“The Wikipedia article on Afghanistan presently states that the Soviet invasion of the country was undertaken in reaction to American efforts to bring down the native Communist government.”
Can you give a link, please? I’d like to contest that.
“As part of a Cold War strategy, in 1979 the United States government (under President Jimmy Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski) began to covertly fund and train anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret service known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). In order to bolster the local Communist forces, the Soviet Union—citing the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness that had been signed between the two countries—intervened on December 24, 1979.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
Have fun. I suspect they’ve got cause and effect confused, at least to some effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
This article quotes Brezhinsky and Carter as saying American covert assistance started in July, 1979 (six months before the invasion) and was intended to drag the Soviets into an invasion, if possible.