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From: eich@uiucdcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: PWhat if They Threw a War... - (nf)
Message-ID: <3916@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Nov-83 22:30:14 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3916
Posted: Thu Nov 17 22:30:14 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Nov-83 04:06:01 EST
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#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiucdcs:29200041:000:1042
uiucdcs!eich    Nov 17 19:55:00 1983

huh?  Afghanistan??  Well why not Czechoslovakia or Hungary?

US nuclear weapons couldn't possibly deter the Soviets from invading
Afghanistan, which lies on the east end of the Asian Tier -- their
"soft underbelly", though nobody's poked at it, and nobody's in the
position to do so, and the Russians know this, so be a little less
credulous about overstated (and often projected) Russian "fears".  And
they had already installed one unreliable puppet (Karmal).  Besides,
earlier in 1979 Jimmy Carter had within the space of a week gone from
the position that a Soviet Combat Brigade in Cuba was an intolerable
status quo, to acceptance of it as the status quo.  Hedrick Smith of
the New York Times has observed that this almost certainly led the
Soviets to conclude that they could do as they pleased in the Asian
Tier. 

Perhaps in the days of Massive Retaliation, when the USSR had
no nuclear weapons to speak of, such deterrence was possible.
Nowadays, the object is to deter invasion of Western Europe
and, ultimately, this hemisphere.