Afghanistan Archive

Last week’s meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai felt like a last desperate attempt to salvage a crumbling marriage: With the relationship clearly dying, the two sides quibbled over the pace of U.S. disengagement and the extent of future American aid and assistance. But as U.S. involvement in Afghanistan winds down, Americans should already be thinking about what they can learn from their longest war. U.S. national security strategy, as I explained in my book “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy,” is shaped by the lessons drawn, rightly or wrongly, from previous conflicts, wars […]

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s meetings this week in Washington should help resolve some of the key issues that will determine his country’s fate and the U.S. role in it. These include how many U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 and also how rapidly those leaving will depart. The Afghan-U.S. discussions should also help resolve uncertainties concerning peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban and their foreign backers as well as how Karzai will transfer power to his duly elected successor in 2014. Above all, the meetings will make evident the limits of American power in a land that has […]

With large-scale U.S. military involvement in Iraq receding in the rearview mirror, and Afghanistan soon to follow, debate is raging over the lessons Americans should draw from a decade of counterinsurgency. This debate is unfolding in a wide range of contexts and from many perspectives. Of these, one of the most important is a re-examination of American civil-military relations, especially the involvement of senior military leaders in building and sustaining public support for counterinsurgency campaigns like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the traditional model of American civil-military relations, civilian officials develop broad national policy, then build and sustain public […]