When the Soviet Union pulled its forces out of Afghanistan, the American media had a simple explanation: Soviet troops had been hounded out of the mountains by U.S.-armed guerrillas--the skies cleared of Soviet aircraft by Stinger missiles--until the Kremlin was forced to cry uncle. But Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison shatter this image. Out of Afghanistan shows that the Red Army was securely entrenched when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw: American weaponry and Afghan bravery raised the costs for Moscow, but it was six years of skillful diplomacy that gave the Russians a way out.

Cordovez and Harrison provide the definitive account of the Soviet blunders that led up to the invasion and the bitter struggles over the withdrawal that raged in the Soviet and Afghan Communist parties and the Reagan Administration. The authors are particularly well-suited to their task: Cordovez was the United Nations mediator who negotiated the Soviet pullout, and Harrison is a leading South Asia expert with four decades of experience in covering Afghanistan. Their story of the U.N. negotiations is interwoven with a gripping chronicle of the war years, complete with palace shootouts in Kabul, turf warfare between rival Soviet intelligence agencies, and the CIA role in building up Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla leaders at the expense of Afghan moderates. Cordovez opens up his diaries to take us behind the scenes in his negotiations, and Harrison draws on interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and other key actors. The result is a book full of surprises. For example, the authors demonstrate that the Soviets intervened not out of a desire to drive to the Indian Ocean, but out of a fear of a U.S.-supported Afghan Tito. Rebuffs by hardline "bleeders" in the Reagan Administration undermined efforts by Yuri Andropov to secure a settlement before his death in 1983. Even more startling, Gorbachev resumed the search for a negotiated withdrawal more than a year before the first American-supplied Stinger missiles were deployed in the war.

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was one of the pivotal events of recent history. Out of Afghanistan destroys many of the myths surrounding the Afghan war and will have a profound impact on the emerging debate over how and why the Cold War ended.

(Note for Jacket--see Marketing File-so/10/26]The vast, politically turbulent region encompassing the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, forty-two littoral states, and one third of the world's population is one of the most potentially explosive theaters of superpower rivalry. In this study, three American and three Indian authors, reflecting different perspectives and areas of expertise, examine the principal factors that have led to the escalation of superpower tensions in the region: the war in Afghanistan, and its spillover into the Afghanistan-Pakistani borderlands; the Indo-Pakistani nuclear arms race; ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka; the Iran-Iraq war; Islamic fundamentalism; and the rapidly growing military presence of the superpowers in the area. Considering how India's emergence as a military power is influencing superpower and indigenous tensions in the region, the contributors compare Indian, American, and Soviet interests, and offer solutions for current Indian-American disagreements.

One fifth of the world's people live in India and Pakistan. Looking back on their first fifty years of independence, leading specialists on South Asia assess their progress and problems, their foreign and defense policies and their relations with the United States. The three coeditors, who compare the achievements of India and Pakistan in a perceptive introductory overview, combine journalistic, diplomatic and academic experience. Selig S. Harrison served as South Asia Bureau Chief of the Washington Post, Paul H. Kreisberg is a former Deputy Chairman of the State Department's Policy Planning Council, and Dennis Kux is a former Director of the India Desk in the State Department.

Mr. Harrison warns that unless a new democratic lender arises when Nehru steps down, India will face Balkanization or authoritarian control based on army force. His disturbing book "is a study of enduring value, fully annotated and indexed and blessed by two of the finest maps in any recent work of scholarship." Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Nearly half a century after the fighting stopped, the 1953 Armistice has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. While Russia and China withdrew the last of their forces in 1958, the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and is pledged to defend it with nuclear weapons. In "Korean Endgame," Selig Harrison mounts the first authoritative challenge to this long-standing U.S. policy.

Harrison shows why North Korea is not--as many policymakers expect--about to collapse. And he explains why existing U.S. policies hamper North-South reconciliation and reunification. Assessing North Korean capabilities and the motivations that have led to its forward deployments, he spells out the arms control concessions by North Korea, South Korea, and the United States necessary to ease the dangers of confrontation, centering on reciprocal U.S. force redeployments and U.S. withdrawals in return for North Korean pullbacks from the thirty-eighth parallel.

Similarly, he proposes specific trade-offs to forestall the North's development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, calling for the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in conjunction with agreements to denuclearize Korea embracing China, Russia, and Japan. The long-term goal of U.S. policy, he argues, should be the full disengagement of U.S. combat forces from Korea as part of regional agreements insulating the peninsula from all foreign conventional and nuclear forces.

A veteran journalist with decades of extensive firsthand knowledge of North Korea and long-standing contacts with leaders in Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang, Harrison is perfectly placed to make these arguments. Throughout, he supports his analysis with revealing accounts of conversations with North Korean, South Korean, and U.S. leaders over thirty-five years. Combining probing scholarship with a seasoned reporter's on-the-ground experience and insights, he has given us the definitive book on U.S. policy in Korea--past, present, and future.

Mr. Harrison warns that unless a new democratic lender arises when Nehru steps down, India will face Balkanization or authoritarian control based on army force. His disturbing book "is a study of enduring value, fully annotated and indexed and blessed by two of the finest maps in any recent work of scholarship." Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.