Quote:Because its the establishing of a Socialist govt. for the betterment of the lives of the people living there??? The Soviets came because the Afghan communist govt. asked them too...and it was to maintain a People's government. Even the Soviets were reluctant to intervene but they did, and rightly so.
Yes. In all honesty I do not blame Moscow for intervening especially considering Afghanistan was a border state unlike in the case of NATO where none of those countries share a border with it. In Soviet strategic thinking it would be very uncomfortable for them to have a pro-US Afghanistan. At the end of the day it is always best to let peoples decide on their own course of action when from outside their civilisation. It was an Afghan affair in which one party in the conflict invited outsiders in to aid them. How would we feel if the Islamic opposition had invited American soldiers directly in (as unfeasible as this would have been)? It was an internal affair of Afghanistan and the wider Islamic world, the Soviet Union should not have involved itself. If anything they gained nothing by intervening because by losing they placed themselves in the minds of the Afghans as an enemy. Iran had already had a revolution in 1979 which replaced a secular government with a religious one. If the Soviets were worried about their Muslim republics becoming influenced by pan-Islamism as is often presented as an excuse for intervention in Afghanistan, why did they not instead do the same in Iran? There were many leftist elements who participated in that revolution but the Soviets never intervened there.
As the Americans learnt in Vietnam, a course of history cannot be forced on a people. If they do not want to have a socialist or capitalist economic and political system, they cannot be forced to have them no matter how much outside actors would like for them to adopt them.
Quote:The Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty and its materialization in the Afghan intervention were imperialistic in its nature. The imperialism of USSR represents one of the pillars of the revisionism implemented in Moscow after Stalin's death alongside peaceful coexistence, liberal reforms, decentralization, etc... What is usually referred as "De-Stalinization" I call it "De-Leninization".
Stalin was also imperialistic. Look at the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang as one of several examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_XinjiangQuote:I agree with Political Interest, if we accept the USSR intervention in Afghanistan we are implicitly legitimate USA military interventions since they are both similar in its nature. However, by saying this I'm not in any way saying that the Socialist Government in Afghanistan was bad or worst than what followed it, on the contrary. They never enjoyed so much freedom in their History as they did under the socialist regime. But if we are gonna take this argument to defend the USSR intervention, the Americans can do the same about the Iraq for instance.
It is good we agree. I also agree that if that if it is acceptable for the Soviet Union to intervene then American intervention also becomes more acceptable.
Quote:Afghanistan was within the geopolitical sphere of influence of the U.S.S.R.
Yes, I agree this does say something. At the same time South America is within the US sphere of influence, should we think it is acceptable for the United States to intervene there?
Quote:And also, as I mentioned in my prior post above, the jihadists threatened not only the security of the government in Afghanistan, but also that of the surrounding soviet socialist republics, that were also predominantly Muslim.
As mentioned above, why did the Soviets not intervene in Iran in 1979? Iran was in its early days against the whole world.
Quote:I believe that had the Soviets won the war, the Russians wouldn't have to be fighting in Chechnya now. So I feel that the Soviet Union had shared interests in Afghanistan.
Why do you say this? The Chechens have a long history of fighting against the Russians, from the nineteenth century and 1940s to the 1990s. do you really believe that winning in Afghanistan would have changed their aspirations for independence? Furthermore, you should not forget that the early Chechen nationalists were largely secular. Also many former Muslim Soviet-Afghan war veterans were inspired by the Afghan Muslims. It was also the era of Islamic revival from the 1970s onwards, it was limited more or less to nowhere. As soon as the 1980s came and people could gain outside ideological and intellectual influences in the Muslim republics they would be influenced by the revival.
Quote:The Taliban were supported by the West, China and some Muslim countries. The Taliban got "reinforcements" from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, so why wouldn't Kabul seek help from their neighbour?
There was no Taliban at this point. Yes, they received assistance but the Pakistanis never occupied Afghanistan, neither did the Chinese unlike the Soviet Union. War will often radicalise people. Is it any surprise that the Taliban emerged after the war?