making process which is capable of generating meaningful ends and
objectives. However, the precise dimensions of such a process will
vary from state to state and actor to actor. In particular, the strategy
pursued by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was in part a product of
long-term ideology, culture, and interests, but more a product of
improvisation. The Soviet Union was well equipped with doctrine to
govern its behaviour in the event of a thermonuclear or a large con-
ventional interstate war, and Odom has argued that ‘only the official
ideology provided an adequate rationale for the whole of the Soviet
force structure’ (Odom, 1998: 14). MccGwire, in a controversial
study, has argued that a careful analysis of Soviet doctrine pointed to
a shift in the mid-1960s and a further shift in the mid-1970s, with the
avoidance of the nuclear devastation of Russia acquiring key impor-
tance (MccGwire, 1987: 44). What is most striking from these stud-
ies, however, is that the USSR’s counter-insurgency doctrine was
strangely impoverished (McMichael, 1991: 38–44; Van Dyke, 1996).
In no small part this was because classical Marxism found it difficult
to come to terms with identities other than those grounded in class.
Apart from the civil war of 1918–20, and the Basmachi rebellion of
the 1920s–30s, the experiences of the Soviet military and civilian
leaders had largely been of conventional interstate war or planning
for it, and the Soviet Union in the late 1970s was simply too vast a
state to be threatened in any meaningful sense by an insurgency on
its territory. As a result, counter-insurgency activity received very lit-
tle attention at the Voroshilov General Staff Academy (Wardak,
1989), and field commanders were likely to pursue inappropriate
courses of action, with inappropriately organised forces. It was only
in 1983 that the Soviet forces of the 40th Army developed a proper-
ly integrated counter-insurgency force with decentralised command
and ‘non-linear’ tactics based on ‘independent operations conducted
at the brigade and battalion level’ (Van Dyke, 1996: 693).
Strategic objectives
The Soviet invasion force consisted of a mixture of Airborne and
Motorised Infantry personnel, totalling approximately 85,000
42 The Afghanistan Wars