What we know about reputation and credibility doesn’t track with the claims of doomsayers. But it also doesn’t accord with those who argue that there’s “nothing to see here.”
Will Afghanistan Hurt U.S. Credibility?
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Afghanistan war
The Politics of “Defeat”
We’re in the middle of a political struggle to define “defeat” in Afghanistan. What does that mean?
This op-ed shows what’s wrong with US foreign policy
Today, Ryan Crocker--career foreign service officer and former Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan--wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing its criticism of the Afghanistan war he oversaw....
Happy Anniversary, Canada!
This week is the 10th anniversary of the start of Canada's combat mission in Kandahar. This was the most stressful Canadian "expedition" since the Korean War, as Canada skipped Iraq 2003 and...
More Afghanistan war Posts
And The Winner Is?
Obviously, too soon to tell. But with the new Obama announcement setting an enddate-ish, my nominee might just be: Pakistan. Pakistan got to have heaps of aid despite spending the entire time subverting American/NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Much American, Canadian, British, Danish, French, Germany, Dutch, Aussie (and others) blood is on Pakistan's hands. Who else? Afghan kleptocrats or whatever you want to call those who enriched themselves and sent pallets of $ to Dubai. Russia and other authoritarian states through which the effort flowed. Much money spent along the way, much...
Post-Kristof Monday Links
Good morning Ducks, here are your links from South Asia... (I am not even going to pretend I know what's going on in the Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, or Venezuela. I'll stick to what I sort of know...). Vasundhara Sirnate at The Hindu writes passionately in defence of the offensive. While Indian liberals will (rightfully) continue to be upset at Penguin India's capitulation to the so called "offended" feelings of a small and obscure group of Hindu fanatics, the liberals fail to realize that the increasing pressure to censor and protect the sentiments of various religious communities is actually...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good mornin' duck fans! Let's start the week by revisiting last week's firestorm in ... Afghanistan Hamid Karzai has become a bewildering enigma for many Americans as he launched yet another verbal tirade against the US last week. This time he recklessly accused the US of colluding with the Taliban. The NY Times speculates that Karzai is keen to shape his legacy given the ultimate fate of Mohammed Najibullah and many other Afghan leaders who came before him. This is certainly plausible, but hardly the whole story. Unfortunately, the article also condescendingly implies that the Afghan...
Leader Comebacks
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." So spoke Winston Churchill, after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. We could say much the same of his defeat in the 1945 general election. A core assumption underlying most of the work analyzing the impact of domestic politics on international relations is that leaders want to remain in office. Insofar as ensuring national survival, territorial integrity, and policy autonomy might help leaders retain power, focusing on political ambition often does not tell...
Winding Down in Afghanistan?
US "combat operations" in Afghanistan are officially scheduled to wind down in 2014. And media attention is now turning toward speculating (i.e. relaying contending institutional preferences between the White House and the Pentagon) on the level of US troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Current estimates, in case you still care, are that US troop levels will be roughly around 10,000 assisted by a couple thousand NATO troops -- assuming, of course, that President Karzai agrees to prolong the suspension of his country's full sovereignty. For next year, however, it is likely that at...
More Evidence for the Underlying Theory of the “Reset”
The basic theory behind the Obama Administration's "Reset" policy was that US-Russian relations could be disaggregated: that it is possible for two countries to disagree on a range of issues and still cooperate on matters of common interest. That bet looks to be correct; despite a significant deterioration in relations between Washington and Moscow, the pursuit of common interests persists. The Russian government has given approval for the United States and its NATO allies to use a Russian air base in the Volga city of Ulyanovsk as a hub for transits to and from Afghanistan. The decree is...
Urination Distraction
Over the past few weeks we’ve had to endure military brass and top government officials falling over themselves to condemn American GIs – first for urinating on dead Afghans, and more recently for beating a sheep. Earlier in the Iraq and Afghan wars, we’ve suffered through pious denunciations of soldiers who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib or laughed as they targeted “dead men” with drones.How noble the sentiment! Criticizing ordinary servicemen who do not abide by the rules of engagement or who break the laws of war. In fact, however, most of the official condemnation has ulterior...
A Reminder
The United States is currently fighting wars in lands that, while distant to us, are not so distant to their inhabitants and US soldiers. I am tempted to carry on about the "new normal," or compare the experience of peripheral wars to that of imperial Britain, France, and Russia. But the fact is that US forces have been engaged in some form of conflict--whether directly or indirectly--pretty much continuously since the start of World War II. And that's a conservative timeline. Still, the most striking thing of the US wars of the twenty-first century is how incidental they've been to most...