scholarly journals Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan in the Documents of J. Carter Administration

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-100
Author(s):  
Olexandr Koval ́kov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Carter Administration ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The U.S

The article examines the documents of Jimmy Carter Administration (1977-1981) published in «Foreign Relations of the United States» series that represent the U.S. position on the Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in December 1979. The author argues that the growing Soviet presence and finally a military intervention in Afghanistan was taken seriously in the United States and made Washington watch the developments in this country closely. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan became one of the major themes in the U.S. foreign policy. It was presented in a large array of documents of various origins, such as the Department of State correspondence with the U.S. Embassies in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union; analytical reports of the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Bureau of Intelligence and Research; exchanges of memorandums between National Security Council officers and other officials; memos from National Security Adviser Z. Brzezinski to J. Carter, and others. They represented the preconditions, preparations and implementation of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The authors of the documents discussed in details the possible motives of the Soviet leaders, and predicted the short-term consequences of the USSR’s intervention for the region and the whole world. Due to the clear understanding of the developments in Afghanistan in December 1979 by the J. Carter administration, it completely rejected the Soviet official version of them that adversely affected the bilateral Soviet-U.S. relations and international relations in general. Due to the lack of accessible Soviet sources on the USSR’s intervention in Afghanistan, the documents of Jimmy Carter’s administration fill this gap and constitute a valuable source for a researcher.

scholarly journals Soviet Union in the 1970s – 1980s in the mirror of foreign documentary heritage

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Dar'ya Viktorovna Yakupova ◽  
Roman Aleksandrovich Yakupov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The U.S

The subject of this article is the content of the foreign electronic archival documents of U.S. departments dedicated to the analysis of situation in the Soviet Union. The goal consists in carrying out a historiographical analysis of foreign documentary heritage of the United States within the framework of comprehension of historical experience of the development of the Soviet Union in the 1970s – 1989. The object this research is the published materials of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Historical Sector of the U.S. Department of State, which contain records on the analysis of development of the Soviet Union during this period. Relevance of this topic is substantiated by increased of the publically available foreign electronic archival materials, which requires their analysis, description, determination of information capacity, as well as assessment of information contained therein for further utilization in the historical (humanities) research on the contemporary history of Russia. The novelty is defined by the fact that this article is first based on interpretation of foreign historical sources to describe the capabilities and limitations of different types of published intelligence documents of the CIA and the U.S. Department of State that characterize the development of the Soviet Union in various spheres. Introduced into the scientific discourse documents allow concluding on the prospects of using the heritage of the U.S. electronic archives in the scientific research, as well as assessing their veracity and reliability. The authors note that these materials contain valuable information on the U.S. policy with regards to the USSR, and analytical awareness on socioeconomic development of the Soviet Union during the 1970s – 1980s. It is established that in many cases publication of the foreign archival documents is often of tendentious nature.

Congo/Zaire-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Namikas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
The Cold War

At the dawn of the 20th century, the region that would become the Democratic Republic of Congo fell to the brutal colonialism of Belgium’s King Leopold. Except for a brief moment when anti-imperialists decried the crimes of plantation slavery, the United States paid little attention to Congo before 1960. But after winning its independence from Belgium in June 1960, Congo suddenly became engulfed in a crisis of decolonization and the Cold War, a time when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for resources and influence. The confrontation in Congo was kept limited by a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force, which ended the secession of the province of Katanga in 1964. At the same time, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) intervened to help create a pro-Western government and eliminate the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Ironically, the result would be a growing reliance on the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu throughout the 1980s. In 1997 a rebellion succeeded in toppling Mobutu from power. Since 2001 President Joseph Kabila has ruled Congo. The United States has supported long-term social and economic growth but has kept its distance while watching Kabila fight internal opponents and insurgents in the east. A UN peacekeeping force returned to Congo and helped limit unrest. Despite serving out two full terms that ended in 2016, Kabila was slow to call elections amid rising turmoil.

