| dc.description.abstract | The present study applies a ‘development perspective’ to the Cold War military invasions of Lebanon by the United States in 1958, and of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979. From the 1950s onwards, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a so-called ‘aid race,’ in which they competed for the favors of the Third World through the provision of development aid. The analysis shows how this ‘development paradigm’ not only resulted in economic or industrial programs but also highly influenced military interventions from both sides of the Cold War.
Using documents on internal discussions and communications, it is firstly demonstrated that both the Soviet and the American governments considered Afghanistan and Lebanon respectively as important stakes in their economic competition. These considerations resulted not only in concrete aid programs to modernize the recipient countries, but ultimately in military incursions into these countries as well. Both invasions were subsequently defended in Emergency Special Sessions of the UN General Assembly, and, in the case of Afghanistan, also in propaganda. A discourse analysis of these justifications reveals that both Cold War competitors used a ‘development discourse’ to justify their interventions. Although their terminologies differed, both discourses contained underlying colonial perceptions and representations of the Third World, through which the invasions were framed as humanitarian gestures from superior benefactors to backward countries. A comparison of these incursions thus unveils the strong resemblance between the American and Soviet development enterprises, and between the ways the American and Soviet leaders employed the mindset behind these aid programs to vindicate their military actions into Third World countries.
This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the pervasiveness of the development paradigm during the Cold War, and to increase knowledge about the worldview underpinning Cold War military invasions from both sides. Most importantly, it establishes that both the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War could be regarded as colonial ‘Northern’ powers, who militarily invaded ‘Southern’ countries in the course of their aid race. | |
