Afghanistan Two Years after the Taliban Take-over

On the two-year anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, JST asked five experts who worked in and on Afghanistan for their comments.
The Shrinking US Defense Budget: Its Washington Politics and Outlook for the Coming Year

Congress has never had an easy time passing defense budgets. Despite partisan bickering, however, the Congress has successfully passed 62 consecutive defense authorization acts, including for the current year. The upcoming year’s budget appears to be a troubling exception. Sadly, the best-case scenario is for a defense budget that will be reduced for a time […]
The United States, Iran, and the Lessons of the Last War

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

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 […]