This post is intended more for your input and opinion rather than me making a point... thoughts, comments, objections are welcome.
With the environment in Afghanistan deteriorating, I can't help but wonder what the situation would be like if the Soviets had won when they invaded the country. As I understand it, the mujahideen succeeded largely because of the support from the United States. Such support included financial and Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, which were useful against Soviet aircraft, as was depicted in Charlie Wilson's War.
So the question, I'll pose is what if the US hadn't provided the support and Soviet invasion has been successful. The USSR collapsed a few years later. Is it possible that Afghanistan would've ended up like the surrounding former Soviet states? Obviously, those countries aren't terribly successful, but they look alot better than Afghanistan does.
Maybe its a moot point because it's hard to imagine that the US would've allowed increased Soviet expansion there, but I think its an interesting scenario to consider.
1 comment:
Yeah...though we let the Commis muddle around with a puppet government in Kabul for about 6ish years, I don't believe the US could stand to keep its hands out of the fray. Though the Cold War ended only a few years after the Soviet pull-out, many continue to maintain that the world still saw events slathered in Cold War rhetoric. Plus, our involvement struck a decent blow to the Soviets, financially and militarily.
You could also throw out the hypothetical of "What if one side actually won the Iran-Iraq War? Would Saddam have kept a hold on power? Would Iran look differently (would the infighting have intensified, disappeared?)?"
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