Afghanistan – Soviet Occupation, 1979-1989

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981

Washington, D.C., December 14, 2023 – The National Security Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a major primary document collection on the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The latest in the Archive’s award-winning Digital National Security Archive series, U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President comprises more than 2,500 communications and top-level policy-making records that Carter personally viewed and, in many cases, commented on directly.

New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program

Washington, D.C., April 27, 2012 – Tensions between the United States and Pakistan rose through the 1980s over intelligence reports that suggested to U.S. officials that Pakistani leader Zia ul-Haq had repeatedly lied to them about his country's nuclear program, according to recently declassified records published today by the National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project. Zia's apparent mendacity posed an immediate challenge to U.S.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 1979: Not Trump’s Terrorists, Nor Zbig’s Warm Water Ports

Washington D.C., January 28, 2019 – President Trump’s claim that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to get rid of terrorists who were coming over the border is false, according to declassified U.S. and Soviet documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Reagan, Gorbachev and Bush at Governors Island

The U.S. and NATO allies worried about losing control of the public narrative of the Cold War in December 1988 after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer of an arms race in reverse in his famous United Nations speech, according to declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive.  Senior Italian officials, for example, complained to U.S. envoy Paul Nitze that the public’s sense of a diminishing Soviet threat would undercut their ability to maintain defense spending – even as the Soviet leader was announcing unilateral troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Was Not a Grand Design But a Grand Entanglement Resulting from Faulty Intelligence, Excessive Secrecy, and a Paralyzed Leadership, According to Conference of Former Decision-Makers

Washington, D.C., December 21, 2012 – On December 12, 1979, the Soviet Politburo gathered to formally approve the decision made several days earlier to send a "limited contingent" of Soviet forces into Afghanistan. The secrecy was so tight that the leadership hand-wrote the authorization document in one copy and hand-carried it to each Politburo member for signature. The order does not even mention Afghanistan by name and uses cryptic language to entrust Andropov, Ustinov and Gromyko to oversee the implementation of the decision.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan a Case of Mission Creep, According to New Book and Original Soviet Documents

Washington, DC, October 13, 2012 – Contrary to U.S. myths of a strategic Soviet offensive towards warm water ports on the Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean, it was "mission creep" that led the Soviet Union into its ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, according to a new, richly documented account of early Soviet engagement in Afghanistan, published in English and in Russian today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org.