Soviet lessons from Afghanistan
All the most senior ministers were at the Afghan strategy meeting.
They knew things were not going well, but from their leader there was a whiff of panic.
"We just need to be sure that the final result does not look like a humiliating defeat: to have lost so many men and now abandoned it all... in short, we have to get out of there."
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - the speaker of those words - was understandably alarmed.
It was June 1986, almost a year since he had taken the decision to start withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan and hand over more responsibility to the government there.
But Soviet losses, already above 10,000, kept mounting.
With conflicting signals this week about the direction of Western policy in Afghanistan, there is a hint of the same kind of panic and indecision.
Soviet exit strategy
US President Barack Obama is still deciding whether to send in thousands of US reinforcements.
Yet the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown - facing ever-greater opposition to the Afghan war - has been highlighting possibilities for UK troops to pull back in some areas next year.
It is less than two weeks since he was saying:"We cannot, must not and will not walk away."
But as Mr Gorbachev found, getting out is at least as difficult as staying in...
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They knew things were not going well, but from their leader there was a whiff of panic.
"We just need to be sure that the final result does not look like a humiliating defeat: to have lost so many men and now abandoned it all... in short, we have to get out of there."
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - the speaker of those words - was understandably alarmed.
It was June 1986, almost a year since he had taken the decision to start withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan and hand over more responsibility to the government there.
But Soviet losses, already above 10,000, kept mounting.
With conflicting signals this week about the direction of Western policy in Afghanistan, there is a hint of the same kind of panic and indecision.
Soviet exit strategy
US President Barack Obama is still deciding whether to send in thousands of US reinforcements.
Yet the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown - facing ever-greater opposition to the Afghan war - has been highlighting possibilities for UK troops to pull back in some areas next year.
It is less than two weeks since he was saying:"We cannot, must not and will not walk away."
But as Mr Gorbachev found, getting out is at least as difficult as staying in...