Lessons for Postwar Gaza from the American Experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan
![Khan Yunis, Gaza, July 2024. Photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa via Reuters Connect.](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/21093633/gaza_n-1024x554.jpg)
“Don’t repeat our mistakes—we can do it ourselves.” This line occurred to me as I listened to discussions of “the day after” in Gaza. Plans and ideas need to address the detailed problems of implementation. I do not pose as an expert on Israel or Palestinian affairs. Rather I draw from the painful lived experiences […]
The Taliban Regime was Not Inevitable – Afghanistan’s Historical and Cultural Legacy and Efforts to Revive It
![Taliban celebrate the second anniversary of their take-over, in front of the American embassy in Kabul, August 15, 2023. Photo credit: Zerah Oriane/ABACA via Reuters Connect](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/02144137/kabul_n-1024x554.jpeg)
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and ensuing Taliban’s conquest have unleashed humanitarian, security, and geopolitical upheavals in the region.
Afghanistan Two Years after the Taliban Take-over
![Soldiers return home from deployment in Afghanistan, Fort Drum, New York, September 2021. Photo credit: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/02144219/afghan_n-1024x554.jpeg)
On the two-year anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, JST asked five experts who worked in and on Afghanistan for their comments.
Afghanistan’s Relations with Neighbors Under the Taliban: Exporting Instability
![Afghan men consume drugs on a side street of a market in Afghanistan. Photo credit: Oliver Weiken/dpa](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/02144231/afghanistan_n-1024x554.jpg)
In the two years since they took over Afghanistan, the Taliban have ignited several diplomatic crises and security threats across the country’s borders. Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have warned that the Taliban are hosting terror groups, and UN and other sources have noted increasing drug trade, border tensions and refugee flows. Central Asian states, particularly […]
The United States, Iran, and the Lessons of the Last War
![Flags of the United States and Iran side by side and a missile with nuclear symbol in the middle of the two national symbols, illustration](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/02144237/iran_n-1024x554.jpg)
Generals, the old adage goes, are prone to fighting the last war. Political leaders and the people they represent typically prefer to avoid armed conflict. They have heeded what they have believed to be the lessons of the most recent conflict in which they have been engaged, seeking, in effect, to avoid the last war. […]
Mike McCaul’s Hard Line on the Afghanistan Papers
![House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul. Photo credit: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/02144402/mike_n-1024x554.jpeg)
Everyone recognizes that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was a chaotic mess. Even the Biden administration, in a National Security Council document released on April 6, acknowledges the civilian evacuation from Kabul should have been carried out sooner. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul (Republican of Texas) has been adamant that the administration come […]
Lessons We Should Have Learned from Vietnam
![Members of Company "D", Second Batallion, Third Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade, in Long Binh, Vietnam on October 6, 1969. Photo credit: DPA / Picture Alliance via Reuters Connect](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/02144515/vietnam_narrow-1024x554.jpg)
With recent experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan in mind, three former US ambassadors look back at their earlier careers as infantry officers in Vietnam and offer the following lessons.
When Nation Building Works
![Reconstructing the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the old city of Mosul, Iraq. Photo credit: Credit: REUTERS](https://static.jstribune.com/jst-site/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02144522/iraq2_narrow-1024x554.jpg)
Nation building is a US policy for transforming post-conflict countries, a policy discredited among a broad swath of Washington because of Iraq and Afghanistan. But I question this consensus and recommend rehabilitating the policy in time to help reconstruct postwar Ukraine. >> Diplomatic Dispatches: Read more from Robert Silverman Didn’t the US role in postwar Japan […]