America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (64 page)

 67.
Quoted in Piero Gleijeses,
Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991
(Chapel Hill, 1993), 168.

 68.
George W. Ball, “Checking the Soviets’ New Mideast Moves,”
Los Angeles Times
(January 27, 1980).

 69.
Not so incidentally, at this very moment the Wolfowitz Limited Contingency Study was leaked to the press. In reporting on the study’s contents,
The New York Times
emphasized the importance of creating a “rapid deployment force” to counter the twenty-three Soviet mechanized divisions said to be available to seize the Persian Gulf. Any U.S. failure to mount an adequate conventional defense would find the United States facing the need to “threaten or make use of tactical nuclear weapons” to defend Persian Gulf oil. Richard Burt, “Study Says a Soviet Move in Iran Might Require U.S. Atomic Arms,”
The New York Times
(February 2, 1980).

2. Gearing Up

 1.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Presidential Directive/NSC 63, Subject: Persian Gulf Security Framework (January 15, 1981),
jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/pd63.pdf
, accessed September 27, 2014.

 2.
The administration had been considering the creation of such force since 1977. The Iranian Revolution forced the issue. Ronald H. Cole et al.,
The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946–1999
(Washington, D.C., 2003), 56.

 3.
P. X. Kelley, “Rapid Deployment: A Vital Trump,”
Parameters
(Spring 1981), 50.

 4.
Kelley, “Rapid Deployment,” 51–52.

 5.
Quoted in Jay LaMonica, “RDF’s Bright Star,”
The Washington Quarterly
(Spring 1982).

 6.
Dana Priest,
The Mission
(New York, 2004), 61–98.

 7.
For the torturous bureaucratic infighting that accompanied the RDJTF’s transition to CENTCOM, see Cole et al.,
History,
56–59, 63–67. The CENTCOM AOR did not include Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, which remained under the purview of U.S. European Command. By 2014, the CENTCOM AOR had grown to twenty countries. In the intervening years, it had handed off responsibility for East Africa to the newly created United States Africa Command, but it had also acquired several nations in Central Asia.

 8.
Since the creation of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, this process is now under way on that continent. See, for example, Kofi Nsia-Pepra, “Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa,”
Military Review
(January–February 2014), 50–58.

 9.
Robert C. Kingston, “From RDF to CENTCOM: New Challenges?”
RUSI
(March 1, 1984), 16.

 10.
Kingston, “From RDF to CENTCOM,” 16.

 11.
“OPLAN 1002 Defense of the Arabian Peninsula,”
globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oplan-1002.htm
, accessed October 1, 2014.

 12.
“General Sees No Great Soviet Mideast Threat,”
Los Angeles Times
(February 16, 1982). In the same article, a spokesman for the secretary of defense disagreed with Kingston’s assessment.

 13.
Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds.,
Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM
(Washington, D.C., 1995), 14–20. This is an account prepared by the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

 14.
Richard Halloran, “Poised for the Persian Gulf,”
The New York Times Magazine
(April 1, 1984), 38–40, 61.

 15.
Curtis Wilkie, “Reagan Pledges to Defend Saudis,”
The Boston Globe
(October 2, 1981).

 16.
A remnant of the British Empire, Diego Garcia remained nominally under British control. Halloran’s essay did not mention the expulsion of the indigenous population that had paved the way for the island’s conversion into a major U.S. military base. For details, see David Vine,
Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base in Diego Garcia
(Princeton, 2009).

 17.
Richard Halloran, “U.S. Intends to Deploy F-4 Fighters in Egypt as Part of Air Buildup,”
The New York Times
(June 13, 1980). Halloran was quoting General Lew Allen, chief of staff of the United States Air Force.

 18.
For an even more optimistic appraisal, see Paul Davis, “Observations on the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force: Origins, Direction, and Mission” (unpublished paper, June 1982). Davis was an analyst employed by RAND, the government-funded think tank.

 19.
See, for example, Jeffrey Record, “The RDF: Is the Pentagon Kidding?”
The Washington Quarterly
(Summer 1981); and David Isenberg, “The Rapid Deployment Force: The Few, the Futile, the Expendable,”
Policy Analysis
(November 8, 1984).

 20.
Robert C. Kingston, Senior Officer Oral History Program, U.S. Army Military History Institute (1987), 326, 329.

 21.
“Soviets Seek Military Lead: Weinberger,”
Los Angeles Times
(March 24, 1987).

