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Friday, September 24, 2021

Issue 75

America After Afghanistan
Background Essay
Background Essay

Our Revels Now Are Ended

by Ralph Petersvia Strategika
Friday, September 24, 2021

It’s hard to win a war when you refuse to understand your enemy. It’s harder still when you cannot realistically define your strategic mission. You lame yourself further when you reduce a complex history to a single inaccurate cliché; i.e., “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.”

Featured Commentary
Featured Commentary

Afghanistan Post-Mortem

by Peter R. Mansoorvia Strategika
Friday, September 24, 2021

The United States has lost its longest war. After twenty years of conflict and nation building in Afghanistan, the U.S.-backed Afghan regime collapsed like a house of cards in just a few weeks after the announced departure of American and NATO troops from the country. A final flurry of activity by the U.S. military managed to rescue 123,000 people from Kabul, but as Winston Churchill once said of Dunkirk, “Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Featured Commentary

Dented, Not Damaged: The American Empire After Afghanistan

by Josef Joffevia Strategika
Friday, September 24, 2021

When small, even middle-sized powers make grievous mistakes like fighting a losing war or ignoring deadly threats, they risk their place in the global hierarchy or, worse, their existence. Thus did France and Britain when they failed to fight Nazi Germany in the Thirties while still in position of strategic superiority. 

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Related Commentary

Today’s Military Needs to be Run More Like a Business

by Kori Schakevia Room for Debate (New York Times)
Monday, July 14, 2014

In the near term, the threats to our interests are numerous small-scale contingencies against militaries not our equal but with pockets of high-tech or disruptive capabilities, like nuclear weapons, cyber or accurate ballistic missiles. In the longer term, there is the potential for China to become a military threat that could challenge us across the military spectrum.

Poster Collection, US 1153, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

The U.S. Cannot Wish Away Its Present Security Concerns

by Kiron K. Skinnervia Strategika
Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Grand strategy requires states to have a long-term plan. It also requires that means and ends be clearly articulated and calibrated to each other. The Obama administration’s long-term plan appears to shift U.S. economic and military assets away from the Middle East and toward Asia. The Middle East, however, shows no signs of relinquishing its role as the world’s central battleground. Furthermore, means and ends are mixed together as priorities under the Obama doctrine.

Poster Collection, US 4642, Hoover Institution Archives.
Background Essay

Size Isn’t All that Matters

by Angelo M. Codevillavia Strategika
Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Repercussions of quantitative changes in military forces are relative strictly to those forces’ specific missions and deployments.

Featured Commentary

Pruning the U.S. Military: We Will Do Less But Must Not Do It Less Well

by General Jim Mattisvia Strategika
Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Clearly America's military will continue to shrink. Across our body politic from fiscal conservatives to those who support increasing entitlements to those unimpressed with the last ten or forty years of America's role on the international stage, there is no longer in Washington adequate vision or sufficient political will to restrain the downsizing of our military. 

Spanish Civil War from an anarchist art album

Strategika: “A History of Surprise: War and Unpredictability” with Andrew Roberts

by Andrew Robertsvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Why Armed Conflict Never Goes according to Plan

Strategika: “The More Wars Change, the More They Stay the Same” with Peter Mansoor

by Peter R. Mansoorvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Why the Technological Revolution May Not Change Warfare as Much as We Think.

Strategika: “The Wars of the Future" with Fred Kagan

by Frederick W. Kaganvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Will Irregular Warfare Counteract the Power of Conventional Arms?

Poster Collection, INT 00491, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

The Risks of Expanding the Nuclear Club’s Membership

by Josiah Bunting IIIvia Strategika
Sunday, June 1, 2014

Vladimir Putin’s indifference to the bleating admonitions of Western leaders will persist. These, and the President’s pathetic warnings that have followed, have all the credibility of promising a Red Line in Damascus. 

Poster Collection, INT 00398, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

The Scramble for Nuclear Deterrence

by Williamson Murrayvia Strategika
Sunday, June 1, 2014

Given the diplomatic and strategic weaknesses that the United States and its leaders have exhibited over the past six years, it is almost inevitable that America’s allies, which exist in substantially more dangerous neighborhoods than does the United States, will seek to develop their own nuclear capabilities.

Harold Melvin Agnew Motion Picture Film, Hoover Institution Archives.
Background Essay

A History of Nuclear Choices

by Josef Joffevia Strategika
Sunday, June 1, 2014

The question “Should more of our European or Pacific democratic allies possess nuclear weapons?” harbors two unspoken ones. First, why do nations go nuclear? Second, will America’s allies do so if U.S. security guarantees wane in this era of retraction and disarmament? A quick history of the nuclear age reveals many mixed motives and only a tenuous relationship between great-power assurances and client-power abstinence.

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The Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict strives to reaffirm the Hoover Institution's dedication to historical research in light of contemporary challenges, and in particular, reinvigorating the national study of military history as an asset to foster and enhance our national security. Read more.

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Strategika is an online journal that analyzes ongoing issues of national security in light of conflicts of the past—the efforts of the Military History Working Group of historians, analysts, and military personnel focusing on military history and contemporary conflict.

Our board of scholars shares no ideological consensus other than a general acknowledgment that human nature is largely unchanging. Consequently, the study of past wars can offer us tragic guidance about present conflicts—a preferable approach to the more popular therapeutic assumption that contemporary efforts to ensure the perfectibility of mankind eventually will lead to eternal peace. New technologies, methodologies, and protocols come and go; the larger tactical and strategic assumptions that guide them remain mostly the same—a fact discernable only through the study of history.

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The opinions expressed in Strategika are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.