The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor Tobin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Post Cold War

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and the overall cost to the American taxpayer was in the region of $2 billion. The Afghan cost was much higher. Over a million Afghans were killed, a further two million wounded, and over six million refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. For the Soviet Union, the ten-year war constituted its largest military action in the postwar era, and the long and protracted nature of the conflict and the failure of the Red Army to subdue the Afghans is partially responsible for the internal turmoil that contributed to the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. The defeat of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan proved to be the final major superpower battle of the Cold War, but it also marked the beginning of a new era. The devastation and radicalization of Afghan society resulted in the subsequent decades of continued conflict and warfare and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism that has shaped the post-Cold War world.

The Cultural Cold War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Iber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cultural Cold War ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union each sought to portray their way of organizing society—liberal democracy or Communism, respectively—as materially and morally superior. In their bids for global leadership, each sponsored “front” groups that defended their priorities and values to audiences around the world. These campaigns frequently enrolled artists and intellectuals, whose lives, works, and prestige could be built up, torn down, exploited, or enhanced through their participation in these groups. Alongside overt diplomatic efforts, the United States funded a number of organizations secretly through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These efforts are often described as belonging to the “Cultural Cold War,” although the programs in fact supported overlapping networks that did anti-Communist work among labor unions, students, and others in addition to artists and intellectuals. The major CIA-sponsored group of intellectuals was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, established in 1950, and the “freedom” in its name was the major concept deployed by United States–aligned propagandists, to emphasize their differences from totalitarianism. The Cultural Cold War, as a program of psychological warfare conducted by the US government, grew out of the intersecting experiences of the left in the 1930s and the security apparatus of the United States at the dawn of the Cold War. The covert nature of the programs allowed them to evade scrutiny from the US Congress, and therefore to engage in activities that might otherwise have been stopped: working with people with radical political biographies or who still identified as “socialists,” or sponsoring avant-garde art, such as abstract expressionist painting. The programs spanned the globe, and grew in scope and ambition until their exposure in 1967. Subsequently, the United States has developed other mechanisms, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, to promote organizations within civil society that support its interests.

“The World Was Not Turning in Their Direction”: The United States and the Decolonization of Angola

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Tiago Moreira de Sá
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
National Union ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Internal Context

In the mid-1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to export the Cold War to Angola at levels that were unprecedented on the African continent. In the case of the United States, this led to immense support for local allies—the National Liberation Front of Angola and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola—in the form of many tons of heavy weaponry, millions of dollars, and the use of mercenaries and even paramilitary operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. This article explains U.S. actions in Angola from 1974 to 1976 against the backdrop of the Cold War, highlighting the decision-making process in Washington, the international context, the internal context, and the actions of both superpowers.

A Dirty, Half-Hidden War

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-184
Author(s):  
Colleen Woods
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

This chapter assesses the formation of a private paramilitary organization in the 1950s by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents who were associated with Edward Lansdale, as well as by a group of veterans from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). This “Freedom Company” was meant to transport the “lessons of the Huk campaign” to sites elsewhere in Asia and Latin America. As an organizing principle, the Freedom Company and its U.S.-based supporters assumed that U.S. colonialism had imparted “modern political knowledge” to Filipinos; as the most “politically modern” Asians, therefore, they were best equipped to “export democracy” throughout the region. The Freedom Company Philippines (FCP), staffed entirely by Filipinos in an effort to distance contemporary U.S. interventions from a history of Western imperialism, actively promoted the idea that the U.S. colonial project in the Philippines had succeeded, while European imperial practices had failed to develop Asian societies properly. Though steeped in racialized perceptions regarding the political capacities of colonized or formerly colonized peoples, anticommunists contended that U.S. colonialism in the Philippines and contemporary U.S. interventions demonstrated the United States' interests in liberating Asians from colonialism across the region.

The Golden Years of Human Rights?

