Terminating the Endless War

Our latest edition focuses on the way ahead in Afghanistan.

It is about coming to terms with war termination.

The Trump Administration has focused in its defense strategy upon the urgent necessity to deal with the direct threats to the United States and its allies posed by peer competitors.

And a crucial skill set in succeeding in this competition will be to know how to manage crises, use force and diplomacy to terminate crises effectively.

But with the endless war in Afghanistan demonstrating clearly that the Administrations which launched and conducted the endless war simply can not terminate US engagement in a conflict, how will this work.

War termination in Afghanistan is not only important in terms of redirecting out efforts to protect core American interests and to deter adversaries investing and building for the high end fight, but also in demonstrating that the US can actually do war termination effectively.

Stability operations simply requires no clear war termination strategy. Crisis management with peer competitors clearly does.

The Afghanistan “warfighting school” is simply teaching the US very bad strategic habits. It is time to learn a new set of habits.

For an ebook version of the report, see the following: