ACURA Viewpoint

Legacy of failure in Afghanistan started in 1979, not 2001

By James Carden
August 18, 2021

A decade ago, John Lamberton Harper, a professor of US Foreign Policy and European Studies at Johns Hopkins in Bologna, Italy published an indispensable history of the first cold war (The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2011) in which he described the origins of what became known as ‘the Carter doctrine.’

The Carter Doctrine pledged US military action against any state that attempted to gain control of the Persian Gulf. As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich has pointed out it “implied the conversion of the Persian Gulf into an informal American protectorate” and set the stage for repeated (and disastrous) interventions over the coming decades. Among other things, the Carter Doctrine, the brainchild of Carter’s Polish-born national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, caused the US to ally with primitive Saudi Arabia at the expense of manageable relations with civilized Persia.

It is also a story of miscalculation and hubris, one which resonates rather profoundly this week as American soldiers, diplomats, intelligence officials and many thousands of Afghans flee the Taliban’s assault on Kabul.

How did we get here?

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Dear CCI Followers,

Often our CCI professionals send me their commentaries that elucidate or question what is appearing in our U.S. mainstream media. Below is one commentary that I asked Sylvia Demarest’s permission to share with you. Sylvia is the retired trial lawyer who took the Catholic Church to court and won huge reparations for innocent altar boys who had been abused by Catholic priests. Further, she collected an archive of documents of the sex abuse crisis and compiled a database of priests who had been publicly accused of abusing children. The documents and the database were donated to Bishop Accountability and is on line at https://www.bishop-accountability.org.  Any parishioner who has a question about a priest moving to their diocese can check the registry to see whether the priest has a prior history of abuse. It is planned that the document collection and the database will be donated as an archive to an educational institution to be available for scholarly research. Among Sylvia’s other vital NGO tasks, she is a cherished CCI volunteer.

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Dear CCI Friends,

I have my own perspective on Mikhail Gorbachev and “Who Destroyed the USSR” as do many others. I cringe when Russians and Americans assume that Gorbachev should have known how or what to do to regarding the break up of the USSR with its 286,000,000 peoples across 11 time zones.

There was no person around who could even think seriously how to break up the Soviet Union, there had never been such a huge, overarching, dictatorial country on the planet. The average Russian or the other 159 nationalities living in the 11 time zones were at the mercy of whoever was in power. Of all others available, Mikhail Gorbachev was probably the most sensitive and kind-hearted. Rumor has it that he was mentored secretly in the basement of the U.S.-Canada Institute by Georgi Arbatov, the closet innovator among the other Communists.

Gorbachev welcomed President Reagan with open arms, he trusted that Americans would be truthful with him regarding NATO, not moving farther than East Germany. During a coup attempt, his beloved wife sustained a stroke from which she never recovered. His greatest nemesis, Yeltsin, was voted in as president of the new Russia December 1991 and made a horrible mess of the next nine years. The 1990’s were devastating years for the whole population except for the young oligarchs. Yeltsin left office a sick and excessive man and Gorbachev has lived out his life as a figure respected by most Americans and disrespected by most Russians … which must be heart-breaking for him. He has my deep respect for trying to be retrospective throughout these ensuing years and for still having passion for today’s Russia and the world.

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Dear CCI Friends,

During a quite busy time here at CCI, Natylie Baldwin will allow us to reprint some of her excellent communications going forward. Natylie found CCI years ago and got in touch for an appointment. She was considering making the switch back to foreign policy writing from fiction, this time with a focus in the U.S.-Russia field. We met numerous times for long dinners at Delancey’s on the bay of San Francisco.

I finally invited Natylie to travel with me to Crimea. That was the beginning of her now engrossment in the history and current day outcomes of U.S.-Russia relations. Her recently published book, The View from Moscow, with subtitle Understanding Russia and US-Russia Relations is serious. It has 40 pages of endnotes from known experts from the last century.  I urge you to read this book if you aren’t completely familiar with US-Russia history..

Meanwhile, enjoy Natylie’s coming articles which will explain what is going on today in this tortuous relationship between Russia/China and the West.

More to follow from Natylie and from me … as time permits!

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Dear CCI Colleagues,

“We Have to Fight Lies and Fake News Virtually on a Daily Basis,”reports Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s Ambassador to the United States when he addressed The National Interests’ editor Jacob Heilbrunn.
Do Russians have to fight lies and fake news from us on a daily basis?

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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