Editor's Answers to Questions:

Q:Was the Western power right in condemning Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
A:We think that Western nations had a valid basis for condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Soviet actions could clearly be seen to be those of trying to conquer Afghanistan and wipe out internal resistance, so the Western nations' accusations were not groundless or entirely warped. When a nation takes part in armed intervention in a neighbouring country it is usually condemned. It is also accepted widely, even by the UN, that no nation should invade another or interfere with another, no matter what reason, because it impinges on that nation's sovereignty. Whatever political motivations Western nations had in condemning the USSR, they did have a duty to stop and chastise other nations for violating its neighbour's rights.

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Q:Had it not been for the Cold War bi-polarity, the two Koreas might have become one entity. Would you agree with this statement? What does your group think?

A:This is a hard question to answer, because no one actually knows what would have been. The term "Cold War bipolarity" also adds to the problem. The bi-polarity itself, or perhaps (in a clearer way) the ideological and political rift between the US and USSR, did not begin only when the Cold War began in 1949-50. Most historians agree that the US and USSR began to tread diverging paths after the end of WWII in 1945, when the US-USSR partnership became defunct and useless, and when the US and USSR became increasingly wary of each other.

If we take that this bipolarity, this rift between the US and the USSR, occurred right after WWII, then we can say that perhaps Korea might have remained intact and united. During the period from after WWII to the Korean War, the US and USSR first partitioned Korea, then set up administrations in their halves that were allied to them. This laid the path for a near-permanent split. Then, with unification elections postponed (cancelled, actually) due to the unwillingness of both Koreas and the US and the USSR to give way and give up Korea to "the other side", the split became more or less permanent.

If there had been no such rivalry or bipolarity, the Koreas might have been peacefully united. There would have been no conflicting US/USSR interests, no ideological split & no Yi Seung-man or Kim Il-Sung, no 38th parallel, and no Korean War. There would have been no bipolarity to promote US-USSR conflict and no escalation of tensions between two politically differentlyorientated Korean governments.

If there had been no Cold War bipolarity, actually, there would have been no split in Korea, or a split in Germany, or a split in Vietnam, or various acts of conscious "partitioning" of countries into several political blocs or factions.

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Q:Did Gorbachev do the right thing in withdrawing the Soviet troops from Afghan?

A:Yes. He began the withdrawal process early on in his years of office. With our knowledge of contextual sources, he probably did so because of: political opposition to the Kremlin and Moscow from the outside world and by citizens due to the war; exorbitant costs of the Afghan War that drained the economy and treasuries; and appalling human costs of the war. We note that Gorbachev took many populist measures during his reign, such us freeing up the media, promising less intervention in Soviet neighbours' affairs, and yet another of his populist moves would have been to pull out from a deeply unpopular war. He also abandoned Afghanistan as part of plans to cut military expenditures. He also wanted to decrease US-USSR friction and tension, and in his moves to reconcile differences between the rest of the world and the USSR, his withdrawal was a sign that the USSR would no longer fight the war in Afghanistan, much like a sign for peace.

Also, the war by his time was no longer of positive meaning to the Kremlin. The USSR has lost much in this war, and it did not want to be bogged down further in this unprofitable conflict. The political, economic, diplomatic repercussions were already too much for the USSR. To have stayed in Afghanistan might have led to the hastened collapse and death of the Soviet Union, its economy, its political standing, and its system itself, as the burdens of the war were simply too great for the USSR to bear. So we believe Gorbachev was very correct in pulling out of Afghanistan.