There were many in the Soviet Politburo who thought that going into Afghanistan was a bad idea. Say they manage to convince Brezhnev that it is. What would happen next? I can see the situation in Afghanistan leading to a civil war, with the USSR giving the communists military and monetary aid, while the US, UK and numerous Muslim majority nations do the same to the Mujahideen. A surviving Taraki (which would most likely be the POD for this) leads to the PDPA becoming more unpopular than IOTL which, along with less Soviet involvement leads to an earlier victory for the Mujahideen possibly around the mid to late 1980s.
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Soviets don't intervene in Afghanistan in 1979
- Thread starter lerk
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1.carter wins reelection u.s. in moscow olmpics.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
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The Soviet Union would be stronger without the Afghan War. The war damaged the legitimacy of many of the institutions of the state. The war helped discredit the Soviet Army as an institution. It proved that the army wasn't invincible, and created ethnic divisions within the army (Central Asian troops were perceived by the leadership as not being trustworthy in Afghanistan). Draft dodging became more widespread, and many soldiers fell into opioid addiction. The Party also lost legitimacy, with the war turning many against it. In particular, secessionists in the non-Russian republics latched onto the war (particularly after glasnost) as evidence that the Soviet Union shouldn't be allowed to exist.
The other major thing that Afghanistan did is help bring about glasnost and perestroika. The war weakened the position of the army, which was a key part of the hardliner coalition. The weakened hardliners found it difficult to stop Gorbachev from achieving power and implementing his reforms. It also forced the issue of censorship. The Afghan War was such a disaster that covering up the failure was extremely difficult. This gave an opening for reformers to push the issue of relaxing censorship. Both glasnost and perestroika hastened the end of the Soviet Union.
So without the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Soviet Union would probably last till the mid to late 90s (the structural issues of the USSR were by that point so serious that I have trouble seeing it lasting past that point). A more hardline politician like Viktor Grishin or Grigory Romanov probably becomes General Secretary rather than Gorbachev, and reforms are delayed for many years (at some point the reformists are probably going to win the power struggle because of the aforementioned structural issues).
The other major thing that Afghanistan did is help bring about glasnost and perestroika. The war weakened the position of the army, which was a key part of the hardliner coalition. The weakened hardliners found it difficult to stop Gorbachev from achieving power and implementing his reforms. It also forced the issue of censorship. The Afghan War was such a disaster that covering up the failure was extremely difficult. This gave an opening for reformers to push the issue of relaxing censorship. Both glasnost and perestroika hastened the end of the Soviet Union.
So without the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Soviet Union would probably last till the mid to late 90s (the structural issues of the USSR were by that point so serious that I have trouble seeing it lasting past that point). A more hardline politician like Viktor Grishin or Grigory Romanov probably becomes General Secretary rather than Gorbachev, and reforms are delayed for many years (at some point the reformists are probably going to win the power struggle because of the aforementioned structural issues).
The US would certain participate in the 1980 Olympics (which also means that the Eastern Bloc would participate in the 1984 Olympics). However no Afghan War wouldn't change the US election. Both the economy and the Iran Hostage Crisis means that Carter would lose. The voters cared way more about those things than Carter's handling of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was at best the cherry on top of his failure sundae.1.carter wins reelection u.s. in moscow olmpics.
Cook
an obscure historical reference.
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- There, or here... but mostly there.
1.carter wins reelection u.s. in moscow olmpics.
Feel free to explain why you think the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan doomed Carter's re-election.
Feel free to explain why you think the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan doomed Carter's re-election.
Didn't he get hit badly in the Midwest over issuing an embargo over cereals for the USSR?
Cook
an obscure historical reference.
- Location
- There, or here... but mostly there.
Didn't he get hit badly in the Midwest over issuing an embargo over cereals for the USSR?
Carter got hit badly everywhere, he only held six states, and the plethora of reasons - double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy, the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, the entirely false notion that he had run down the nation's armed forces - make it unrealistic to ascribe his defeat to what was probably the most minor crisis of his last year in office.
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