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Bibliographic Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2025

Paul D. Miller
Paul D. Miller
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Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Choosing Defeat
The Twenty-Year Saga of How America Lost Afghanistan
 , pp. 496 - 504
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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Bibliographic Essay

Interviews: I am grateful to the following officials who sat for on-the-record interviews for this book (listed alphabetically by last name): Richard Armitage, David Barno, John Bolton, Richard Boucher, John Brennan, Ash Carter, Victoria Coates, Eliot Cohen, Ryan Crocker, James Cunningham, Lisa Curtis, Jim Dobbins, Eric Edelman, Jeff Eggers, Karl Eikenberry, Andrew Erdman, William Fallon, Douglas Feith, John Gastright, Robert Gates, Bob Grenier, Marc Grossman, Stephen P. Hadley, Chuck Hagel, Tony Harriman, Colin Jackson, Jim Jones, Zalmay Khalilzad, Chris Kolenda, Peter Lavoy, Hugo Llorens, Fernando Lujan, Doug Lute, Stan McChrystal, Ken McKenzie, David McKiernan, Michael McKinley, H. R. McMaster, Dan McNeill, Laurel Miller, Ronald Neumann, Robert O’Brien, Rick Olson, Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, Maureen Quinn, Mitchell Reiss, Condoleezza Rice, Barney Rubin, Frank Ruggiero, James Shinn, Mitchell Shivers, Vikram Singh, Ashely Tellis, Joseph Votel, Tony Wayne, Larry Wilkerson, Bill Wood.

I also used interviews from two other sources. First, the Miller Center’s George W. Bush Oral History project at the University of Virginia (https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/george-w-bush) is cited in the text by the last name of the interviewee followed by “Bush Oral History.” (Columbia University houses the Obama Oral History Project and only just started publishing interviews as my work on this book concluded.) Second, interviews conducted by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction are available through the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers project (www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/). They are cited in the text by the last name of the interviewee followed by “SIGAR interview.”

Some former officials were unavailable or unwilling to sit for an interview. Bush and Obama declined invitations. Both have written insightful memoirs, though Obama’s second volume, covering his second term, has not been published yet. Trump’s office did not respond to my invitation, and he was busy running for a second term and avoiding jail, not writing a memoir, during this project. Biden’s office responded with an email touting his success in managing the withdrawal. Among the other principals: Don Rumsfeld passed away two months before I started this project; Colin Powell passed away four months later, before I could establish contact with him, and sadly left behind no memoir of his time as secretary of state, though I did hear a rumor that he had started one. Susan Rice and John Kerry were serving in the Biden administration and declined or did not respond to invitations to speak to me during this project. Unfortunately, their memoirs are sparse on Afghanistan. Jim Mattis graciously declined my invitation and appears to have no plans to write a memoir of his time as secretary of defense. Tom Donilon, Hillary Clinton, and Rex Tillerson did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Clinton’s memoir has more detail than Kerry’s or Rice’s; Donilon and Tillerson seem unlikely to write theirs. I remain interested in speaking to any official involved in the war in hopes of someday updating this work in a new edition.

Official Reports: The UN secretary general began issuing quarterly reports on “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security” in 1996, after the Taliban first came to power. They are cited in the text using the United Nations’ notation system (e.g., A/56/6810-S/2001/1157) along with the date and page number. The US Department of Defense issued twenty-six biannual reports between 2008 and 2020, first entitled “Report on Progress towards Security and Stability in Afghanistan” until the 2014 transition, and “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan” thereafter. They are cited in the text as “Report on Progress” or “Enhancing Security,” along with the date and page number. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) issued fifty-two quarterly reports from October 2008 to the end of the war (and continued to issue them after the fall of Kabul), which are cited in the text as “SIGAR Quarterly Report,” along with the date and page number. Collectively, these sources are the best official narratives available in English representing the American and international side in the war in Afghanistan.

Document Archives: Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir is unique: he cajoled the Department of Defense into declassifying hundreds of pages of his memos during his time as secretary of defense. The papers are available at www.rumsfeld.com and represent the earliest look at the archival record of the Bush administration (though Rumsfeld’s selection of what to declassify is itself a matter for scrutiny). Other primary source documents are available at George Washington University’s National Security Archive (nsarchive.gwu.edu), with special reading rooms related to Afghanistan here (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/afghanistan-taliban-project) and here (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/afghanistan/2021-08-19/afghanistan-2020-20-year-war-20-documents).

Congressional Testimony: There are tens of thousands of pages of congressional hearings and testimony related to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. I have cited Congressional testimony by committee name, name of the hearing, date, and page number. Hearing transcripts and committee reports can be found here (www.govinfo.gov/browse/committee).

Speeches, News, Polls: Where I have quoted from presidential speeches or used contemporary news source or public opinion polls, I have put the full citation in the footnote. I have not included those sources in the bibliography.

Online Data: I used a wide array of data that is readily available online. These are generally cited in the text with the originating organization’s name, the name of the dataset or webpage, and a web address.

The Brookings Institution collected a wide range of data in its periodic “Afghanistan Index,” updated regularly between 2005 and 2020 (www.brookings.edu/afghanistan-index/).

The Asia Foundation first polled the Afghan population in advance of the 2004 presidential election and thereafter conducted annual surveys from 2006 to 2019, the best (and almost only) source of information about public opinion in Afghanistan. The reports were taken down from the Foundation’s website after the Taliban’s seizure of power, but many university libraries and other organizations host copies.

The New America Foundation maintains an online database of reported drone strikes in Pakistan (www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/americas-counterterrorism-wars/the-drone-war-in-pakistan/).

USAID maintains an online portal with data on US foreign assistance to every state in the world since World War II (www.foreignassistance.gov/).

The World Bank calculates several “governance indicators” to measure the quality of governance around the world (https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/).

Transparency International publishes an annual “Corruptions Perception Index” ranking all countries in the world by the amount of perceived corruption in their public institutions (www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022).

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) publishes an annual Opium Survey with reams of statistics on poppy cultivation and opium and heroin production in various states, including Afghanistan (www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/surveys.html).

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (at Uppsala University, Sweden) is the largest dataset on organized violence that I know of (www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/).

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  • Bibliographic Essay
  • Paul D. Miller, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Choosing Defeat
  • Online publication: 07 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614382.017
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  • Bibliographic Essay
  • Paul D. Miller, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Choosing Defeat
  • Online publication: 07 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614382.017
Available formats
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  • Bibliographic Essay
  • Paul D. Miller, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: Choosing Defeat
  • Online publication: 07 October 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614382.017
Available formats
×