1. A short time ago we were discussing the implications of the Soviet move
into Afghanistan. We asked whether this was an aberration which, when behind
us, will see the Soviet Union revert to its previous pattern of behavior; or
whether it is a symptom of a new phase of adventuresome policy to which the
Kremlin is already committed.2 Subsequently, I asked
our Soviet experts to look at these two possible explanations for Soviet
behavior in Afghanistan. They have written the attached paper which I
believe is very helpful in putting these two explanations into perspective.
[classification marking and handling restriction not
declassified]
2. It concludes that Soviet behavior in the future will be quite contingent
on the conclusions which the Soviet leadership draws from the results of
their experience in Afghanistan and US reactions to it. In short, the
Soviets are neither committed to returning to detente nor to pursuing an
aggressive policy on a global basis. [classification
marking and handling restriction not declassified]
3. I would only add a personal comment that I would be a bit more categoric
than the paper in stating that the Soviet behavior in Afghanistan was not an
aberration. I agree that we do not have evidence that the Soviets are firmly
committed to continuing as aggressive a policy in the third world as was
this Afghan example. Yet, I do believe that the Soviet track record over the
past five or six years indicates a definitely greater willingness to probe
the limits of our tolerance. “Detente” was not a bar to their greater
assertiveness in Angola, Ethiopia, Kampuchea, and Yemen. It need not be so
again, even if we return to detente. As the paper concludes, how assertive
the Soviets will be
[Page 681]
in the future
will very likely depend upon how “successful” the Soviet leadership views
their intervention in Afghanistan to have been. [classification marking and handling restriction not
declassified]
Attachment
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence
Agency4
Washington, April 10, 1980
[Omitted here is a summary.]
SUBJECT
- The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Aberration or Symptom?
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has precipitated a sharp debate over
its significance. On one side, some offer Afghan-specific explanations
to argue that the move is an episodic aberration in an otherwise
generally circumspect pattern of Soviet behavior. On the other side of
the debate are those who hold that the invasion represents the opening
of a new and more aggressive phase in what promises to be an escalating
global competition.
Proponents of the first view concede that the invasion represents
Moscow’s first postwar use of combat forces outside the Soviet Bloc. But
they emphasize Afghanistan’s status as a Soviet client and ally and
suggest that the invasion was the result of a reluctant decision by
Moscow that it could not permit the collapse of a proto-socialist allied
regime in a neighboring country which was an incipient bastion of
anti-Communist Islamic fundamentalism, if not a potential client of the
US or the PRC.
Proponents of the second view contend that the invasion is symptomatic of
Moscow’s growing willingness to play a worldwide interventionist role
and to resort to the direct use of Soviet military force in the pursuit
of otherwise unattainable ambitions. As these analysts see it, Moscow is
convinced that “the correlation of forces” has shifted to its side,
creating a situation in which actions that it would previously have
rejected as “adventuristic” can now be confidently undertaken. Some
analysts of this persuasion even argue that Moscow’s new found
confidence has led it to embark on a calculated plan to fill the
unprece
[Page 682]
dented vacuum of
power in Southwest Asia and consolidate a position of privileged access
to Middle Eastern oil and control over oil supply routes. In this way,
the Soviet Union would be assured of a solution to its own emergent
energy problem, and also win immense leverage against the West—leverage
which, among other things, Moscow could utilize to forestall the sort of
Western military buildup which could redress the currently favorable
“correlation of forces”.
Rather different policy implications flow from these alternative
explanations and expectations of Soviet behavior. The first implies that
if the Soviet Union can be induced to withdraw from Afghanistan in
return for suitable “reassurances” it will revert to a more acceptable
pattern of behavior and may even show a heightened appreciation of the
value (and fragility) of “detente”. According to this view, the present
Soviet predicament is in large part the product of miscalculation which
is now recognized as such. This has led to a situation in which the
mutual interests of the West and the Soviet Union lie in fashioning a
face-saving solution which will permit the resumption of normal
relations.
