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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Poster Collection, IR 132, Hoover Institution Archives.

Strategika: “What’s Good Enough in Afghanistan?” with Joe Felter

by Joseph Feltervia Strategika
Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Retired Colonel Joseph Felter explains the problems facing America in Afghanistan and what the United States can do to address them.

Poster Collection, CC 75, Hoover Institution Archives.

Strategika: “The Implications of Chinese History” with Edward Luttwak

by Edward N. Luttwak via Strategika
Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Edward Luttwak explains how Chinese history should color our perceptions of that nation’s modern ambitions.

Hoover Archives poster collection: CC 89

Strategika: “Can America Manage China’s Rise?” with Gary Roughead

by Admiral Gary Rougheadvia Strategika
Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Retired Admiral Gary Roughead looks at America’s options to keep the rise of China from causing global instability.

Hoover Archives poster collection: CC 94

Strategika “Can China Be a Cooperative Power?” with Ian Morris

via Strategika
Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Ian Morris looks at which variables may determine whether China is aggressive or peaceful in the future.

Poster Collection, US 2706, Hoover Institution Archives.
Related Commentary

Provocation in a Time of Uncertainty

by Colonel Eric Shirleyvia Military History in the News
Tuesday, April 8, 2014

As was widely anticipated, the 2015 defense budget proposal follows the narrative of the postwar drawdown of the U.S. Army. As Secretary of Defense Hagel rightly states, “The world is growing more volatile, more unpredictable, and in some instances more threatening to the United States.” 

Related Commentary

Israel's Worst Enemy

by Bruce Thorntonvia Front Page Magazine Online
Tuesday, April 8, 2014

The Washington Post reports that some members of Secretary of State John Kerry’s senior staff think it’s time to say “enough” of Kerry’s futile and delusional attempts to broker peace between the Israelis and Arabs and implement the “two-state solution.” That’s a revelation one would think the chief diplomat of the greatest power in history would have experienced decades ago.

Related Commentary

Credible Leadership Should Seek More Than Containment

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

U.S. Cold War presidential directives coalesced around precepts that defense experts and foreign policy elites advocated: Mutual Assured Destruction (having enough nuclear retaliatory power so that the adversary would not risk a first strike); containing Soviet expansionism, especially in key industrial centers; nuclear arms control negotiations at all costs; the policy of linkage—tying U.S.-Soviet negotiations on one front to bilateral progress on other fronts; and preemptive concession making to demonstrate goodwill toward the Soviet Union.

Poster Collection, RU/SU 2165, Hoover Institution Archives.
Background Essay

Ukraine Adrift Between East and West

by Kori Schakevia Strategika
Tuesday, April 1, 2014

The current issue of Strategika asks the question: Are 20th-century-style conventional military assets and strategies still relevant, or are they being replaced by drones, cyber-warfare, counterinsurgency, and satellite technologies?  Using history as a guide, Andrew Roberts, Frederick W. Kagan, and Peter R. Mansoor all argue for the continuing relevance of conventional weapons and soldiers, even though the there is an inherent unpredictability to the exact nature of future conflicts.
 

Poster Collection, RU/SU 1437, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

Vladimir Putin, Murderer of Myths

by Ralph Petersvia Strategika
Tuesday, April 1, 2014

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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.