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foreign affairs in strategic context
Browsing All Posts filed under »David Kilcullen«
Afghanistan: An unwinnable war?
September 23, 2010
I am always annoyed when someone says a war is unwinnable; it annoyed me when it was said about Iraq with much sanctimony and it annoys me now when said about Afghanistan. No war is unwinnable; to succeed depends on figuring out the kind of conflict you’re fighting, organising yourself accordingly and doing it better/faster […]
RollingStan and civil-military relations
June 29, 2010
Andrew Bacevich and Bernard Finel are like Nietzsche; they make me think, but often the opposite of what they want me to think. They have both written pieces about civil-military relations, focussing on the controversy surrounding Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stones profile. Bacevich argues that long wars ‘are antithetical to democracy’; protracted conflicts encourage praetorianism in […]
Afghanistan and Adam Holloway MP
May 31, 2010
The critique of Western involvement in Afghanistan provided by Adam Holloway and other distinguished commentators like Andrew Bacevich and Rory Stewart land telling blows on arguments for our presence there. We are hampered by financial and political corruption in the Karzai government. Our imperfect knowledge of local cultures and an under-appreciation of local politics can […]
November 16, 2012
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