Understanding War in Afghanistan

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This monograph is an intellectual primer on war in Afghanistan. I come to this task through a string of accidents that has kept me involved with war in Afghanistan as a Soldier and an academic for over 30 years. It began in graduate school at Columbia University in New York City, where I was privileged to study with some of the Nation’s greatest experts on the Soviet Union and Central Europe, and with another superb crew of scholars on war and peace issues. These interests came together with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. From 1980 to 1984, I worked on my dissertation on the Soviet invasion under the guidance of two consummate professionals: Professors Marshall Shulman, the former Advisor to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on Soviet affairs; and Zalmay Khalilzad, a young academic strategist who later became a colleague in the Pentagon and still later Ambassador to Afghanistan, his boyhood home, and then to Iraq. Three colleagues at West Point were very helpful in my study of Afghanistan…