Afghanistan Archive

Just as the turning of the leaves heralds the arrival of winter’s chill, so too are there unmistakable signs whenever a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization draws near. The media is filled with commentary about “NATO’s crisis,” while statements percolate forth from the alliance’s capitals about NATO’s clear purpose for the 21st century. This is a yearly ritual, with the proclamations of alliance unity and cohesion that inevitably accompany any NATO summit having similarly acquired a totemic quality. When the meeting is over, reality catches up with the vision that has been so ardently reaffirmed. The same issues […]

Turkey’s deepening ties with China are worth paying attention to regardless of the academic reasoning used to justify them. But I thought Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s formulation was worth passing on. Referring to Francis Fukuyama’s famous “end of history” as a framework for understanding the end of the Cold War, Davutoglu instead referred to the Cold War and the colonial period that preceded it as historical anomalies, with Turkey’s foreign policy orientation now reflecting the ways in which history is undergoing a “normalization.” I’ve seen this same anomaly framework applied by French Gen. Vincent Desportes to Cold War approaches to […]

Last Friday, Wikileaks released a huge trove of documents on U.S. conduct of the war in Iraq. The release was conducted in collaboration with the New York Times, the Guardian, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, and Der Spiegel, and consisted mostly of U.S. military incident reports. Early reaction has concentrated much more on the substance of the material than on criticism of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange. In part because of improvements in redaction policies, but also because negative revelations about the Iraq War are no longer as controversial as criticism of the ongoing Afghanistan conflict, attacks on Wikileaks have been more […]

In June, Rolling Stone helped bring down Gen. Stanley McChrystal by publishing “The Runaway General,” a Michael Hastings article depicting McChrystal’s staff as contemptuous of civilian authority. Last month, Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” suggested that the uniformed military had boxed President Barack Obama into an escalation of the Afghanistan War. In tandem, the publications re-awakened concerns about the health of civil-military relations in the United States. Although the military has not directly challenged civilian authority, some observers worried that contempt in the ranks and the effort to control policy in Afghanistan could spell trouble for civilian supremacy. The Winter 2010 […]

It is hard for most Americans to fathom why the U.S. military should be involved in either Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan for anything other than the targeting of terrorist networks. And since drones can do most of that dirty work, few feel it is vital to engage in the long and difficult task of nation-building in that part of the world. These are distant, backward places whose sheer disconnectedness relegates them to the dustbin of globalization, and nothing more. If only that were true. But as globetrotting journalist Robert D. Kaplan makes eminently clear in his new book, “Monsoon: The […]

In advance of President Barack Obama’s visit to India next month, the administration is sending signals about great and wondrous changes ahead in the Indo-American relationship. But in reading Lalit K. Jha’s dispatch from Washington, a term I have come to dread in foreign policy rhetoric made its predictable appearance: Obama’s visit is supposed to herald the establishment of a “true strategic partnership.” “Strategic partnership” entered the U.S. diplomatic lexicon as a way to find a halfway house between those countries that are formal American allies — especially those for whom this status is a matter of treaty and Congressional […]

Few would have expected it to be possible a few months ago, but Kyrgyzstan managed to hold a free, fair, and surprisingly non-violent and trouble-free parliamentary election this weekend. In an assessment widely shared by regional experts, David Trilling, writing at EurasiaNet, concluded, “Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary elections couldn’t have gone better.” Turnout exceeded 50 percent of the country’s 2.8 million eligible voters and produced sharply divided results that will force political leaders to compromise to form a coalition government. Five political parties, out of the 29 that participated, overcame the 5 percent threshold required to receive seats in the 120-member parliament. […]

Reports surfaced this week that the Quetta Shura of the Afghan Taliban has agreed to commence negotiations with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in an effort to reach a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. The development, reportedly the result of intensive lobbying by Saudi Arabia, raises the question of whether any sort of workable Afghan power-sharing deal is possible. Some opinion polling data from Pashtun-dominated provinces in Afghanistan suggest that there is popular support for reaching such an arrangement. But could the United States accept a negotiated end to the fighting that includes some degree of […]

Ajai Shukla builds a strong case for why an immediate American withdrawal from Afghanistan would serve India’s interests, despite concerns in New Delhi to the contrary. The case rests on three major arguments. First, the vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal would splinter the insurgent factions, and set them at odds not only with each other but also with their Pakistani handlers. Second, the epicenter of terrorist safe havens is no longer Afghanistan, but Pakistan, and a U.S. withdrawal would free Washington’s hands to target them by removing its dependence on Pakistani supply routes for the war effort. And finally, […]