Strategika

Subscribe to receive Strategika. Subscribe »

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. 

E.g., 12 / 3 / 2021
E.g., 12 / 3 / 2021
Harold Melvin Agnew Motion Picture Film, Hoover Institution Archives.
Sunday, June 1, 2014

Issue 15

Should more of our European or Pacific democratic allies possess nuclear weapons?
Okhrana Records, Box 237, Hoover Institution Archives.
Thursday, May 1, 2014

Issue 14

Are 20th-century-style conventional military assets and strategies still relevant, or are they being replaced by drones, cyber-warfare, counterinsurgency, and satellite technologies?
Poster Collection, RU/SU 2165, Hoover Institution Archives
Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Issue 13

Can or should the West try to stop Vladimir Putin's attempts to reabsorb portions of the old Soviet Union?

Background Essay

by Kori Schake Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article

Featured Commentary

by Thomas Donnelly Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
by Ralph Peters Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article

Related Commentary

by Kiron K. Skinner Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
by Peter R. Mansoor Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
by Paul R. Gregory Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
by Victor Davis Hanson Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
by Angelo M. Codevilla Tuesday, April 1, 2014
article
Poster Collection, INT 503, Hoover Institution Archives
Saturday, March 1, 2014

Issue 12

What Will Afghanistan Look Like Following the Final U.S. Withdrawal in 2014?

Background Essay

by Max Boot Saturday, March 1, 2014
article

Featured Commentary

by Joseph Felter Saturday, March 1, 2014
article
by Kimberly Kagan Saturday, March 1, 2014
article
by Bing West Saturday, March 1, 2014
article

Related Commentary

by Mark Moyar Saturday, March 1, 2014
article
by Thomas Donnelly Saturday, March 1, 2014
article

Pages

Explore Research

Filter By:

Topic

Type

Author

Section

Enter comma-separated IDs of authors
Enter comma-separated IDs of contributors

Support the Hoover Institution

Join the Hoover Institution's community of supporters in advancing ideas defining a free society.

Support Hoover

Related Commentary

Nyet to the Reset

by Robert G. Kaufmanvia Strategika
Friday, February 15, 2019

Any reset with Putin’s increasingly illiberal and expansionist Russia is a triumph of hope over experience. Unrealistic realists underestimate the importance of ideology and regime type in assessing Russia’s calculus of its ambitions and interest.

Strategika Issue 56: The Defense Of Europe

via Strategika
Friday, January 18, 2019

Strategika Issue 56 is now available online. 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.

Featured Commentary

Urging More From Our NATO Allies

by Robert G. Kaufmanvia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

The United States should never expect to achieve full burden-sharing with the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Even in the most balanced alliances, the most powerful member will pay some premium for ensuring its credibility and effectiveness. The United States can strive plausibly to minimize but not eliminate the massive degree of free riding and strategic incoherence that has become politically untenable and strategically unwise. 

Featured Commentary

NATO Renewed (Coming Soon To A Theater Of War Near You)

by Ralph Petersvia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

Clio, the muse of history, has a fabulous sense of irony: As the human pageant unfolds, she delights in confounding our intentions and expectations. Thus, two public enemies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (whose acronym, NATO, sounds like another Greek deity) promise to be the unwitting saviors of the alliance, rescuing it from complacency, lethargy, and diminishing relevance.

Background Essay

European Defense

by Angelo M. Codevillavia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question—Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?—is no longer meaningful as posed, because the political energies of Europe’s elites are absorbed as they try to fend off attacks on their legitimacy by broad sectors of their population.

Related Commentary

Europe Is Alert to the Dangers It Faces

by Kori Schakevia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

I think the question (Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S.—or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?) is lagging the reality of European acknowledgement of their military shortfalls. Europeans are no longer downplaying the necessity of military readiness.

Related Commentary

Even Amidst Change, Europe Still Relies on the U.S. for Defense

by Barry Straussvia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

Are there circumstances in which the European Union and NATO will partner fully with the U.S.? At the moment, they don’t. In 2017, for example, only a very few European countries contributed more than 2 per cent to defense, in spite of a 2014 promise to do so. Meanwhile, the U.S. contributed more than 4 per cent.

Related Commentary

Europe Lacks the Will to Defend Itself

by Bing Westvia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University posed this question—Will NATO Europe fully partner with the U.S., or continue to downplay military readiness? The brief answer is that the leading economic powers in Europe have moved beyond national defense into a never-never land of post-military globalism. The liminal leap into self-induced delusion assumes that major conflict will never again embroil the European continent. So there isn’t enough money for a credible military force in Europe because there is not the political will. The moral is to the physical as four to one in battle, and Europe lost the spirit to fight long ago.

Related Commentary

The European Alliance That Never Was

by Angelo M. Codevillavia Strategika
Thursday, January 17, 2019

The notion of an Atlantic alliance consisting of Europeans and Americans as full partners was once a useful fiction. Today it is a dysfunctional one, an obstacle to all sides’ understanding of what useful cooperation may yet be possible.

Strategika Issue 55: The Structure of World Power

via Strategika
Friday, November 16, 2018

Strategika Issue 55 is now available online. 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.

Pages


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.

Is there a military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Stay Up To Date!

Be notified when an new issue is available.

Subscriptions »

RSS Feed Subscription

subscribe and listen on iTunes

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.

To stay up to date when new issues are released, sign up here to be notified when a new Strategika is available.

Subscriptions »

 

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