International Relations is offering an additional zero level elective for IR majors, minors and students interested in the topic.
Check out this new course being taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Thomas Cavanna:
Despite a seemingly brilliant victory in the early post-9/11 era, the war in Afghanistan became the longest war in US history, failed to eradicate regional terrorism, and ended in 2021 with the return of the Taliban in Kabul following a chaotic evacuation process whose tragic images made the headlines globally. How can we explain this failure? Did Washington and its allies ever stand a chance to create a stable, democratic, and prosperous Afghanistan, or was it all just a hubristic overreach? Straddling history, theory, and policy, this course investigates those questions by confronting the US-led coalition’s objectives and way of war to the experience of previous invaders (from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union), the lasting legacies of the Cold War, the inherent ambiguities of foreign-led state-building and democratization, the complex dynamics of the Global War on Terror, and the deep-seated features of Afghanistan’ society. It also discusses how local developments interacted with issues such as the India-Pakistan rivalry, the rise of China, and US domestic politics.
IR 096: The U.S. War in Afghanistan - The course is being offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays (15:00-16:15)