By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* The role of the Vice-President Biden in foreign policy in the Obama Administration ‘Listen to me, boss…Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know when these generals are trying to box in a new president…Don’t let them jam you.’[1] Vice-President Biden to President Obama…

By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘After reading McChrystal’s sixty-six-page assessment, I shared Joe’s skepticism. As far as I could tell, there was no clear exit strategy; under McChrystal’s plan, it would take five to six years just to get U.S. troop numbers back down to what they were now. The costs were staggering, at least…

By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs, and David Petraeus all endorsed McChrystal’s COIN strategy in its entirety; anything less, they argued, was likely to fail and would signal a dangerous lack of American resolve to friends and foes alike. Hillary and Panetta quickly followed suit.’[1] President Obama Introduction In the complex…

By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* ‘Joe and a sizable number of NSC staffers viewed McChrystal’s proposal as just the latest attempt by an unrestrained military to drag the country deeper into a futile, widely expensive nation-building exercise, when we could and should be narrowly focused on counterterrorism (CT) efforts against al-Qaeda.’[1] President Obama Introduction  In…

  By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* The Afghanistan War (and the Iraq War) had ‘left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarised and partisan backdrop for’ their effort to fight terrorism.[1] President Obama (and Secretary of Defense Gates) Introduction On December 1, 2009, President Barack Obama announced a critical…