate Parcham faction led by Babrak Karmal, which had the favor of Moscow. The Khalq soon came to persecute this faction.