Research: European diplomatic history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
During the 1970s, a climate of distension between powers and superpowers had been created through an intense dialogue. This dialogue had favored a significant easing of tensions both in Europe and between the two blocs. In the 1980s, various events led to a breakthrough in Europe and in the Western world.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan came exactly at the beginning of this crisis of dialogue. Although there is an extensive historiography on the invasion and occupation, a part of the academics considers that the worsening of relations between blocs in the 1980s could be traced back exclusively to the conflict between the two superpowers. On the contrary, the research that I propose has its focus on the European-Western perspective on the Afghan crisis. Specifically, the Italian, British, German and French one.
To highlight their views on the crisis will enlighten the debate on the renewed opposition between the Soviet Union and the United States during the last decade of the Cold War. In fact, the European countries were forced to face an aggression of a superpower against a sovereign state, after a considerably long period of commitment on the détente.
Was worth it to sacrifice the achieved détente to follow the US policy in Afghanistan? Was better to preserve their relation with Moscow and its allies and consequentially to displease the United States? These questions allow us to analyze the ambiguity of the international political dimension that European diplomacies and political decision-makers articulated in that decade of renewed complexity and exacerbated conflict. At the same time, to delve into these questions enable us to maintain a vivid connection with the situation in which European countries found themselves starting from 25 December 1979.
The political concepts that developed within Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany and France presented similarities and differences that allow us to further understand the different sensitivities, thus enriching the international political framework of the 1980s.
It is necessary to use the sources from the archives of the four foreign ministries to trace the diplomatic history of the European perspective of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Documents coming from other archives, private and public, are to be considered fundamental for this research.