A Remarkable Realism on Afghanistan : Gorbachev Saw the Futility, We Should See the Opportunity

The withdrawal of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan is an occasion not only for rejoicing but for reflection as well. The effect of Soviet defeat may prove more profound than the consequences of American failure in Vietnam. Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s remarkable realism here demonstrates an unprecedented willingness to cooperate in resolving regional conflicts. More recent initiatives in Angola and Cambodia suggest that this willingness extends to other conflicts, too. Even in Central America, the graveyard of the Reagan-Shultz-Abrams campaign to overthrow the Sandinistas, a satisfactory settlement appears within reach--if the United States has the will to stretch. Current circumstances present the Bush Administration with the widest window of opportunity in the postwar period to decisively conclude the era of Soviet “wars of liberation.”

In 1979, when the Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, no one could have dreamed of such an outcome. To appreciate the magnitude of this victory and its implications, it is necessary to go back nine years to American and Soviet perceptions of the stakes.

For President Jimmy Carter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a formative experience. As he confessed: “This action of the Soviets has made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they’ve done in the previous time that I’ve been in office.”

The Carter Administration interpreted the Soviet action as a geostrategic grab. Afghanistan translated the Soviet military buildup into action. For the first time since World War II, Soviet military forces were directly engaged outside Europe. Afghanistan represented a calculated step in Russia’s centuries-old quest for warm-water ports. Domination of the world’s strategic oil reserves in the Persian Gulf was the unspoken prize.

All this became conventional wisdom after 1980 and shaped the Reagan Administration’s views of Soviet ambitions. Indeed, it continues to dominate the thinking of many Americans today.

Statements by the Soviet government and commentaries by Soviet advisers did little to allay the American concerns. In conversations with Westerners, even Soviets who had opposed Soviet intervention made a point of emphasizing the difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam. As one told me bluntly: “Whatever the merits of the decision, having decided to act, the Soviet Union will do whatever is necessary to win. We will never bug out for lack of guts or heart.”

Yet Gorbachev has accepted defeat, with only a fig leaf of calling it stalemate. He has not even demanded the “decent interval” that Henry A. Kissinger sought in 1975.

Americans who believed, as I did, that Afghanistan constituted a geostrategic challenge must now ask how Gorbachev’s reversal of that policy can be explained. In the light of the potential benefits of success, and the probable consequences of failure, what kind of Soviet leader and what kind of Soviet Union could actually do such a thing?

A chorus of commentary explains simply that the Soviets found the costs exceeding the benefits. But this tautology just rephrases the puzzle. Clearly the combination of Afghan courage, Western supplies (including American Stinger missiles), international condemnation and domestic discontent imposed heavy costs. But who says that these costs exceed the benefits of realizing a venerable geopolitical aspiration? Had the Soviet Union continued the war and even annexed Afghanistan or parts thereof, these pundits would solemnly announce that the benefits exceeded the costs.

Consider the consequences of Soviet acceptance of defeat and withdrawal. How will the Soviet army explain to itself and its supporters that a military establishment that consumes 15%-20% of the Soviet gross national product, that faced no restrictions on its pursuit of the war, in a system of government that puts long-term interests ahead of short-term pressures of public opinion, nonetheless lost. Even more significant will be the reverberations in Soviet satellite and client states, since the defeat in Afghanistan rolls back for the first time the Brezhnev doctrine of the irreversibility of communist gains.

What will happen in Afghanistan? The Soviet client government is unlikely to last as long as Nguyen Van Thieu did in Vietnam. The prospects of continuing warfare and instability, perhaps even a “Lebanon” right on the Soviet border, cannot be excluded.

The crucial factor explaining the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is Gorbachev. Reviewing the facts--a declining Soviet economy, increasingly burdensome Third World clients and an international system evolving away from military-based bipolarity toward technologically determined multipolarity--Gorbachev has come to a radically different conception of how the Soviet Union’s interests can best be secured. While his predecessors sought greater security through support for Marxist-Leninist revolutions, Gorbachev has seen that real security can best be achieved, for the foreseeable future, through a normalization of relations that respects both sovereignty and international law. If the Bush Administration will think clearly about what U.S. interests require, it can now settle this aspect of the Cold War on terms that achieve our original objectives.