JAMES W. CARDEN – Hawkish US officials overstated Soviet gains in the third world in the 1970s, and “exhibit A in the case that the USSR was inexorably expanding…was Afghanistan.†And after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, “Washington believed Russia’s objective was the Persian Gulf.†Yet, it is argued by John Lamberton Harper, that the hawks within the Carter administration, led by Brzezinski, “were misled by their schematic conceptions.â€Â