In the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the Biden Administration has announced the United States has adopted “Over the Horizon” strategy for intervening against suspected terrorists, “We can’t kill our way to success,” notes former CIA officer Douglas London in Just Security. ” Perhaps the greatest flaw in an “Over the Horizon” strategy,...
Tag: Afghanistan
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A Beginner’s Guide to ‘The Blob’–and the American Way of War
Why has American been at war for the entire 21st century? What accounts for the reality of “endless wars,” a phrase that even President Biden used to justify U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? One obvious answer is that the Washington foreign policymaking class–a community now known as “the Blob” to critics–favors military interventions and rejects non-military...
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Pakistan’s ISI Has a Message for the Taliban: You Owe Us
From Jonathan Broder at the reliable SpyTalk. You can’t understand Afghanistan without understanding the role of the Pakistani spy agency known as Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI. Islamabad publicly distanced itself from the Taliban, proclaiming Pakistan a loyal ally in the U.S. war on terror. But the ISI covertly continued its support for the group, giving...
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After Afghanistan: Time for Realist Internationalism
A large part of this disagreement also lies in our differing attitudes towards the course of US and allied foreign and security policy over the past generation. The ‘breakthrough moment for the restraint school’ was most certainly not the rise of Trump, as Ikenberry and Deudney allege. It was the disasters that followed the...
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The Afghan Intelligence Agency Was Raided: Who Got the Files?
The people who seized the files at the National Security Directorate and the Ministry of Communications may not have even been Taliban: The men did not speak Afghan languages, the officials said, and may have been agents of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency working in tandem with Taliban forces. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has long supported...