>Well, by the same token we should have expected British Tommies
>there, too. What, Britain's stratgeic interests and capabilities
>were different in 1979 than 1879?
Actually, yes. India was part of the Commonwealth, but not the Empire, by 1979. Britain may have been itching to get back into wog-bashing in the NWF, but by 1979 they didn't have the resources (including political along with military) to do so. India was no longer their greatest off-shore colony, worth every drop of Tommy (and Ranjit) blood needed to protect it. For 150 years the keeping of India in the British Sphere *drove* British foreign policy from Gibralter to Suez and the Middle East to India. After Indian Independence in 1947 it no longer did.
Concidentally, the same was true
>of the Russians. Afghanistan's only real value is as a gateway to
>India or the Middle East; if you lack the desire to invade further,
>then there's no positive reason to invade Afghanistan -- instead
>there are the negative ones of not seeing a neighbour fall to
>fundamentalist Islam and suffer the humiliation of a notional ally
>collapsing with Moscow appearing unable or unwilling to do anything
>about it.
Which says that Russia *did* have designs on the Middle East and/or India, dunnit? They have since the time of Peter the Great. A simple regime change doesn't seem to have changed *that* aspect of Russian Forign Policy.
>(it's also why Russia is fighting so hard in
> places like Chechnya and all the -stans).
>The difference with Chechnya (and BTW, the Chechens are a hell of a
>lot tougher than the Afghans, for whom Kipling did the best PR job
>ever) is that the Russians cosnider it part of their country, in a
>way Afghanistan never was.
Only because the Brits successfully kept them out by playing the Great Game. Chechnya was only finally conquered by Russia in 1859, so has been "Russian" 150 years (give or take). Afghanistan *would* have been Russian, too, if the Brits hadn't seen it as imperative to keep them out of it. (Sure, there are American states that are only that old or less, gained essentially the same way (ripped bleeding from the hands of the indiginous peoples...) and we'd fight like hell to keep them (heck, we *did*, back in 1861, and 1941...), so I can't fault Russia for wantting to keep it.)
But my point is that expansion of "Russia" into and beyond Central Asia has been a driving force in their foriegn policy for the past 300 years, and is unlikely to change (something about leopard and spots).
RR
C'est par mon ordre et pour le bien de l'Etat que le porteur du présent a
fait ce qu'il a fait.
- Richelieu
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