The second view holds that the Soviet Union is determined to maintain a
permanent military presence in Afghanistan and will use it to bolster
its geopolitical position in the region, to bring pressure to bear on
neighboring and nearby countries, to discredit or nullify Western
security guarantees, and to highlight Western weakness and irresolution.
With reference to detente, this view holds that the Soviets are prepared
to write off for the time being what they already perceived before
Afghanistan as unsatisfactory levels of US trade, credits and technology
transfers. Simultaneously, Moscow will seek to preserve and extend its
commercial relations with Western Europe, and Japan through what it
believes can be a successful policy of “differentiated detente”.
The relevance of the central and regional military balances for the
Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan is also at issue in these
contrasting views of Soviet behavior. Members of the aberrationist
school are inclined to believe that shifts in the military balance over
the course of the last ten to fifteen years were essentially irrelevant
with respect to the Afghanistan intervention. Given the identical set of
circumstances, they contend, the Soviets would have intervened in
Afghanistan ten or fifteen years ago, as they did in Hungary in 1956. In
contrast, those who view the invasion as reflecting a higher Soviet
propensity to take risks hold that it was precisely the shift in the
military balances of the past ten to fifteen years that emboldened the
Soviets for the first time to employ military force directly against a
non-bloc state. As these analysts see it, the shifting strategic balance
has created a military environment in which Soviet recourse to force
became both physically possible and politically attractive.
[Page 683]
We believe that each of these divergent viewpoints captures important
aspects of reality, but that each also omits important considerations.
If taken alone, each has potentially misleading policy implications.
Like those who view the intervention as an aberration, we believe it was
triggered by Afghan-specific events and did not in itself stem from or
reflect a conviction that the time was ripe for a global offensive, let
alone from a belief that it was a necessary (or even a very sensible)
first step in the pursuit of warm water ports or control of Middle
Eastern oil. Like the aberrationists, we also believe that the timing of
the Soviet decision to intervene was critically affected by fear of an
imminent, and possibly irreversible, disintegration of the established
Kabul regime and its replacement by a regime which might even prove
susceptible to hostile external influence. In addition, we share the
aberrationists’ belief that the invasion of Afghanistan was defensive in
the sense that it was motivated by fear that the loss of a country from
within the Soviet sphere of influence would have an extremely adverse
effect on Moscow’s credibility as a power determined to brook no
challenge to the integrity of its empire or to the irreversibility of
“socialist” gains.
We are also inclined to agree with some of the arguments of those who see
the invasion as an expression of a more fundamental shift in global
Soviet policy. We believe it is probably the Soviet perception that
their enhanced military posture, especially in the strategic area, has
created a more permissive political environment for the conduct of
foreign policy. It has lowered the perceived risk of Soviet exploitation
of political and social instability in the Third World, and of a more
assertive foreign policy that has included the use of military force,
either directly or through proxies, in some Third World countries.
Growing Soviet military aid efforts have served as the main conveyor of
Soviet influence—in Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen, etc. The calculations that
informed the invasion of Afghanistan, therefore, were not without
precedent. Afghanistan involved the crossing of an important threshold,
and was recognized as such by the Soviet leadership. But, as we have
also pointed out, it was preceded by a gradual, decade-long escalation
in Soviet political-military involvement in the Third World.
The decision to solve the Afghanistan problem by an unprecedented massive
military intervention in a “Third World” country is a culmination of
this process. It reflects a confidence that the shift in the global
military balance, as the Soviets perceive it, guaranteed the USSR immunity from Western military
retaliation, and has created new possibilities to demonstrate the
apparent inability of the West to deter Soviet self-assertiveness. The
possibility that Afghanistan represents a qualitative turn in Soviet
foreign policy in the region and toward the Third World is one to be
taken seriously. The Soviets recognize that the issue
[Page 684]
of super-power involvement in a region
that stretches from Morocco to the Indian subcontinent remains the vital
question informing the posture and policies of the nations in the
region.
On balance, we tend to disagree with the argument that ascribes the
USSR’s Third World involvement and
its involvement in Afghanistan largely to Soviet feelings of insecurity.
