From Great Game to Grand Bargain
Afghanistan and Pakistan are major trouble spots and a key source of terrorism, largely because of poverty, minimal education and economic opportunities, and training camps that blame the US, Israel and India for local problems. Yet sending more combat troops to the region won’t improve security, argue authors Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in an essay for Foreign Affairs. “U.S. diplomacy has been paralyzed by the rhetoric of ‘the war on terror’ -- a struggle against ‘evil,’ in which other actors are ‘with us or with the terrorists,’" write Rubin and Rashid. “Such rhetoric thwarts sound strategic thinking.” The region’s problems are complex and require diplomacy and soft-power investments, including economic development and education. – YaleGlobal
From Great Game to Grand Bargain
Ending chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Click here to read the article in Foreign Affairs.
Barnett R. Rubin is director of studies and a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the author of “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan” and “Blood on the Doorstep.” Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and writer, a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the author of “Jihad, Taliban,” and, most recently, “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20081001faessay87603/barnett-r-rubin-ahmed-rashid/...
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