 22.
Richard Halloran, “U.S. Altering Strategy for Defense of Arabian Oilfields,”
The New York Times
(December 4, 1988).

 23.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
(New York, 1992), 285.

 24.
Quoted in Richard Swain,
“Lucky War”: Third Army in Desert Storm
(Fort Leavenworth, 1994), 5.

 25.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
7, capitalization in the original.

 26.
Swain,
“Lucky War,”
6–7.

 27.
One explanation, but not the only one. Other contributing factors included the clout wielded by the military-industrial complex; the posturing of office-seekers, particularly Democrats protecting themselves from being portrayed as insufficiently militant; and the collective determination of the national security apparatus to protect its status and prerogatives.

 28.
Reinhold Niebuhr was the obvious exception, but the impact of his views in policymaking circles did not extend much beyond providing moral justifications for actions policymakers were already inclined to take.

3. Arsenal of Theocracy

 1.
Quoted in Sean Wilentz,
The Age of Reagan
(New York, 2008), 151.

 2.
Quoted in George Crile,
Charlie Wilson’s War
(New York, 2003), x.

 3.
Gates,
From the Shadows,
349.

 4.
It was also reported that Pakistan was expecting Washington to “turn a blind eye” to its nuclear weapons program. U.S. officials did just that. Michael T. Kaufman, “U.S. Said to Weigh Extensive Arms Sales to Pakistan,”
The New York Times
(March 5, 1981).

 5.
Carl Bernstein, “Arms for Afghanistan,”
The New Republic
(July 18, 1981).

 6.
Strobe Talbott, “Turning the Tables on Moscow,”
Time
(April 15, 1985).

 7.
Marguerite Johnson, “Leaks in the Pipeline,”
Time
(December 9, 1985).

 8.
David B. Ottaway and Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Sends New Arms to Rebels,”
The Washington Post
(March 30, 1986).

 9.
Bob Woodward and Charles R. Babcock, “U.S. Covert Aid to Afghans on the Rise,”
The Washington Post
(January 13, 1985).

 10.
Jones,
In the Graveyard of Empires,
37.

 11.
Steve Coll in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, “Democracy Now!” (June 10, 2004),
democracynow.org/2004/6/10/ghost_wars_how_reagan_armed_the
, accessed October 23, 2014.

 12.
Ronald Reagan, “Proclamation 4908—Afghanistan Day” (March 10, 1982).

 13.
Available at
youtube.com/watch?v=uqZ-ToXjCz0
, accessed October 23, 2014.

 14.
Jones,
In the Graveyard of Empires,
31–34.

 15.
Crile,
Charlie Wilson’s War,
ix.

 16.
Crile,
Charlie Wilson’s War,
5.

 17.
Zalmay Khalilzad, “How the Good Guys Won in Afghanistan,”
The Washington Post
(February 12, 1989).

 18.
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, “Lessons from the War in Afghanistan” (undated [1989]), 4. The entire study is available at the National Security Archive,
www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/us11.pdf
, accessed November 2, 2014.

 19.
This was, of course, the thesis of a famous article by Francis Fukuyama. What imbued the “end of history” argument with such allure was not its originality but its timing. Fukuyama caught the mood of the moment in Washington. He put in words what members of the policy elite were already thinking but had not fully articulated. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”
The National Interest
(Summer 1989).

 20.
Imtiyaz Gul Khan, “Afghanistan: Human Cost of Armed Conflict Since the Soviet Invasion,”
Perceptions
(Winter 2012), 212–14.

 21.
Barnett R. Rubin, “The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan,”
World Development
(2000), 1791–93.

 22.
Thomas Barfield,
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History
(Princeton, 2010), 243.

 23.
Bruce Riedel,
What We Won: America’s Secret War in Afghanistan
(Washington, D.C., 2014).

 24.
George H. W. Bush, “Statement on the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan” (February 16, 1989)
.

 25.
Elaine Sciolino, “To U.S., Afghanistan Seems to Move Farther Away,”
The New York Times
(February 12, 1989).

 26.
Barfield,
Afghanistan,
251.

 27.
Leslie H. Gelb, “Rebels, Be Good,”
The New York Times
(April 20, 1992). Gelb mocked the State Department spokesperson for imploring of the mujahedin forces closing in on Kabul, “Please do not have violence.”

 28.
Leonard Larsen, “U.S. May Pay High Price for Afghan Aid,” Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
(March 16, 1989).

 29.
Mark Fineman, “Next Step: Have Guns, Will Travel,”
Los Angeles Times
(April 7, 1992).