New Roundtable: Defeat in Afghanistan? The View from 2050
An important upcoming blogging roundtable this summer at Chicago Boyz. Now a word from our moderator, Lexington Green:
Defeat in Afghanistan? The View from 2050
Voices from many quarters are saying dire things about the American-led campaign in Afghanistan. The prospect of defeat, whatever that may mean in practice, is real. But we are so close to the events, it is hard to know what is and is not critical. And the facts which trickle out allow people who are not insiders to only have a sketchy, pointillist impression of the state of play. There is a lot of noise around a weak signal.
ChicagoBoyz will be convening a group of contributors to look back on the American campaign in Afghanistan from a forty year distance, from 2050.
40 years is the period from Fort Sumter to the Death of Victoria, from the Death of Victoria to Pearl Harbor, from Pearl Harbor to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. It is a big chunk of history. It is enough time to gain perspective.
This exercise in informed and educated imagination is meant to help us gain intellectual distance from the drumbeat of day to day events, to understand the current situation in Afghanistan more clearly, to think-through the potential outcomes, and to consider the stakes which are in play in the longer run of history for America, for its military, for the region, and for the rest of the world.
The Roundtable contributors will publish their posts and responses during the third and fourth weeks of August, 2010.
The ChicagoBoyz blog is a place where we can think about the unthinkable.
Stand by for further details, including a list of our contributors.
June 19th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Wish list: Barnett, Robb, Exum, Elkus, Maximus, Flagg, Wiggins, TDAXP, Courtney (GSGF), Payne & Betz (KOW), and you, of course. That’s off the top of my head…
I trust Lex and others at CB will have their own bits, too. Whoa – a couple of guys at SWJ, without doubt, too. Can’t wait for this one, and I love the approach.
June 19th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
hi Lurker,
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That is a good list. Some big names have, in fact, already committed and we hope to have a field that is both strong as well as diverse in expertise. I think the shorter format is appealing to ppl with very busy scheds.
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Lex will announce the final list in a few wweeks time but I will reproduce it here when he does
June 20th, 2010 at 1:26 am
This looks like a hell of a contribution to advancing the Afghanistan debate. Plus its always beneficial to showcase the exceptional ability of this corner of the blogosphere to foster valuable thinking on issues that is mostly independent of empty partisanship and ideology.
June 20th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
So in order "to understand the current situation in Afghanistan more clearly" You want your contributors "to think-through the potential outcomes, and to consider the stakes which are in play in the longer run of history for America, for its military, for the region, and for the rest of the world."
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This is a worthwhile project which should give the blogosphere an opportunity to compete with mainstream think tanks for policy influence. After past round-tables, you guys created a book that included the major contributions. This time you should prepare the book in a way that would be useful to policy makers. These people (policy makers)need a new perspective besides what their friends at the thank tanks and on Wall Street put out.
July 6th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
[…] am excited to be a part of this upcoming roundtable, along with Mark Safranski, Shane Deichman, and others. I hope my own upcoming post, The Long Type of Time, will be […]