The Trump and Biden administrations have spent an enormous amount of energy blaming each other for the final collapse. Pompeo excoriated Biden in his memoir, fully blaming him and claiming the Doha agreement had nothing to do with Afghanistan’s subsequent collapse. In turn, the Biden White House released a twelve-page document in April 2023 with their version of events, placing blame on the Trump administration. In their mutual finger-pointing, they are both right: Trump signed the deal, and Biden implemented it. Trump was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan irrespective of what the Taliban said or did, weakening the United States’ diplomatic and military position to the point of collapse. Biden, despite having campaigned on a promise to undo Trump’s legacy, inexplicably followed Trump’s example and implemented Trump’s strategy. Thanks to Trump, Biden inherited an extremely difficult situation – one he managed to make even worse. He played a bad hand badly. And he did so, in large part, because when he looked at Afghanistan, he saw Vietnam.

President Obama spent almost his entire presidency talking about withdrawing from Afghanistan, which ended up being the one thing he managed not to accomplish. Endless and repetitive strategy reviews had all come to similar conclusions – that the US should stay for the long haul and do more to rebuild Afghanistan – conclusions which Obama resisted until the logic of events forced his hand. The timetable was not the single point of failure of the Afghanistan war, nor the only driver of all the problems with Obama’s handling of it. It is, however, the most potent symbol of Obama’s war. The timetable was the product of the defeatism and cynicism that pervaded every aspect of Obama’s handling of the war even as it undermined the surge, obviated reconstruction, and hamstrung negotiations, worsening the very failures and disappointments that Obama used to justify lowering his ambitions in the first place, made all the worse by how predictable the consequences would be.

The Taliban insurgency happened because they enjoyed a permissive environment: safe haven in Pakistan, state failure in Afghanistan, and an America increasingly focused on Iraq. In turn, most of those had common roots in the Bush administration’s decisions in 2001: to define the conflict as a “War on Terror” best waged with a light footprint and to conflate the Taliban and al-Qaida. Some of those decisions made sense in 2001, but none of them bore scrutiny as the situation in Afghanistan changed, and the Bush administration failed to adapt quickly enough.

The 2009 strategy review resulted in the most consequential decisions of the war. While scholars and historians have typically focused on the surge of 30,000 additional troops, the administration’s strategy was not simply to add more troops. Obama rejected the logic that to defeat al-Qaida required defeating the Taliban and made an explicit decision not to seek the Taliban’s defeat – but he also chose to escalate the war against them anyway. Instead, Obama adopted a vague goal of “reversing their momentum,” while training Afghan security forces. That was muddled enough, but he undermined even those goals by adopting a public withdrawal timetable for US troops and failing to coordinate the surge with reconstruction and diplomatic efforts. Coupled with internal miscommunications, tensions with the military, and a growing attitude of pessimism, the changes introduced in the December 2009 strategy hamstrung the surge and set the course for the rest of Obama’s presidency.

For its first eighteen months, the Trump administration steered a surprisingly defensible course in Afghanistan, thanks to many of Trump’s appointees who worked to preserve something of America’s interests intact within the confines of Trump’s desire to reduce American commitments overseas. They were squeezed from two sides: on the one hand, the frustrating results of the Obama administration’s various strategies – surge, drawdown, and negotiations – seemed (wrongly) to prove their futility. On the other hand, virtually no one was convinced that Trump’s demand to get out fully and immediately was a good idea. They wanted to stay, but it was unclear what kind of posture, mission, or strategy would be more effective than what Obama had tried.

Trump’s newly empowered foreign policy led to the Doha agreement with the Taliban and America’s final defeat in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s principal demand and the central element of the eventual Doha agreement was the full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. It was hardly something the Taliban needed to demand because Trump was demanding it too. Trump was not inclined to enforce the agreement anyway. Trump campaigned on getting out of Afghanistan and repeatedly and publicly announced his intent to withdraw, which undermined negotiations just as much as Obama’s timetable had done.

Some common themes emerge from these lessons about strategy and bureaucracy. The statesman and strategist also need wisdom to take the long view, prudence to discern what is practical, persistence and fortitude in implementation, courage to overcome groupthink and pride and bureaucratic resistance, temperance and humility to toil in unglamorous details. Above all the strategist must have a passion to pursue justice and peace. Statesmen and stateswomen need wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. If that is true, such timeless principles do not apply only to the individual policymaker. They apply to the nation we serve. American foreign policy should be characterized by wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice; our role in the world should serve those principles. Our grand strategy should take the long view, be practical and aware of our limits yet also courageous and visionary, fearless and uncompromising in the face of obstacles. Above all it must aim at justice – which means it must serve American interests, but it must do so with an awareness of how our interests are entwined with others.

The introduction provides an overview of the book, presents the core arguments, highlights the contribution to current literature, explains the book’s methods and sources, and outlines the structure of the book. The overarching argument of the book is that intelligence cooperation was so beneficial for all parties that European authorities therefore let Mossad carry out its operation and tolerated the use of its intelligence to kill Palestinians. Hence, the book demonstrates that the extensive advantages that European agencies gained through Club de Berne intelligence-sharing led them to turn a blind eye towards, or even tacitly support, Israeli covert actions on their respective territories.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States further propelled the global focus on terrorism. Despite international efforts, the threat of terrorism remains throughout the world. In this chapter, the challenges in defining and analyzing terrorism are established by articulating the characteristics, structures, and motivations of groups that terrorize others. These definitions of terrorism, and the features of relevant groups, are then placed within the wider context of intrastate conflict. Key questions addressed include: Why does terrorism more frequently occur in war-torn countries? And how does its occurrence lower prospects for sustainable peace? This analysis is then used to inform modern counterterrorism methods, and how their evolution is critical for future international and national security along with peace mediation studies.

There is a growing concern about the evolution of violent extremism in the digital era. This chapter presents historical progression and current state of how extremists have used digital advancements to increase their reach and influence for their own nefarious purposes. This chapter also discusses the challenges due to encryption and the need for a strategic collaboration and comprehensive whole-of-society approach to combat the threats effectively.

Chapter 3 focuses on the figure of the jihadist in the context of the Syrian Civil War. Outlawed as a terrorist by the Security Council and perceived as a security threat in home states, this latest version of the enemy of humanity seems to have nothing in common with previous foreign fighters. The aim of the chapter is to re-inscribe this actor within the longer history of foreign volunteering. It shifts from domestic debates to national courtrooms, showing how the jihadist combatant gets constantly split in two: idealist and fanatic, hero and villain, martyr and freedom fighter. Based on previous images of the foreign fighter, these dichotomies highlight different conceptions of freedom and hence problematize its current conflation with terrorism. The chapter ends with a digression on the laws of war, revealing the persisting cultural bias used against certain foreign combatants through the domestic application of IHL.