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BOOK REVIEWS 249 putting NATO on tenuous political footing by endorsing an "offensive " strategy. Ultimately, forward attacks and the level of destruction that the new technologies create may well equal nuclear weapons. If these attacks are to take place on Eastern European soil (which is where the pact's follow-on forces are to be located) the tendency of European leaders to acquiesce in their use may be no greater than with nuclear weapons, which suggests that the political-procedural problems have not been eliminated. Even if conventional capabilities were strengthened, the preemption risk would remain. For the nuclear threshold to be credibly raised, it must be maintained as an option, albeit one of last resort. The location-relocation problems inherent in the deployment of theater nuclear weapons have not been alleviated nor have the dual-capable issues been attenuated (in fact, they may have worsened). The dilemma of nuclear weapons is intractable. The costs of its use are so high as to discourage their credibility as a practical instrument of policy. Yet the lessening of their role in military planning seems to encourage war planning by reducing uncertainty. As John Steinbruner notes, deterrence lies not in force structure or planning, but in the capacity to use nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, so does the fear and the danger. South Asian Security after Afghanistan. By G. S. Bhargava. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., Lexington Books Series, 1982. 209 pp. $23.95. The Afghan Syndrome: How to Live with Soviet Power. By Bhabani Sen Gupta. Advent, N.Y.: Vikas Publishing House, Ltd., 1982. 296 pp. $37.50. Reviewed by Afshin Pedram, M.A. candidate, SAIS. The authors of both studies make a concerted effort to explore and define the geostrategic implications of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Neither author intends to focus on the ramifications of the invasion on Afghanistan itself, yet both inadvertently place the India-Pakistan regional rivalry as their central themes. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan indisputably served to usher in the inauguration of the Soviet Union as a superpower fully capable of resorting to unilateral action in line with its hegemonic desires. Whether the invasion precipitated the emergence of the Soviet Union as a global military power on par with the United States (as claimed by the Indian scholars), however, should be treated with reservation. Bhabani Sen Gupta argues in the Afghan Syndrome that the arrival of Soviet troops to defend the faltering Marxist regime of Hafizullah Amin, in conjunction with Moscow's earlier interventions in Angola and Ethiopia through Cuban proxies, marks the emergence of the Soviet Union as a true superpower prepared to compete with the United States on equal footing in world affairs. Prior to Afghanistan, a more careful analysis of events clearly indicates Soviet demonstration of a military outer reach by its instant, massive arms delivery to Ethiopia. The magnitude of such an arms air-transport, unprecedented since 250 SAIS REVIEW the United States' role in 1973 Yom Kippur War, clearly tilted the balance of power in the raging Ethiopia-Somalia armed conflict in the Ogadan Desert in favor of Ethiopia's strongman Mengistu Haile. In retrospect, was the Afghan invasion a watershed to formalize the military projection capability of the Soviet Union, or did it merely confirm the pattern of Soviet military continuity in the Third World? Only recently the Soviet air force deployed a helicopter carrier to the Caribbean while the Soviet navy staged its first amphibious landing exercises on the Vietnamese coast. A careful reading of either of the books fails to justify why the Soviets are currently subsidizing their occupation to the tune of $1 million a day despite escalating troop casualties and the loss of several hundred counterinsurgency combat helicopters. In brief, the logic of the U.S.-Soviet superpower military projection in a presumably postwar bipolar world, as claimed by both authors, suffer from reductionism. The strength of both authors, however, is the analysis of interregional relationships encompassing India, Pakistan, Iran, China, and Bangladesh. The public attitudes and government policies of these regimes in the wake of the Afghan invasion should not be taken lightly. The focus of analysis becomes particularly intense in assessing the South Asian...

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