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“We need to understand not just how mistakes were made, but why," International Security fellow Matthew Waldman says about his research on a conflict that has beleaguered U.S. foreign policymakers for over twelve years: the war in Afghanistan. Waldman offers his insights into underlying factors that have clouded policymaking judgment through the course of America’s longest war.

The Summer 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s expanding work on complex cybersecurity issues and Middle East challenges, offers reflections on the role of the U.S. in Iraq, and spotlights work being done by the Center and its affiliates on environment and energy issues.

"Even as they acknowledged that potential dangers loom in Afghanistan over the next two years, experts at a Harvard conference pointed to some encouraging signs. One example: the number of schoolchildren has grown from 800,000 in 2001 to nearly nine million today....Speakers from Afghanistan and the West recognized that violence persists and problems such as endemic corruption still plague the country....But they took solace from the work of Afghans themselves in building a credible national military force that has increasingly taken on the brunt of combat duties"

During October 2012, the Belfer Center remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 with a series of events that highlighted the threat and lessons that leaders can take from the most dangerous moment in human history.

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Following the recent appointment of Ashton B. Carter as deputy secretary of defense, we asked Carter about the challenges and opportunities of his new position. Carter, an on-leave member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, is a former director of the Belfer Center and was co-director of the Center’s Preventive Defense Project until leaving in 2009 to serve as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Ashton B. Carter, a member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors is a former director of the Belfer Center and was co-director of the Center’s Preventive Defense Project until leaving in 2009 to serve as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Following his recent selection as deputy secretary of defense, we asked Carter about the challenges and opportunities of his new position.

With an interest in international events and medicine in high school, Chiara Ruffa dreamed of joining Doctors without Borders.  A fear of surgeries kept her from becoming a doctor, but it did not stop her from crossing borders.  Now, a fellow with the International Security Program at the Belfer Center, Ruffa’s extensive travels inspire her research of complex humanitarian emergencies, specifically the interaction between local populations and intervening actors.

David Gergen suggests it is probably the largest gathering of Harvard’s military officers and veterans since Winston Churchill received an honorary degree in 1943. On April 25, some 300 Harvard students, either now serving in the U.S. military or recent veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, gathered for the 3^rd annual “Tribute to Student Veterans at Harvard.” 

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.