The Great Game - Cold War

Cold War

After the success of the temporary Second World War alliance among the Allied forces, which included the United States of America, the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union (USSR); a new era of geopolitical realignment began which left the US and USSR as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. During this post-Second World War post-colonial period, the legacy of the Great Game would sow the seeds of a new sustained state of political and military tension; between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies; and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies. This era coined the "Cold War", or "Great Game II" by some scholars; was so named as it never featured any direct military action as both sides possessed nuclear weapons, and their use would probably guarantee their mutual assured destruction.

Historians trace the start of cold war era to 1947. A year when decolonisation of the British Empire started - attributed as one of the focal point - of the Cold War evolution. It changed the dynamics of inter-Asian geopolitics, especially in Central Asia and the Middle East; leading to several conflicts which include Arab-Israeli conflict, 1953 Iranian coup d'état, and 1959 Iraqi Revolution. The USSR discovered the bitter truth for its 1979 misadventure in Afghanistan as the British found that out in the 19th Century, and withdrew its last troops in 1988 from the so known "graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan. The Cold War culminated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The relevance of the Great Game in the cold war context is evident in the final years of Mohammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed president of Afghanistan. During his 1992-96 refuge in the UN compound in Kabul, while waiting for the UN to negotiate his safe passage to India, he engaged himself in translating Peter Hopkirk's book The Great Game into his mother tongue Pashto. Few months before his execution by Taliban, he quoted, "Afghans keep making the same mistake," reflecting upon his translation to a visitor.