Afghanistan, 'Star Wars' and the end of the arms race

What the specification asks for

“Superpowers and guerrilla warfare, especially in Afghanistan. Further developments in nuclear warfare – 'Star Wars' and the end of the nuclear arms race.” — examined through consequence and similarity. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The same war, twice

Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in December 1979 to support a communist government against an insurgency, and withdrew in February 1989 having failed to defeat it. The parallel with Vietnam is close enough to be the strongest comparison available on this option: a superpower with total firepower superiority, holding cities and roads, unable to hold the countryside, facing an opponent with sanctuary across a border and external supply.

The supply mattered in both cases and it is the concrete point a candidate should carry. Afghan resistance groups received weapons routed largely through Pakistan and funded principally by the United States and Saudi Arabia, including from 1986 shoulder-launched Stinger missiles that made low-flying helicopter operations far more dangerous. Helicopters had been the Soviet answer to a country without roads, and reducing their freedom of movement changed the campaign.

The differences are worth stating too, because a comparison that only finds similarities is a weaker answer. Afghanistan bordered the USSR directly; the war was fought by a state that could not be voted out; and the political effect at home worked through cost, casualties and the credibility of the system rather than through an election.

What the war did to the Soviet Union

The war lasted more than nine years and cost the Soviet armed forces around 15,000 dead. It coincided with an economy that could not sustain both military spending and civilian expectations, and with the arrival of a leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev committed to reducing external commitments in order to reform at home.

The historians' argument is about weight rather than direction. Nobody denies that Afghanistan damaged the Soviet system; the dispute is whether it was a significant cause of the system's collapse or a symptom of weaknesses that were already decisive. A candidate who states that dispute has produced the AO4 move the interpretation questions reward.

Three specific damages are worth naming because they can be supported. The first is financial: a war of that length had to be paid for out of an economy that was already failing to meet civilian expectations, at a time when the oil price on which Soviet export earnings depended had fallen sharply. The second is institutional: the army returned with a generation of veterans who had been told the war was a limited fraternal mission and knew otherwise, and the gap between the official account and their experience corroded the credibility of official accounts generally. The third is diplomatic, in that the invasion ended the détente of the 1970s at a stroke and produced the Western rearmament of the early 1980s that the Soviet economy then had to answer.

Star Wars, and the end of the race

In March 1983 Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, a research programme intended to intercept incoming ballistic missiles. It was widely doubted on technical grounds and it was strategically explosive: a defence that worked would undermine the assured destruction on which stability rested, which is exactly why the ABM Treaty of 1972 had limited defences in the first place.

The consequence that matters is the negotiation, not the technology. Nothing was deployed, and the argument about whether the initiative pressured the Soviet Union into arms reduction or merely complicated talks is unsettled. What is not in dispute is what followed: the INF Treaty of December 1987 eliminated an entire class of missiles — intermediate-range weapons in Europe — with on-site verification, and it is the first agreement of the whole period that removed weapons rather than capping them.

That is the change to hold on to. Between 1945 and 1975 arms control limited; from 1987 it reduced. A breadth-study question on the arms race across the period turns on being able to date that switch and to say what made it possible.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

December 1979

Soviet forces enter Afghanistan. Why this date: It begins the nine-year commitment whose failure supplies the Vietnam parallel and the pressure on the Soviet system.

March 1983

The Strategic Defense Initiative is announced. Why this date: It challenges the logic of the ABM Treaty and therefore the stability of deterrence, which is why it dominated the arms talks that followed.

1986

Stinger missiles reach the Afghan resistance in quantity. Why this date: It restricts Soviet helicopter operations, which had been the answer to a country with few usable roads.

December 1987

The INF Treaty is signed. Why this date: It is the first agreement to eliminate a class of weapons with on-site verification, which is reduction rather than limitation.

February 1989

The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is completed. Why this date: It dates the failure and falls in the same year as the collapse of Soviet control in Eastern Europe.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• Around 15,000 — Soviet military dead in Afghanistan, 1979–89. (Official and later estimates differ; around 15,000 is the conventional figure and should be given as an estimate.)
• 1979–89 — The span of the Soviet war, longer than the Second World War in Europe.
• 1987 — The INF Treaty — the switch from limitation to elimination.

The people to place

• Ronald Reagan — President of the United States; announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983 and signed the INF Treaty in 1987.
• Mikhail Gorbachev — Soviet leader from 1985; withdrew from Afghanistan and negotiated the INF Treaty.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'Afghanistan broke the Soviet Union' reading: A nine-year war with no achievable objective drained resources, discredited the army and the leadership, and contributed materially to the collapse that followed within three years of withdrawal. Contested by The reading that the Soviet economic and political crisis had structural causes long predating 1979, and that Afghanistan revealed and accelerated a decline rather than causing it..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Strategic Defense Initiative was built and made Soviet missiles useless.

This: It remained a research programme and nothing was deployed. Its effects were political and negotiating effects, and how large those were is genuinely disputed.

Not this: The INF Treaty limited the number of nuclear weapons in the way SALT did.

This: It eliminated an entire class of intermediate-range missiles and provided for on-site inspection. That is a different kind of agreement from a cap on launchers.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Vietnam and Afghanistan as identical cases.

The distinction: The military pattern is closely similar — sanctuary, external supply, an opponent who avoids battle — but the political mechanism differs: American withdrawal was forced through public opinion and elections, and Soviet withdrawal came from a leadership decision about cost and reform.

Blurred: Limitation and elimination in arms control.

The distinction: SALT I capped launchers in 1972 while warhead numbers rose. INF in 1987 destroyed missiles under inspection. Saying which kind an agreement is is worth a mark in any question about the arms race.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer sees the same shape in both superpower defeats and then refuses to make it a law. What defeated both was an opponent who could not be brought to battle and could not be cut off from supply; what differed was how each society registered the cost, and that difference is why one withdrawal took an election and the other took a change of leader.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The Vietnam and Afghanistan comparison stated as a mechanism — sanctuary, supply, an opponent who need only survive — rather than as a resemblance. Comparison with a mechanism is AO2; resemblance is not.

The cap that bites here: The 16-mark question requires at least three aspects. Two very good ones will not reach the top band.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which the Soviet war in Afghanistan was different from the American war in Vietnam. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the signing of the INF Treaty in 1987. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant was guerrilla warfare in defeating the superpowers, in the years 1945–2011? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far was the war in Afghanistan responsible for the end of the nuclear arms race, in the years 1979–91? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The first Gulf War, the Falklands and carrier warfare
• Next lesson, in key topic 5: Terrorism, 'surgical' strikes and unmanned systems
• Key topic 4 · Conventional war and the development of 'new' wars, 1976–2000 · The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The changing nature of warfare and international conflict: The changing nature of warfare, 1919–39 · Changing methods of warfare by land, air and sea, 1939–45 · New forms of conflict – nuclear and guerrilla war versus conventional war, 1945–75 · Changing methods of warfare at the beginning of the 21st century, 2000–2011