Over the next week or so, you may read many pieces explaining America's military failure in Afghanistan and while we shouldn't ignore the strategic mistakes on the battlefield, they are not the lessons that explain how the Taliban retook control in a few short weeks after our exit. The Taliban's victory was perfectly predictable once we withdrew. The only question was how long it would take. There are numerous reasons for the Taliban's success, and they aren't all that comple

All the recent polling of Americans made clear that there was no support for keeping US troops in Afghanistan. 73% of registered voters in a July 2-3 survey conducted by The Hill and the HarrisX organization said they support removing U.S. forces. We have written often that we disagree with that decision, both when President Donald Trump announced his withdrawal timetable and as the Biden administration revisited the policy several months ago. The consequences were all too pr

Donald Trump's victory in 2016 didn't happen in a vacuum. He adopted policies circulating through Europe and adapted them to America. Trump and Steve Bannon, who became his adviser on such things, saw Brexit in the UK along with the rise of Marine Le Pen in France and the election of far right politicians in Poland and Hungary as a bellwether for political change in Western democracies. It was a reactionary movement against immigration, secularism, and globalism and Bannon re

During the Trump years, America's standing in the world was reduced to what it could obtain through raw power and intimidation. That might have been enough for Great Britain in the 19th Century, but in the age of nuclear weapons, cyberwarfare, terrorism, and a globalized economy it's not enough to achieve the nation's international goals. You also need what IR expert Joseph Nye called "soft power." US President Joe Biden understands that you need both to reach your global obj

To most Middle-East foreign policy experts, the current fighting between Israel and Palestinians is a predictable consequence of not addressing the two underlying impediments to peace. They haven't changed much in 30 or more years. 1. Hamas [The Islamic Resistance Movement] continues to offer the Palestinians in Gaza, and, to a lesser extent, the West Bank, a vision of "victory" that has absolutely no relationship to reality. They will not "liberate" Palestine from Israeli "o

There appears to be no end to the horrors that China will perpetuate against its Muslim minority in Xinjiang. The Chinese government’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang now represents a "crime against humanity" under international law. Human Rights Watch has been documenting the atrocities. Human Rights Watch: "As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities,[3] which include “political education” camps, pretria