Alarms over Afghanistan as a future ‘threat’ are irrational
But poverty, climate stress, and instability make the people who live there, and the strength of any new government, vulnerable.
But poverty, climate stress, and instability make the people who live there, and the strength of any new government, vulnerable.
In new book, Spencer Ackerman shows how the post-9/11 Global War on Terror gave us neither the peace or stability it promised.
Washington elites are rightly horrified by the Taliban’s swift takeover, but more troops and more time wouldn’t have made a difference.
Now is not the time for bureaucracy or delay. The United States will only get one opportunity to get this right.
The former general joins a chorus of calls to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely with broad assumptions that there will be no costs.
But all bets are off if the United States starts rekindling a civil conflict there.
Congress has abdicated its constitutional role, helping mire the US in endless conflicts around the world.
When the US military was done using the Sunni ‘Sons of Iraq’ they literally turned their iris scans over to the Shia government.
These members bucked their parties and risked alienation (and primaries), but stood their ground on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Afghanistan is not the first time that a regime dramatically collapsed once America withdrew its military support.
The reconstruction was largely a failure that could have been avoided, and SIGAR said this all along. Was anyone listening?
And how seeing its origins in Cold War geopolitics can help us avoid future disasters.
Our ability to manage the Middle East and Central Asia has reached a critical turning point in Afghanistan. We should heed that.
A move to allow direct participation in government has excluded significant numbers of the Qatar citizenry.
Ebrahim Raisi promised to create jobs, but it may take more than simply rejoining the JCPOA to do it.
China, India, Iran, and Pakistan will be forced to begin a new game of multidimensional economic chess.
H.R. McMaster and other apologists for the failed policy in Afghanistan would like us to focus on anything but their complicity in it today.
But don’t expect a lot of pushback on settlements or a renewed push for two state solution. Right now this is about management.
There are too many careers and too much money tied to American power projection. So expect it to shift, not recede from the stage.
There will likely be a return to a much more historically normal state of global affairs in which multiple players are engaged.
The US or the EU may need to get involved as regional actors are stepping in to push their authoritarian agendas.