South Asia

Stephen Walt suspects that what really bothers European allies about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is what it might reveal about America's willingness to keep subsidizing allies who aren't pulling their weight. 

Winning hearts and minds doesn't defeat insurgent groups, author Jacqueline Hazelton argues. So why does the United States still rely on counterinsurgency?

Stephen Walt explains why the withdrawal from Afghanistan has not been a strategic disaster for the United States.

Fredrik Logevall reviews THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: A History by Carter Malkasian and The AFGHANISTAN PAPERS: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock.

Jacqueline L. Hazelton analyzes why the United States fails at counterinsurgency in light of its withdrawal from Afghanistan. She asserts that the belief that democracy is necessary for long-term stability and can flow from the barrel of a gun is rooted in misleading accounts of past counterinsurgency campaigns, such as the Malayan Emergency and the 1948–1954 insurgency in the Philippines.

Stephen Walt asks whether the United States is a good model for other liberal states and whether its policy judgments are ones that others should trust and follow, especially with respect to foreign policy.  He argues that—on balance—the answer to both questions is "no."

Stephen Walt writes that understanding why it was so hard to end the Afghan war could teach future presidents two valuable lessons: It is usually easier to invade a foreign country than it is to leave it, and wars of choice should never be waged for frivolous or ill-considered reasons.

Stephen Walt warns that after making the right call on withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden better get ready for second-guessing from hawkish critics convinced the war could somehow be won and by Republicans looking to exploit the issue. 

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and enables military and political victory. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites.

The United States' present dysfunction—and the hyper-securitized physical apparatus in Washington—is the natural outgrowth of its reckless, militaristic conduct abroad, Stephen M. Walt writes.