Forging an Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan

September 14, 2016 Topic: Security Region: Middle East Tags: AfghanistanMiddle EastMilitary

Forging an Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan

Advice to the next U.S. president. 

While dangers are always present, new possibilities lie ahead. Determined collaboration between the White House and Congress as well as Afghan leaders can break the cycle of yearly approaches to the brink of the policymaking cliff. That can in turn help create a longer time horizon for security, political, and economic reforms that will surely take an additional decade or more even to reach a modest degree of success. In light of the continued extremist threat in Central and South Asia, and thus the importance of Afghanistan to western security, this is a burden that we can afford to bear—and one to which we should mutually commit in partnership with the Afghan people and government.

Ambassadors to Afghanistan

Ryan Crocker

James Cunningham

Robert Finn

Zalmay Khalilzad

Ronald Neumann

Military Commanders in Afghanistan

John Allen

David Barno

John Campbell

Stanley McChrystal

David Petraeus

Special Representatives for Afghanistan/Pakistan

James Dobbins

Marc Grossman

Afghanistan Scholars

Vanda Felbab-Brown, The Brookings Institution

Seth Jones, RAND Corporation

Clare Lockhart, Institute for State Effectiveness

Michael O’Hanlon, The Brookings Institution

Bruce Riedel, The Brookings Institution

David Sedney, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Earl Anthony (Tony) Wayne, Center for Strategic and International Studies