American Foreign Policy and Soviet Afghanistan War

For a time during the 1970’s it seemed that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had finally begun to thaw. President Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev had agreed to SALT I or the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; an agreement to limit the number of nuclear weapons that each nation kept in their arsenal. Along with the SALT I agreement came “the adoption of a new policy method, détente, which would dominate U.S. and Soviet policy for the next decade” [1] an agreement formed due in fact to the deep and personal relationship between the two leaders. Yet within a few short years Nixon would resign because of the Watergate Scandal. The détente between the two powers remained in effect even after Nixon 's resignation. Unfortunately though, President Ford never came close to holding the same relationship with Brezhnev that Nixon had and in 1976 lost the election to Jimmy Carter. Under the Carter administration, American foreign policies became more hostile towards the Soviet Union, while at the same time aiming to stop funding for some repressive anti-communist governments the United States supported. By the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s tensions greatly increased between the two major powers, leading to what some have called the Second Cold War a term originated from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 24th 1979. This war lasted through the Reagan administration. At the time few were able to realize the lasting geopolitical impacts of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It can be argued that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan changed the political and military landscape of not only the principals involved, but also created a dramatic shift in the Middle East. Muslim and Islamic sentiment toward western culture turned hostile, the Soviet Union and its communist regime began to crumble, and the United States foreign policy took a dramatic shift toward ensuring it’s stronghold in the Middle East.
In the years prior to the

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