Abstract
Conflicts in the Third World were an important part of the Cold War. Although Moscow and Washington were involved in many regional conflicts, three took on special importance near the end of the Cold War: (1) the civil war in Angola; (2) the anti-Somoza revolution and subsequent Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua; and (3) the coup d’etat and revolution imposed from above in Afghanistan that led to the Soviet invasion and occupation.
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Notes
James A. Baker III, with Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), pp. 71–74.
On symbolic nature of regional conflicts see Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospects of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 174–225,
and Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefa and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland, eds. Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
John Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume 2: Exile Politics and Guerilla Warfare, 1962–1976 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978).
See Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation & Collapse in the International System (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 111–21.
See Raymond Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C., 1985), pp. 887–965.
Also see Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Interventionism, 1973–1996 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
See Charles Kupchan, The Persian Gulf and the West: The Dilemmas of Security (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 68–125.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), pp. 426–69.
Martha Cottam, Images and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), p. 89–101.
Robert Pastor, Whirpool: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 42–64.
Anatolii Chernyaev reports that Gorbachev persuaded the Politburo to that withdrawal from Afghanistan as early as October 17, 1985. See Bennett op. cit., p. 289 citing Chernyaev, Shest’ Let s Gorbachevym, po dnevnikovym zapisyam (Moscow: Kultura, 1993), pp. 57–58.
Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal op. cit., pp. 201–09. Also see Riaz M. Khan, Untying the Afghan Knot: Negotiating Soviet Withdrawal (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 65–66.
See George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 1086–94.
See W. Martin James III, A Political History of the Civil War in Angola 1974–1990 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992), p. 240.
See Margaret Joan Anstee. Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process, 1992–93. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
Michael McFaul, “Rethinking the Reagan Doctrine,” International Security 14 (3) (Winter 1989–90), pp. 99–135, pp. 106–07.
Human Rights Watch, Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process (New York: Humtan Rights Watch, 1999).
See Alexander M. Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1984)
and Constantine C. Menges, Inside the National Security Council: The True Story of the Making and Unmaking of Reagan’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).
Ronald Reagan, “The State of the Union, Address Delivered before a Joint Session of the Congress,” February 6, 1985, Presidential Documents, 21 (February 11, 1985), p. 145.
Gary Prevost. “The FSLN in Opposition.” In Vanessa Castro and Gary Prevost (eds.), The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and Their Aftermath. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield publishers, 1992), pp. 48–179.
$11989 increased by 262 percent compared to deliveries made between 1982 and 1985. Richard Grimmett, Trends in Conventional-Arms Transfers to the Third World by Major Supplier, 1982–1989 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, June 19, 1990), p. 60. Also see Bennett, Condemned to Repetition, op. cit., pp. 285.
Between 1985 and 1989 the flow of Soviet military supply to Nicaragua increased. In 1984 it was $350 million, in 1985 $280 million, in 1986 $600 million, in 1987 $500 million, and in 1988 $525 million. Jan S. Adams, A Foreign Policy in Transition: Moscow’s Retreat from Central America and the Caribbean, 1985–1992 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), p. 111.
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1989 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1990), p. 101.
John Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
See Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospects of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 174–225 and Robert Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” in Jervis and Snyder (eds.), Dominoes and Bandwagons, pp. 20–50. and Robert Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” in Jervis and Snyder (eds.), Dominoes and Bandwagons, pp. 20–50.
For a review of the thinking that led to the Soviet involvement in Angola, see Odd Arne Westad, “Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974–1976: A New Pattern of Intervention,” in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 8–9 (Winter 1996/1997), pp. 21–32.
Ole Holsti and James Rosenau, American Leadership in World Affairs: Vietnam and the Breakdown of Consensus (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984).
See President James Carter, “A Foreign Policy Based on America’s Essential Character (address made at the commencement exercises of Notre Dame University, South Bend, Ind., May 22, 1977), Department of State Bulletin (June 13, 1977), pp. 621–25. Also see Jerel Rosati, The Carter Administration’s Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991).
See David Welch and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Intervention in Afghanistan and the Fall of Detente, Nobel Symposium 95, September 17–20, 1995 (Oslo: The Norwegian Nobel Institute, 1996).
Also see Richard Herrmann, “The Empirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Inferences About Perceptions,” International Studies Quarterly 32 (1988), pp. 175–203.
See, for instance, A. Bovin, “Afghanistan: A Difficult Decade,” Izvestiya, Dec. 23, 1988, 5 (FBIS-SOV-88–247), pp. 24–26.
For a review of these developments, see Jerry Hough, The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American Options (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1986).
See Sarah Mendelson, Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). Also see Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? op. cit., pp. 247–94.
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© 2004 Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow
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Herrmann, R.K. (2004). Regional Conflicts as Turning Points. In: Herrmann, R.K., Lebow, R.N. (eds) Ending the Cold War. New Visions in Security. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982810_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982810_3
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