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Author: Barnett R. Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-03-25
Total Pages: 540
ISBN-13: 0190229276
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A collection of articles written from 1989 to 2009, updated for this volume.
Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2005-03-03
Total Pages: 736
ISBN-13: 0141935790
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Author: Barnett R. Rubin
Publisher: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 0190496630
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Through much of the twentieth century Afghanistan seemed to be a distant concern in the U.S. "Afghanistanism" used to be journalistic shorthand for stories about distant places that editors dismissed as irrelevant. Afghanistan's territory does include some remote, barely accessible regions, but it also includes ancient metropolises such as Balkh, Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar that through much of history were crossroads for commerce and the spread of ideas, including religions and artistic styles. Afghanistan's period of isolation was not an inevitable consequence of its location; it was the result of the policies of the British and Russian colonial empires. In the late 19th and 20th century, those empires agreed to make Afghanistan a buffer state separating their two empires. The only foreign representative would be a Muslim representative of British India, which controlled Afghanistan's foreign affairs. That arrangement has broken down so thoroughly, that Afghanistan is now the opposite of a buffer state. Instead of preventing conflict by separating empires or states, it has become an arena where others act out proxy conflicts. The Soviet invasion of December 1979 turned the country into the hottest conflict of a supposedly Cold War. The Afghan state collapsed in the 1990s as a result of that proxy war and the breakup of the USSR, which had been funding the state. The country then became the arena of conflict among regional powers - Pakistan versus Iran, Russia, and India - but also a zone of competition over pipeline routes among the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Iran."--
Author: Deepak Tripathi
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 363
ISBN-13: 1597975605
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Beginning with the Communist Saur Revolution of 1978 and continuing through Gen. David Petraeus’s 2010 appointment replacing Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, this book is an inside account of one of the most vicious conflicts fought between the two Cold War superpowers: the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89). Analyzing the behind-the-scenes decisions made in Moscow, Washington, and Kabul, former BBC correspondent Deepak Tripathi shows how that conflict transformed Afghanistan into a sanctuary for terrorism. Explaining how Afghanistan descended into a civil war from which the Taliban emerged, Tripathi explores the ways in which the country ultimately became a grotesque mirror image of the anticommunist alliance of U.S. forces and radical Islamists in the Cold War’s final phase. Calling for a departure from the current pursuit of military strong-arm tactics, he advocates an approach that is centered on development, internal reconciliation, and societal reconstruction in Afghanistan.
Author: Mark N. Katz
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2012-03-14
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13: 142140558X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Assesses what went wrong in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlines how the U.S. can restructure its foreign policy by following lessons learned in the Cold War.
Author: Peter Tomsen
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2013-12-10
Total Pages: 912
ISBN-13: 1610394127
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →As Ambassador and Special Envoy on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, Peter Tomsen has had close relationships with Afghan leaders and has dealt with senior Taliban, warlords, and religious leaders involved in the region's conflicts over the last two decades. Now Tomsen draws on a rich trove of never-before-published material to shed new light on the American involvement in the long and continuing Afghan war. This book offers a deeply informed perspective on how Afghanistan's history as a “shatter zone” for foreign invaders and its tribal society have shaped the modern Afghan narrative. It brings to life the appallingly misinformed secret operations by foreign intelligence agencies, including the Soviet NKVD and KGB, the Pakistani ISI, and the CIA. American policy makers, Tomsen argues, still do not understand Afghanistan; nor do they appreciate how the CIA's covert operations and the Pentagon's military strategy have strengthened extremism in the country. At this critical time, he shows how the U.S. and the coalition it leads can assist the region back to peace and stability.
Author: Paul Rogers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2013-04-23
Total Pages: 227
ISBN-13: 0745645623
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The war on terror is a lost cause. As the war heads towards its second decade, American security policy is in disarray – the Iraq War is a disaster, Afghanistan is deeply insecure and the al-Qaida movement remains as potent as ever with new generations of leaders coming to the fore. Well over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, many tens of thousands have been detained without trial, and torture, prisoner abuse and rendition have sullied the reputation of the United States and its coalition partners. Why We’re Losing the War on Terror examines the reasons for the failure, focusing on American political and military attitudes, the impact of 9/11, the fallacy of a New American Century, the role of oil and, above all, the consummate failure to go beyond a narrow western view of the world. More significantly, it argues that the disaster of the war may have a huge if unexpected bonus. Its very failure will make it possible to completely re-think western attitudes to global security, moving towards a sustainable policy that will be much more effective in addressing the real threats to global security – the widening socio-economic divide and climate change.
Author: Alejandro Colas
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-04-11
Total Pages: 279
ISBN-13: 1134258267
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This new study shows how the American-led ‘war on terror’ has brought about the most significant shift in the contours of the international system since the end of the Cold War. A new ‘imperial moment’ is now discernible in US foreign policy in the wake of the neo-conservative rise to power in the USA, marked by the development of a fresh strategic doctrine based on the legitimacy of preventative military strikes on hostile forces across any part of the globe. Key features of this new volume include: * an alternative, critical take on contemporary US foreign policy * a timely, accessible overview of critical thinking on US foreign policy, imperialism and war on terror * the full spectrum of critical view sin a single volume * many of these essays are now ‘contemporary classics’ The essays collected in this volume analyse the historical, socio-economic and political dimensions of the current international conjuncture, and assess the degree to which the war on terror has transformed the nature and projection of US global power. Drawing on a range of critical social theories, this collection seeks to ground historically the analysis of global developments since the inception of the new Bush Presidency and weigh up the political consequences of this imperial turn. This book will be of great interest for all students of US foreign policy, contemporary international affairs, international relations and politics.
Author: Beth L. Bailey
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 377
ISBN-13: 9781479809080
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Daniel P. Bolger
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 565
ISBN-13: 0544370481
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.
