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.”

Articles
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.”

Articles
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. 

Articles
Related Commentary: 
Graveyard of Narratives
Articles
by Angelo M. Codevilla
The Afghanistization Of America
Articles
by Victor Davis Hanson
A Lost War: A Conversation With Victor Davis Hanson And H. R. McMaster On Afghanistan’s Past, Present, And Future
Videos
interview with Victor Davis Hanson, H. R. McMaster
Fleeing Afghanistan
Articles
by Bruce Thornton
Who Will Trust Us after Afghanistan?
Articles
by Bing West
The ‘Forever War’ Hasn’t Ended
Articles
by Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz
Additional Resources: 
Discussion Questions For Educators And Policy Makers
Download the Issue as a PDF
Featured Poll

How should Americans assess the recent chaos in Afghanistan?

Cast your vote
E.g., 12 / 3 / 2021
E.g., 12 / 3 / 2021

No issues were found in that date range. Please expand your range and try again.

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

How To Counter The Putin Playbook

by Michael McFaulvia The New York Times
Saturday, July 30, 2016

A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it seemed that only democracies promoted their values abroad. Today, autocracies have entered the arena again, exporting their ideas and methods — even to the United States.

Articles
Featured Commentary

Unity, Strategy, And Will

by Angelo M. Codevillavia Strategika
Friday, July 1, 2016

The meaning of any nation’s membership in or departure from any “union” or alliance, especially with regard to geopolitical strategies, depends entirely on the nature and degree of that unity or alliance—in short, on the extent to which these represent a common will. History teaches that international organizations, ranging from formal “unions” to informal alliances, tend to obscure the members’ differing wills, and to be hindrances to rational strategizing, individual and collective.

Articles
Background Essay

Brexit and the Defence of Europe

by Andrew Robertsvia Strategika
Friday, July 1, 2016

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU)—nicknamed “Brexit”—does not have anything like the security ramifications for the West that its opponents liked to pretend during the recent campaign. A central part of the pro-Remain campaign was to try to terrify voters into believing that Brexit entailed dire security implications, but the British public voted to leave anyhow, because they understood that far from guaranteeing peace and security on the European continent, the EU has been at best neutral in its effect, and it was always NATO that has been the bedrock.

Articles
Related Commentary

The Strategic Problems of Grexit

by Barry Straussvia Strategika
Friday, July 1, 2016

With Britain posed to exit the European Union, other European countries might reconsider their own status. None has a more fraught relationship with the EU than Greece, primarily because of its experience with the Euro. And what if Greece leaves the Eurozone?

Articles
Related Commentary

The Potential Perils of Grexit

by Kori Schakevia Strategika
Friday, July 1, 2016

Would a Grexit from the Eurozone create any strategic problems? Absolutely. If other Eurozone countries force Greece out of the currency union, we should expect it to have a deeply damaging effect on the NATO alliance, which remains the crucial lever by which the United States organizes security contributions from European countries.

Articles
Featured Commentary

Brexit: How Much Contagion, How Many Strategic Consequences?

by Josef Joffevia Strategika
Friday, July 1, 2016

Will Britain’s departure from the EU set off a stampede, prompting other members to bolt? The probability ranges from “very low” to “nil.” Like Tolstoy’s oft-invoked unhappy family, every EU member is unhappy in his own way, but none will take the plunge. For one, everyone is feeling in his own body politic Britain’s buyer’s remorse on the day thereafter. The pound took the largest hit in more than thirty years.

Articles
Related Commentary

Brexit: Isolationism or Atlanticism?

by Max Bootvia Commentary
Monday, June 27, 2016

Britons might never have voted to leave the European Union had it not been for the refugee crisis that hit Europe as a result of the Syrian civil war. Even though Britain has accepted only some 5,000 Syrian refugees, German premier Angela Merkel agreed to take in 800,000, thus fueling fears across the continent of an influx of possible terrorists. 

Articles
Related Commentary

The EU-Progressive Paradigm is Falling Apart

by Bruce Thorntonvia FrontPage Mag.com
Monday, June 27, 2016

The rise of populist and patriotic passions.

Articles
The Classicist with Victor Davis Hanson:
Related Commentary

The Classicist: “Brexit and the Future of Europe”

interview with Victor Davis Hansonvia The Classicist
Friday, June 24, 2016

What the UK’s split from Brussels means for the future.

Podcasts
Related Commentary

Why Brexit alarms Britain’s Baltic allies

by Max Bootvia The Washington Post
Monday, June 20, 2016

The world is transfixed by Britain’s referendum Thursday over whether to stay in the European Union. Some of the most interested and anxious spectators of the “Brexit” debate are in the Baltic republics, where I recently spent a week meeting with political and military leaders as part of a delegation from the Jamestown Foundation.

Articles

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.