The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

The final decision that day was not recorded in writing. They agreed that, “troopswill have to be put on alert for possible military intervention on Afghan territory, ‘just incase.’”Surprisingly, that episode did not shake Ogarkov’s determination to continueinsisting on his point of view. It’s possible that the Politburo was facing such consistentresistance from one of the state’s top leaders for the first time in the many years of itsexistence.On December 10, the head of the General Staff undertook a final desperate attemptto derail the course of events. He prepared a detailed, substantive report, which narratedthe salient characteristics of the current situation in Afghanistan, with possible solutions toresolve the problems. He concluded that the appearance of Soviet troops on the territory ofa sovereign foreign state would likely cause extremely negative political, economic, social,and military consequences. Ogarkov, Akhromeev, and Varennikov signed the report. Thethree of them brought the report to the minister of defense.Handing the report to the minister, Ogarkov played his final trump card: “Don’t youthink, Dmitry Fedorovich, that the Americans are deliberately baiting us into a large-scalewar in order to bleed us to death and to compromise the USSR in the eyes of theinternational community? Our comrades share the opinion that the U.S. special servicesfalsified and fed us misleading information regarding both Amin’s betrayal and theirpossible control over Afghanistan.”“Notice how calmly and, I would say, indifferently they react to our militarypreparations,” added Varennikov. “They are hardly unaware of these preparations, but they678