The Soviet-Vietnam War

In the late 1970’s there was a hot bed of political activity throughout the world, which fed into the Cold War. The Soviet-Afghanistan War was a battlefield in which the Cold War super powers never faced each other but fought each other through different avenues like many other conflicts. Years earlier, the American military fought a counterinsurgency in Vietnam in which the Soviets helped the North Vietnamese fight the Americans. Even though the Americans won the major battles within the war, it never achieved true outright victory. The war was very unpopular with the American people and there were limited strategic objectives achieved. Fast forward several years later the Soviets found themselves in a similar situation. The American …show more content…
One area of the world that both super powers had their eyes on was the Middle East. “At the time, the United States had been making headway in the Middle East at Moscow’s expense, successfully courting Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. The Soviet Union feared the loss of its communist proxy in Afghanistan.” (Adams, 2008) During this period, the Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) came into power after a coup. The PDPA was a communist party that favored the Soviets; they emplaced NUR Muhammed Taraki as the leader of this party. There had been growing opposition movements against the PDPA because they were trying to bring social and economic reform to Afghanistan but these programs fared poorly because most people lived outside of the cities and most people were farmers and lived in their tribal settings far from the socialist leadership. Hafizullah Amin was the Prime Minister of Afghanistan and was second to Taraki. Prime Minister Amin was a power hunger individual and thought Taraki was not the strong leader that Afghanistan needed. In September of 1979 after considerable unrest, the murder of NUR Muhammed Taraki in Harat made the Soviets very uneasy and they feared they might lose their communist foothold in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Amin seized power of the country. Many people in Afghanistan did not like Amin because he was not in line with …show more content…
Corruption within the Afghan government did not allow for reform within the military or the police forces. There was recruiting, training and leader development within these organizations but did not endure the test of time. Some estimates had the Afghan military and police forces at over 300,000 by 1986 but it still could not handle its end of the bargain because of high desertion