America in Afghanistan

Foreign Policy and Decision Making From Bush to Obama to Trump

Sharifullah Dorani

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781784539986
• eBook ISBN: 9781786735829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Afghanistan has been a theatre of civil and international conflict for much of the twentieth century – stability is essential if there is to be peace in the Greater Middle East. Yet policy-makers in the West often seem to forget the lessons learned from previous administrations, whose interventions have contributed to the instability in the region. Here, Sharifullah Dorani focuses on the process of decision-making, looking at which factors influenced American policy-makers in the build-up to its longest war, the Afghanistan War, and how reactions on the ground in Afghanistan have influenced events since then. America in Afghanistan is a new, full history of US foreign policy toward Afghanistan from Bush's 'War on Terror', to Obama's war of 'Countering Violent Extremism' to Trump's war against 'Radical Islamic Terrorism'. Dorani is fluent in Pashto and Dari and uses unique and unseen Afghan source-work, published here for the first time, to understand the people in Afghanistan itself, and to answer their unanswered questions about 'real' US Afghan goals, the reasons for US failures in Afghanistan, especially its inability to improve governance and stop Pakistan, Iran and Russia from supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan, and the reasons for the bewildering changes in US Afghan policy over the course of 16 and a half years. To that end the author also assesses Presidents Karzai and Ghani's responses to Bush, Obama and Trump's policies in Afghanistan and the region. In addition, the book covers the role Afghanistan's neighbours – Russia, Iran, India, and especially Pakistan – played in America's Afghanistan War. This will be an essential book for those interested in the future of the region, and those who seek to understand its recent past.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I. BUSH’S ‘GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR’ IN AFGHANISTAN, 2001 – 8
• 1. The Intervention Decision at the Initiation Stage
• 2. The Intervention and Counterterrorism Decisions at the Formulation Stage, September 2001 – February 2002
• 3. An Insider’s Insight into Bush’s War Cabinet
• 4. The Counterterrorism Strategy at the Implementation Stage, 2002 – 8
• 5. The Counterterrorism Strategy at the Evaluation Stage and Bush’s Tilt towards a Counter-insurgency Strategy, 2007 – 8
• PART II. OBAMA’S WAR OF ‘COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM’ IN AFGHANISTAN, 2009 – 17
• 6. The Surge Decision at the Initiation Phase
• 7. An Insider’s Insight into Obama’s War Cabinet
• 8. The Surge Decision at the Formulation Phase, September – December 2009
• 9. The Surge Decision at the Implementation Phase, January 2010 – June 2011
• 10. The Surge Decision at the Evaluation Phase and Obama’s Formulation of the Withdrawal Decision, June 2011
• 11. The Withdrawal Strategy at the Implementation Phase and Obama’s Final Policy Alterations, July 2011 – December 2016
• PART III. TRUMP’S WAR AGAINST ‘RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM’ IN AFGHANISTAN, 2016 – 18
• 12. An Insider’s Insight into President Trump and his Administration
• 13. Trump’s South Asia Strategy in Afghanistan at the Initiation, Formulation and Implementation Phases, 2016 – 18
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index