Unless you are the Mongols. So after ten disastrous years, the Soviets finally abandoned Afghanistan. Some of those Mujahideen later became members of the Taliban, though, so it's difficult to say that anyone won that war. But it wasn't just Asia. In Nicaragua, the US supported rebels to overthrow the leftist government. In El Salvador, the US bolstered authoritarian regimes that were threatened by left-wing guerrillas. The United States ended up supporting a lot of awful governments, like the one in Guatemala, which held onto power through the use of death squads.