Strategika

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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

Appeasing Iran Ignores the Lessons of History

by Victor Davis Hansonvia National Review
Thursday, July 23, 2015

The now-concluded Iran nuclear negotiations predictably reflect ancient truths of appeasement.

Related Commentary

Why is the Iran deal bad? Think North Korea.

by Max Bootvia Max Boot
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Is Iran more like North Korea or Libya? That is the question politicians and the public must ask themselves as they consider President Obama's nuclear deal.

Related Commentary

More Sanctions Wouldn’t Have Stopped Iran

by Bruce Thorntonvia Front Page Magazine Online
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Critics of President Obama’s recent deal with Iran have rejected the president’s assertion that the only alternative to his deal is war. They think that more aggressive sanctions could have changed Iran’s behavior, given the economic costs the current sanction regime has inflicted.

Related Commentary

The Iran Failure Has Many Fathers

by Bruce Thorntonvia Front Page Magazine Online
Thursday, July 16, 2015

Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster.

Related Commentary

The Dawn of Iranian Empire

by Max Bootvia Commentary
Tuesday, July 14, 2015

By now, after months of leaks following the initial agreement on April 2, the broad outlines of the deal with Iran are already familiar.

Poster Collection, UK 2779, Hoover Institution Archives.

Strategika: “The Relentless Innovators: The Military’s Culture of Excellence” With Bing West

interview with Bing Westvia Strategika
Thursday, June 25, 2015

How the United States military continues to adapt to new international threats.

Strategika: “A History of Violence: The Changing Face Of Warfare,” With Thomas Donnelly

interview with Thomas Donnellyvia Strategika
Thursday, June 25, 2015

How the West was seduced by the prospect of replacing soldiers with technology.

Poster Collection, UK 2771a, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

Even With Technological Change, Some Things Never Change

by Max Bootvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

The world’s militaries—and especially the most advanced military in the world, that of the United States—are now caught in the vortex of technological change.

Poster Collection, UK 2771a, Hoover Institution Archives.
Related Commentary

Possessing Sea And Land

by Williamson Murrayvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Only those who are ignorant of military history and strategy can argue that the changes in technology and the international environment have marginalized conventional capabilities.

Related Commentary

The Perils Of Downsizing

by Mark Moyarvia Strategika
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

The current downward trends in fighter wings and conventional ground forces are likely to continue, given the ongoing shrinkage of the defense budget, and carrier groups appear to be headed in the same direction. 

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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.