Afghanistan Déjà vu? Lessons from the Soviet Experience

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 292

Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya

Posted - October 30, 2009

For more information contact:
Svetlana Savranskaya: 202/994-7190

Washington, D.C., October 30, 2009 - The debate over U.S. policy in the Afghanistan war features striking and troubling parallels with the choices faced by Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, according to Soviet documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive. The documents have sparked a series of recent articles by Rodric Braithwaite (“New Afghan Myths Bode Ill for Western Aims,” October 15, 2008) in the Financial Times, Peter Beaumont (“Same Old Mistakes in Afghanistan,” October 18, 2009) in the Observer, Mark Thomson (“Soviets in Afghanistan … Obama’s Déjà vu?”, October 19, 2009 in Time, and Victor Sebestyen (“Transcripts of Defeat,” October 28, 2009) in the New York Times.

The documents obtained by the National Security Archive from the Russian archives show that even if history does not repeat, it almost certainly rhymes—more than 20 years later, U.S. policy makers are encountering very similar choices and analyses as they discuss the options for prosecuting or ending the war.

The rest.

Source: The National Security Archive