We would argue that such behavior is more the product of confidence in a
potentially enduring shift in the balance of power—a stronger sense of
being a superpower and being perceived by others as such. This status
and self-image has become an important determinant of Soviet behavior; a
superpower would not let an “allied” regime in a bordering country go
down the drain. At the same time, from the Soviet point of view,
Afghanistan probably appeared an extremely low risk venture precisely
because it was preceded by numerous ventures which, though they did not
involve the direct use of large-scale Soviet forces, did involve an
active Soviet military presence in countries remote from the borders of
the Soviet Union, and located well within traditional Western spheres of
influence. The Soviet ability to carry out these ventures without
incurring drastic costs enhanced Moscow’s confidence that it could
intervene with relative impunity in Afghanistan. Perhaps to Moscow’s
surprise, this intervention did finally precipitate the sort of Western
reaction that the Kremlin may well have feared, but tended to discount
in view of the relatively passive reaction to its earlier involvements
elsewhere.
Even if those who see the invasion as an aberration were completely
correct in their explanation, there would be grounds for skepticism
about the policy implications they often tend to draw: namely, that if
the USSR can terminate its Afghan
adventure in relatively short order and without an undue loss of face,
it is unlikely to try to expand its influence elsewhere in Southwest
Asia or to challenge Western Third World interests militarily. However,
unlike the symptomists, we do not take it to be an almost foregone
conclusion that the invasion of Afghanistan will be followed by
comparable acts of Soviet military self-assertiveness. Like the
aberrationists, we consider it possible that the termination of the
Afghan adventure will leave the Soviet Union willing and eager to resume
the process of detente. However, as was true before the invasion, the
Soviets will continue to interpret detente as permitting active military
and quasi-military challenges to Western Third World interests.
The real issue of this discussion—whether the Afghanistan invasion
represents an aberration or a trend in Soviet policy—is the degree of
restraint which has governed Soviet policy toward opportunities in the
Third World, the nature and sources of that restraint, and changes in
it. Some would acknowledge that while Soviet policies since the
mid-1970’s have been more assertive and probing, such policies also
[Page 685]
reflect caution and
risk-avoidance, imposed in part by Moscow’s desire to preserve its
detente and arms control relationships with the US. While a combination
of these motives contributed to the Soviet decision to invade, one can
only explain that decision in the broader context of Soviet perceptions
of a more favorable global military position and a greater latitude for
risk. If one subscribes to the idea that the Soviet propensity to take
risks is higher, however, one must realize that an ongoing cost-benefit
analysis will continue to shape Moscow’s policies toward the Third
World.
While we disagree with those who argue that the Soviets are henceforth
irrevocably committed to the direct use of their own military force to
aggrandize power in the Third World, we agree with them that Afghanistan
could be a precedent if the Soviets conclude it was an appropriate
solution to the Afghan problem, if they perceive that it places them in
a position from which they can exert pervasive leverage in Southwest
Asia, and if they conclude that the West is either incapable or
unwilling to frustrate the effort or to oblige the Soviet Union to pay a
counterbalancing military or political price elsewhere. In short, the
answer to the question of whether or not Afghanistan is a harbinger of
things to come will depend importantly on the “lessons” that are drawn
from the Afghan experience by the present incumbents in the Kremlin and
the successors who will shortly replace them.
In sum, we believe that Afghanistan is neither an aberration which, when
behind us, will see the Soviet Union revert to its previous pattern of
behavior, nor a symptom of a new phase of adventuresome policy to which
the Kremlin is already committed. We believe that future Soviet behavior
will be more contingent, the result of conclusions the Soviet leadership
reaches after an analysis of the costs and benefits of the invasion. A
generally assertive Soviet policy will almost certainly continue, but
whether it is more constrained in use of military force or not will
depend importantly on the “lessons of Afghanistan”: the outcome of the
situation in that country, its impact on the region, and on US allies,
but, above all, on Soviet perceptions of US reactions.
