1 For instance, I read in The Independent, 17 August 1990: ‘A Soviet general who publicly declared that President Mikhail Gorbachev should do three months’ military service has been reliably reported to have been seen in Iraq, and is now at the centre of a mystery about Soviet knowledge of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait … Then, on 21 June, General Makashev told the Russian Communist Party conference that the army had lost confidence in the party and the government … If General Makashev was in Baghdad just before the crisis, was he aware of the Iraqi preparations? Being a staunch conservative, might he have gone along with them, knowing that they would bring the brief “peace dividend” to an end?…’

And in The Times, 24 August 1990: ‘The Soviet leadership already faces criticism for being too keen to please America and for “ceding positions” to the West. It was clear from the defensiveness of Mr Gorbachev’s speech to the military last weekend that criticism of foreign policy weakness in the wake of the loss of Eastern Europe has not been silenced.’