When President Jimmy Carter suggested that the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 posed the greatest threat to world peace since the Second World War, he was partially right but for the wrong reasons. The invasion did not, as Carter feared, lead to the outbreak of open hostilities between the superpowers and another world war – as had been feared in Korea in the 1950s and Cuba in 1962. But it did set in train a series of events that continues to threaten world peace and has involved Britain in its ‘Fourth Afghan War’.
The Unending War
Afghanistan 1979-present, Military Times, May 2011