Burgeoning oil wealth bolstered the regime s credibility not least by enabling a significant increase in military spending and rising economic and military strength gave the Soviet Union s geriatric leadership a rejuvenated sense of invulnerability. The invasion of Afghanistan was not merely an improvised response to a local development (a putsch in Kabul) it was also a direct result of this trend.

Moreover, new concerns have been added to the nightmare of the annihilation of the human species. The transition from a confrontational bipolar order to a new order of global cooperation and interdependence would be impeded if a handful of States insisted on maintaining indefinitely arsenals whose sole apparent purpose was to ensure independence, autonomy, invulnerability, influence and international prestige for those States, and only them.