Download or read book Afghanistan from the Cold War Through the War on Terror written by Barnett R. Rubin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-25 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of articles written from 1989 to 2009, updated for this volume.
Download or read book Ghost Wars written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Barnett R. Rubin and published by What Everyone Needs to Know(r). This book was released on 2020 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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."--
Download or read book Breeding Ground written by Deepak Tripathi and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Wars of Afghanistan written by Peter Tomsen and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leaving Without Losing written by Mark N. Katz and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Afghanistan in the Post Cold War Era written by Barnett R. Rubin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of articles written from 1989 to 2009, updated for this volume.
Download or read book Why We re Losing the War on Terror written by Paul Rogers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The War on Terrorism and the American Empire after the Cold War written by Alejandro Colas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-04-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Why We Lost written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Understanding the U S Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan written by Beth L. Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Imagining Afghanistan written by Alla Ivanchikova and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelled Afghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening “Afghanistan” has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition. “Afghanistan” serves as a lens through which contemporary cultural producers contend with the moral ambiguities of twenty-first-century humanitarianism, interpret the legacy of the Cold War, debate the role of the U.S. in the rise of transnational terror, and grapple with the long-term impact of war on both human and nonhuman ecologies. Post-9/11 global Afghanistan literary production remains largely NATO-centric insofar as it is marked by an uncritical investment in humanitarianism as an approach to Third World suffering and in anti-communism as an unquestioned premise. The book’s first half exposes how persisting anti-socialist biases—including anti-statist bias—not only shaped recent literary and visual texts on Afghanistan, resulting in a distorted portrayal of its tragic history, but also informed these texts’ reception by critics. In the book’s second half, the author examines cultural texts that challenge this limited horizon and forge alternative ways of representing traumatic histories. Captured by the author through the concepts of deep time, nonhuman witness, and war as a multispecies ecology, these new aesthetics bring readers a sophisticated portrait of Afghanistan as a rich multispecies habitat affected in dramatic ways by decades of war but not annihilated.
Download or read book The War on Terror and the American empire After the Cold War written by Alejandro Colás and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The contributions in The War on Terror and the American 'Empire' After the Cold War 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." "The War on Terror and the American 'Empire' After the Cold War is essential reading for students and academics with research interests in US History and Politics and Global Politics. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book America s war on Terrorism written by John E. Owens and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has 9/11 and George W. Bush's self-declared "war" on terror changed American government and US foreign policy? This is the central question addressed in the nine original essays in this book. Following an introduction by the editors, in which they survey issues and debates raised by America's "War" on Terrorism and its consequences for US government and politics, foreign policy, and for American foreign relations, the contributions to this volume--from British and American scholars--explain the implications of the post-9/11 mobilization and reconfiguration of US foreign and internal security policies. Issues addressed in the book include: the growth of presidential power, executive branch reconfiguration and the managerial presidency, the Bush doctrine of pre-emption, the changing role of the US in the international order, the impact of the "war" on terrorism on the US military, intelligence failure and the changed role of US intelligence, renewed tension in US-European relations, and Bush's alliance with Tony Blair's government in the United Kingdom. Taken together, the essays represent an original and timely assessment of the domestic and international repercussions of George W. Bush's responses to the terrorist attacks September 11, 2001.
Download or read book Crossing Zero written by Elizabeth Gould and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan has become the most complex foreign policy problem the United States has ever faced, spreading into Pakistan and involving the conflicting interests of Russia, India, China and Iran. Written as a companion to Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald's widely acclaimed book Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Crossing Zero focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration's evolving military and political strategy, the people implementing it, and the long-term consequences for the United States and the region. "Fitzgerald and Gould have consistently raised the difficult questions and inconvenient truths about western engagement in Afghanistan. While many analysts and observers have attempted to wish a reality on a grim and tragic situation in Afghanistan, Fitzgerald and Gould have systematically dug through the archives and historical record with integrity and foresight to reveal a series of misguided strategies and approaches that have contributed to what has become a tragic quagmire in Afghanistan. I suspect that many of their assessments while presently viewed as controversial and contentious, will eventually be considered conventional wisdom."—Thomas Johnson "Americans are now beginning to grasp the scope of the mess their leaders made while pursuing misguided military adventures into regions of Central Asia we once called 'remote.' How this happened—and what the US can do to extricate itself from its entanglements in Pakistan and Afghanistan—is the story of Crossing Zero. Based on decades of study and research, this book draws lines and connects dots in ways few others do. It is clear, sober and methodical—an ideal handbook for anyone seeking to understand how the US became the latest imperial power to blunder into this turbulent and fascinating region."—Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah's Men and Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future "I loved it. An extraordinary contribution to understanding war and geo-politics in Afghanistan that will shock most Americans by its revelations of official American government complicity in using, shielding, sponsoring and supporting terrorism. A devastating indictment on the behind-the-scenes shenanigans by some of America's most respected statesmen."—Daniel Estulin "Gould and Fitzgerald have identified the triumphalist strain that has marked American foreign policy over the past 100 years and documented President Obama's failure to introduce change to American national security policy. The war in Afghanistan is consistent with previous failures in U.S. policymaking over the past 50 years as well as with the misuse of military force. This book should be required reading at the National Security Council and the Pentagon."—Melvin A. Goodman; CIA Senior Soviet Analyst, 1966-1990; Professor of International Security at the National War College,1986-2004; Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy, Washington, DC. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's television show, Watchworks. Called, The Arms Race and the Economy, A Delicate Balance, they found themselves in the midst of a swirling controversy that was to boil over a few months later with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Their acquisition of the first visas to enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew in the spring of 1981, brought them into the middle of the most heated Cold War controversy since Vietnam. But the pictures and the people inside Soviet occupied Afghanistan told a very different story from the one being broadcast on the evening news.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Barnett Rubin and published by . This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barnett R. Rubin, one of the world's leading scholars of contemporary conflict and politics in Afghanistan, offers unique insights into the country's turbulent history, gleaned from four decades of work as a scholar and practitioner for both the United Nations and the United States. After situating the formation of modern Afghanistan in its long-term historical context, Rubin focuses on the period of armed conflict that began in 1978. The book analyzes the local, national, regional, and global shifts on social structure and the economy that perpetuated violent conflict while transforming its structure. Rubin's own analysis is complemented by guest chapters by world experts on Afghanistan's aid economy, drug industry, and the Taliban.
Download or read book The Afghan War and Its Geopolitical Implications for India written by Salman Haidar and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Countries Have Been More Affected By The Us-Led War Against Afghanistan Than India. There Was Initial Hope That The War Would Stamp Out The Terrorism Plaguing India But This Was Soon Belied, And The Afghan Situation Remains Highly Unpredictable. By Now, American`S Interest Has Shifted Elsewhere, Yet The Military Presence It Has Established All Around Afghanistan Profoundly Affects The Geopolitical Picture In The Heart Of Asia. The Powerful Lure Of Oil And Gas Has Begun To Open Up A Region Once Off Limits To The West, And New Commercial And Political Rivalries Are Taking Shape.
