In 1979, using the Brezhnev Doctrine as an excuse, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support a new Communist government. The Soviets took control of the major cities but they were not able to wipe out resistance in the countryside. The invasion of Afghanistan led to a collapse of détente with the United States. The Soviets had more soldiers and better weapons than the Afghans. The United States gave the Afghan rebeks military and economic aid.
             In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by promising to loosen governmental restraints on the marketplace, increase military spending, and confront the Soviets everywhere. Reagan spent $2.2 trillion for the military over eight years and imposed economic sanctions to protest Brezhnev''s crackdown on Poland. Military spending and structural economic problems transformed Americans from the world's leading creditor in 1981 to its leading debtor by 1985. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union worsened until the tension rivaled that of the worst days of the cold war in the late 1940s.
             The tension finally lessened after Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in Moscow during 1985. Realizing that the Soviet economy was collapsing, he made such major concessions in the areas of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and removing internal controls that Reagan agreed to arms and economic agreements. In 1989 Gorbachev pulled stalemated Soviet forces from Afghanistan and announced that "the postwar period is over." After some hesitation, the George Bush administration in Washington agreed that the world had "clearly outgrown" the post-1945 superpower "clash." Both powers had actually begun losing control of the international arena in the late 1950s and, especially, the 1970s. Their competition in newly emerging areas wound down after both suffered disasters.
             More than four million Afghans had to flee their war-torn country in which they had to cross the borders into Iran and P...