Blame America pt 2: Late Cold War

In today's NYT, in the Arts pages, of all places, they popularize the theory of Mahmood Mamdani that the Americans created terrorism. See my post of March 14 on this topic. What Mamdani does not do is address the chronology of American use of non-state proxies compared to Soviet use of same. I think there is plenty of evidence that the Soviets were way ahead in this area and that America was playing catch-up. I also think that the Americans prefered to support guerrillas rather than terrorists. The Soviets don't seem to have had a perference. I continue to see this as a case where American responsibility is substantially less than Soviet responsibility. Looking at only the American side without taking the Soviet role into consideration thoroughly skews our understanding of how and why non-state terrorism is the problem it is today.