<P> In September 1979, Khalqist President Nur Muhammad Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA orchestrated by fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency . Distrusted by the Soviets, Amin was assassinated by Soviet special forces in December 1979 . A Soviet - organized government, led by Parcham's Babrak Karmal but inclusive of both factions, filled the vacuum . Soviet troops were deployed to stabilize Afghanistan under Karmal in more substantial numbers, although the Soviet government did not expect to do most of the fighting in Afghanistan . As a result, however, the Soviets were now directly involved in what had been a domestic war in Afghanistan . </P> <P> Carter responded to the Soviet intervention by withdrawing the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow . He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War". </P> <P> In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Ronald Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War . "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said . "It is this: We win and they lose . What do you think of that?" In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere . Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology . Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history," while Thatcher inculpated the Soviets as "bent on world dominance ." </P> <P> By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had developed into a stance known as the new Reagan Doctrine--which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments . Besides continuing Carter's policy of supporting the Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet - backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promoting Islamism in the majority - Muslim Central Asian Soviet Union . Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's ISI to train Muslims from around the world to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union . </P>

The end of the cold war also ended conflict in eastern europe