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-254
Author(s):  
Vanessa Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Carter Administration ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
National Security Strategy ◽  
The World ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter explains that for Movement advocates, the human rights vision of the 1970s was intimately connected with a reckoning with the U.S. failures of Vietnam, Cold War national security strategy, and, of course, Chile. The Movement and the Carter administration shared a vision of human rights as a way to improve not only the world but also the U.S. government and its policies. This is not to say the Movement's views were universally shared, or that human rights faded away after the 1970s. Rather, human rights continued to serve as an instrument of its time, a powerful idea and language, flexible and indelible. The Carter administration's human rights policy was far from perfect or consistent. It was, however, a uniquely self-reflective policy that restrained U.S. intervention and addressed abuses taking place in areas where the United States was most directly complicit in empowering violators.

Iran-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Shannon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Iranian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
The U.S

Historian James A. Bill famously described America’s relationship with Iran as a tragedy. “Few international relationships,” he wrote, “have had a more positive beginning than that which characterized Iranian-American contacts for more than a century.” The nations’ first diplomatic dealings in the 1850s resulted in a treaty of friendship, and although the U.S. government remained largely aloof from Iranian affairs until World War II, many Iranians saw Americans and the United States positively by the early 20th century. The United States became more deeply involved with Iran during the Second World War, and the two nations were close allies during the Cold War. Yet they became enemies following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. How did this happen? The events that led to the Islamic Republic of Iran dubbing the United States the “Great Satan” in 1979 do indeed contain elements of tragedy. By the late 19th century, Iran—known to Americans as “Persia” until the 1930s—was caught in the middle of the imperial “Great Game” between Great Britain and Russia. Although no European power formally colonized Iran, Britain and Russia developed “spheres of influence” in the country and meddled constantly in Iran’s affairs. As Iranians struggled to create a modern, independent nation-state, they looked to disinterested third parties for help in their struggle to break free from British and Russian control. Consequently, many Iranians came to see the United States as a desirable ally. Activities of individual Americans in Iran from the mid-19th century onward, ranging from Presbyterian missionaries who built hospitals and schools to economic experts who advised Iran’s government, as well as the United States’ own revolutionary and democratic history, fostered a positive view of the United States among Iranians. The two world wars drew the United States into more active involvement in the Middle East, and following both conflicts, the U.S. government defended Iran’s sovereignty against British and Soviet manipulation. The event that caused the United States to lose the admiration of many Iranians occurred in 1953, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Intelligence Service staged a coup, which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, because he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. The coup allowed Iran’s shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to transform himself from a constitutional monarch into an absolute ruler. The 1953 coup, coupled with the subsequent decades of U.S. support for the Shah’s politically repressive regime, resulted in anti-American resentment that burst forth during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The two nations have been enemies ever since. This article traces the origins and evolution of the U.S. relationship with Iran from the 19th through the early 21st centuries.

scholarly journals Human Experiments and National Security: The Need to Clarify Policy

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-195
Author(s):  
JONATHAN D. MORENO
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Clear Vision ◽  
Human Experiments ◽  
Defensive Measures ◽  
The U.S

On September 4, 2001, press reports indicated that the Defense Intelligence Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) planned to reproduce a strain of anthrax virus suspected of being held in Russian laboratories. According to the same reports, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the auspices of Project Clear Vision, is engaged in building replicas of bomblets believed to have been developed by the former Soviet Union. These small bombs were designed to disperse biological agents, including anthrax. Government attorneys were said to be confident that, because these projects were designed to develop defensive measures, they were not in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

The Carter Era and the Collapse of Détente, 1977–80

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Carter Administration ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the relevant predictions of the alternative theses about how states should assess intentions by analyzing the case of the Carter administration during the period 1977–1980. Jimmy Carter began his time as president of the United States with great optimism about the USSR and was committed to improving the U.S.–Soviet relations. By the end of his tenure, however, Carter’s perceptions of the Soviet Union had changed and his policies emphasized competition over cooperation. The détente had collapsed. The chapter examines the Carter administration’s assessment of Soviet intentions, and more specifically the dramatic changes in U.S. perceptions of the Soviet Union, using the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. It considers whether key decision makers in the Carter administration engaged in intentions assessment attend to different indicators than the U.S. intelligence organizations.

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