It was then, however, that Afghanistan dropped off the US foreign policy view screen. Global politics drew US attention elsewhere. Afghanistan had been a Cold War battlefield, and the Cold War was over. It didn’t officially end until 1991, but it was over effectively as soon as the Soviet Empire went into its final throes. The fall of the Soviet Empire was the defining political earthquake of the early nineties, whose aftershocks monopolized Western policy and punditry for the bulk of the decade.
