The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

***Having finished the meeting with the Anarchist, Starostin gave him a ride todowntown Kabul and then returned home. Thinking about their conversation, he internallyagreed with the Anarchist that Afghanistan represents only an arena of confrontation withthe Soviet Union for the United States. “And what is Afghanistan for us, the Soviet Union? Astrategic partner? A platform for possible expansion towards the south? A reliable neutralcountry that serves as a buffer to prevent a possible nuclear attack? A testing ground for agrandiose social experiment that, in case of success, could spread across all of Asia? Or allof the above?“Most probably for our Soviet politicians, who do not restrict the allocation ofresources for the purpose of keeping Afghanistan in the Soviet orbit, they are guided by anentirely different set of reasons, each of them significant.”Valery thought that there must be some objective geopolitical laws that determinethe aspirations of states and the relations between those states in different parts of theworld, independent of political regimes or the socio-economic systems of those states. Inthe case of Afghanistan, a long time ago, in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was thearena for a rigid confrontation between Czarist Russia and imperial Britain.Starostin jogged his memory for episodes of that great confrontation of worldpowers. In the case of Russia and Britain, their interests could be defined and understood.Russia shared a border with Afghanistan in the north, while British colonial possessionsbordered Afghanistan in the south and the east. By 1941, Germans were also looking toengage in the region, having created a vast intelligence network. The Germans wereeffective: when Hitler attacked the USSR, Kabul’s initial reaction was positive. Afghan219