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

Vladimir Putin, Murderer of Myths

by Ralph Petersvia Strategika
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Related Commentary

Russia: Weaker than What?

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Strategika
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Poster Collection, INT 503, Hoover Institution Archives.
Background Essay

Afghanistan—Graveyard of Empires?

by Max Bootvia Strategika
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Featured Commentary

Afghanistan: There Has To Be A Better Way

by Bing Westvia Strategika
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Poster Collection, IR 132, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

How Good is Afghan Good Enough?

by Joseph Feltervia Strategika
Saturday, March 1, 2014

U.S.-led Coalition forces have made significant and hard-earned progress building the capacity of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to take the lead in providing the security needed to bring stability, development, and governance to this persistently impoverished country with little history of effective centralized rule.

Poster Collection, RU/SU 2321.9, Hoover Institution Archives.
Featured Commentary

The Folly of Abandoning Afghanistan

by Kimberly Kaganvia Strategika
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Related Commentary

Afghanistan’s Fragile Political Landscape

by Mark Moyarvia Strategika
Saturday, March 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.