Afghanistan, the Soviet Union's last war /

This collection (12 chapters and a conclusion) is packed with emotion and criticism. The chapters are not devoid of facts and figures, but most of the impact is derived from frequent quotations by Soviet veterans of the Afghan war. The book's promised central thesis, that the war did not bury Brezhnevism and then Gorbachevism although it certainly helped, is surely implied in the contents of each chapter. But it is neither clear nor strong enough to bind the chapters into a truly unified book. The author appears to have written the chapters as individual articles to be published separately. To compare the Afghan and Vietnam wars, it is argued, will assure erroneous conclusions. The cost of the Afghan war to the Soviets was an insignificant one to two percent of their total defense budget, a peak of 150,000 personnel, 0.7 troops per square mile, and the loss of 15,000 men. The cost of the Vietnam War was 23 percent of the US defense budget (1n 1969), 500,000 personnel, seven troops per square mile, and loss of 40,000 men. "Arrogance, vanity, ignorance and prejudice" may have brought the Soviets into Afghanistan, but "to suggest that defeat in Afghanistan doomed the USSR is patently unfounded." The doom was rooted in economic failures and the loss of legitimacy. General readers. F. L. Mokhtari; Norwich University