After Afghanistan

We asked several of our editors to comment on the changed international situation after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. There will be a second round in the next issue. —EDS.

I. Dennis H. Wrong

The Soviet Union has acted before with brutal decisiveness along its own borders when the Western powers were preoccupied elsewhere. Hungary was invaded in 1956 at the time of the Suez war, Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the United States was involved in a war in Southeast Asia that was the major issue in a bitter presidential campaign. For that matter, one can go all the way back to the Nazi-Soviet pact with its secret clause partitioning Poland and the invasion of Finland later that year when Stalin’s German ally was at wa...