Contenu du sommaire

Afghanistan : is there a political solution ?, by Selig S. Harrison Politically as will as mïlitarïly, the stalemate in Afghanistan deepens. On one side, the Soviet-subsidized communist regime is slowly but steadily building a stable Afghan city-state in Kabul and its environs. On the other, scattered groups of dedicated résistance fighters, while better coordinated militarily than in the past, continue to lack the political infrastructure that would be necessary to follow up there military successes. If the present escalation of the Afghan conflict should continue, Moscow woul be likely to intensify its efforts to make Afghanistan a South Asian Mongolia governed by a monolithic communist elite. The security interests of non-communist countries woul be better served by a negotiated seulement based on acceptance of a Finland-style security relationship between the Soviet Union and a less monolithic client regime in Kabul.

The War in Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia, by Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantai Lemercier-Quelquejay The events in Iran and Afghanistan have not created a new situation but have served as a catalyst accelerating an existing situation in Soviet Islam and rendering it more dramatic and dangerous. Muslim socialism, fundamentalism or secularism have been introducted into central Asia through many different channels, i.e. through Soviet Muslims in Afghanistan, Afghans in the USSR, foreign Muslims residing in the Soviet Union, finally and especially through foreign radio broadcasts. Islam is no longer just an « ideology » in the USSR, it is increasingly becoming a political force. Realising this, the Soviet authorities have ceased to collaborate with Soviet muslin leaders and have revived a brutal form of anti-Islamic propaganda. Soviet Muslims have discovered by opening themselves to the outside Muslim world that resistance to « big brother » is possible, that Islamic fundamentalism seems younger and more dyna-mic than Marxism-Leninism and also that they belong to Dar-el-Islam, the community of 800 million believers against the infidels.

Franco-German Relations and Nuclear Arms in a Divided Europe, by André Adrets The Soviet Union is the unwitting cause of the new Franco-German coopération in the fields of national security and defence. Paris and Bonn were brought closer together by the Euro-missile crisis and seem to have forgotten their former competition to become the « privileged » partner of the USSR in the seventies. A large number of important projetcs for the future have resulted from this new close relationship. The whole nature of Franco-German cooperation has been transformed. In order to make further progress the French and the Germans owe each other mutually satisfactory definition of policy on nuclear arms. However taking small steps at time seems to be the only feasible way to proceed. Over-ambitious proposals will at best have to be discreetly dropped or may at worst raise the degree of tension involved in too rigid an adherence to the status quo.

France's Logistic and tactical nuclear Dilemmas, by François de Rosé The problem of our logistic contribution and the part played by our conventional forces in NATO operations, are the crux of the role we intend to play in the defence of Europe. If we want to remove the ambiguity surrounding our defence policy, we must answer the following question : are our conventional forces primarily concerned with a tactical nuclear role to protect the hexagon and its approaches or are they destined to augment the continent's defence, leaving the nuclear mission to specialised forces ? Another problem concerns our nuclear armament, particularly with regard to our relations with Germany. The choice of objectives which our forces might be expected to attack should be the subject of common study by ourselves and the Bonn government with emphasis on deployment of the first army and its potential battle zones.