Were conservative Washington think-tankers helping determine U.S. strategy in Afghanistan?
Maybe David Brooks Could Teach Gen. Petraeus and the Kagans a Thing or Two About Humility
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Afghanistan
Six Global Issues The Foreign Policy Debates Won’t Touch
In the interest of keeping vital global issues in the discussion, Foreign Policy in Focus reached out to scholars at the Institute for Policy Studies—our institutional home—to sketch out progressive perspectives on the world issues we don’t expect to get fair treatment in the debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Without an informed citizenry, these crucial topics will always fall by the wayside. So read up, and share widely!
Romney on the Middle East: Obama, but Worse
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute, while trotted out as a major rejection of the current administration’s approach to the Middle East, mostly just rehashed President Obama’s policies, albeit with more hawkish bravado. But Romney’s speech also included a host of faulty assumptions about Arabs and Muslims, indicating a potentially reckless misunderstanding of America’s relationship with the Muslim world.
Curbing Corruption in Afghanistan
Governmental corruption is a huge issue in many of the countries that the United States seeks to influence. Afghanistan is only one of the more notable cases in which corruption is rampant. America has put millions into USAID and State Department projects designed to combat corruption, but there is very little to show for its efforts. To date, no high-level corruption prosecution has gone forward in Afghanistan.
Accountability and Insurgency in Afghanistan
Although the war in Afghanistan—with its tally of U.S. combat deaths now exceeding 2,000—has largely faded from the news, it is useful to consider why the conflict is so intractable. Why has a campaign that initially seemed so hopeful resulted in a country that is politically fractured and increasingly deadly for Afghans and foreign militaries alike?
Feminism as Counterterrorism?
The most prominent and unequivocal public articulation of an alliance between feminism and counterterrorism came at the dawn of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, when Laura Bush argued that “the fight against terrorism is a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
On Drugs and Democracy
The UN Office of Drug Control (UNODC) has thoroughly documented the violence, crime, and corruption linked with the worldwide heroin and opium trade. The U.S. news media report every day on the mayhem and corruption of government officials caused by the drug wars in Mexico, Colombia, and other points south of our border. In Afghanistan, the Taliban tax the opium trade and protect poppy farmers from eradication, fueling the insurgency and our 11-year war.
However, these problems are all consequences of drug prohibition, not of the drugs themselves.
Taliban Vaccination Ban: Paranoia or Based in Fact?
CIA taints polio vaccination campaigns by using them as a cover for espionage.
Afghanistan Dominates Latest U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue
United States-India cooperation continues to move beyond the economic and scientific to the military.
To ISAF, Committing Atrocities Means Only Having to Say You’re Sorry
The definition of insanity is continuing air and drone strikes and expecting the results to be different each time.