Military

BY BENJAMIN CLAYTON I’m British, so I know what a waning superpower looks like. America, welcome to the club. In 2015, Joseph Nye, geopolitical analyst extraordinaire, published a book: “Is the American Century Over?” His answer: no. Across three dimensions of power – economic, hard, and soft – Nye concluded that only in the first […]

BY DAN FISHER The Trump administration is set to send about 4,000 new troops to Afghanistan, and the usual pessimists are coming out of the woodwork. The naysayers argue against what some are referring to as another “surge,” treating the increase as if it were a time warp back to 2010, when the United States […]

BY JACOB SHELLY When President Obama stood outside the Blue Room on September 10th to announce a major expansion of airstrikes in the Middle East, he explained that he had no other choice. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), he warned, poses a threat to the entire region — including American citizens, personnel, […]

BY WILL DENN Fahim Muhammad believed that until the Taliban were defeated, Afghanistan, his homeland, would never be safe.1 In 2006, despite the objections of his wife and two children, Fahim dropped out of school to become a U.S. military interpreter. Because of his excellent command of English, Dari, Pashto, and the obscure Nuristani language, […]

BY MATTHEW VIGEANT For the first time in two years, Iraq is back on many Americans’ radars. The media has flashed alerts about Al Qaeda taking over cities in Anbar Province, and death tolls being at their highest since 2008. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration and Congress blame each other for the violence as they debate […]

A Note of Explanation: For the first time, the Kennedy School Review has tapped into the policy expertise of students across the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to collect their perspectives on President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address.  For two days, HKS students are providing their analysis on a broad range of policy […]

In 2004, Tammy Duckworth was deployed to Iraq as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot for the Illinois Army National Guard. She was one of the first Army women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom until her helicopter was hit by an RPG on 12 November 2004. Duckworth lost her legs and partial use […]