As with wildfires, conflicts between states are the interplay of multiple factors which can generate manifestly different outcomes.
Fireground Rules, Part 2: A Scheme is Not a Vision
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Afghanistan
Petraeus Played
Ambition on the part of Gen. Petraeus may have blinded him to truth that Taliban impostor was too good to be true.
U.S. Out of Afghanistan by 2014? Don’t Hold Your Breath
400 military bases and a mega-embassy are not the face of an impending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Could Gandhi Have Halted Night Raids?
Just Foreign Policy’s Robert Naiman wonders whether Gandhi’s satyagraha can work in Afghanistan.
Election Was Missed Opportunity to Convince Voters to Abandon Current Afghanistan Strategy
Americans forget that the $3 billion a week it spends on Afghanistan and Iraq makes the bank bailout and stimulus look like chump change.
Of Horns and Beaks and the Afghanistan War
There is always another “strategic” battle — in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam — that’s “key” to winning a war against an insurgency. But there are millions of hills and valleys and they are as meaningless in Afghanistan as they were in Vietnam.
Will Rockets or Schools Tell the Tale of Afghanistan?
Even at its most successful, a military-led counterinsurgency campaign remains inherently unsustainable.
U.S. Military Aid Far Outpaces Democracy Assistance
Desperate to secure supply routes to Afghanistan, the United States has been spending at least six times more on military aid for the mostly authoritarian states of Central Asia than on efforts to promote political liberalisation and human rights in the region, according to a new report released here by the Open Society Foundations (OSF).
U.S. in Afghanistan: a Perpetual Motion Machine for the Generation of Grief
While Americans die in Afghanistan, the democracy we’re attempting to instill there is but an abstraction to most Afghans.
Aid Worker Linda Norgrove Victim of the “Entebbe Fantasy”?
Politicians seeking credit for a sensational rescue may have helped condemn Linda Norgrave.