Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Gregory Winger examining U.S. policy toward Afghanistan in the 1970s, leading up to the seizure of power in 1978 by a Soviet-backed Communist organization known as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). In 1973, the monarchy in Afghanistan was overthrown, and a new government emerged under President Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had served as prime minister for the king in the early 1960s until forced to resign in 1963. In returning to power in 1973, Daoud relied for assistance on the PDPA and the Soviet Union, despite his wariness of them. The new arrangement in Afghanistan posed challenges for the United States. In line with the doctrine President Richard Nixon enunciated in Guam in July 1969, the U.S. government backed Daoud in his embrace of nonalignment and his efforts to steer a middle course between the PDPA and the ultraconservative Islamic clerics...