George W. Bush

As the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 looms, President Joe Biden has rushed to pull US troops out of Afghanistan. What are we to make of all of this?

Today we’re covering three scintillating pieces from Providence this week, one on the Israel and Hamas conflict, another on a new book about the Iraq War, and thirdly, one by yours truly on the New Whiggery.

Robert Draper’s book To Start a War details why the Bush administration made a gravely mistaken decision, despite having clearly met the jus ad bellum criteria of “right intention.”

The fact that Americans have shifted their focus back to domestic concerns isn’t abnormal or un-American. It is the predictable resurgence of the two domestically focused schools of the American foreign policy tradition.

In the almost-19 years since they dispatched their military to Afghanistan, US policymakers and the people they represent have learned, relearned, and unlearned several lessons.

Much of Carter Malkesian’s narrative about the Afghan war is spot-on, but he gets several key events wrong.

In the wake of the Washington Post’s big document dump of secret government and military communications about the war in Afghanistan, a fresh wave of calls for pulling out of Afghanistan is sounding across the media.

What is the role of moral values in the conduct of foreign relations? Although many answers have been given, three major traditions predominate: realism, idealism, and principled realism.

If history is any guide, we will regret abandoning Afghanistan (again), trusting the Taliban and disengaging from the world around us.