Afghanistan: Winnable, But Only Just…

Kilcullen on Afghanistan: It’s Still Winnable, But Only Just – George Packer, The New Yorker’s Interesting Times

I wrote about David Kilcullen two years ago, in a piece called Knowing the Enemy. Few experts understand counterinsurgency and counterterrorism better than this former Australian army officer and anthropology Ph.D, who has advised the American, British, and Australian governments, was one of General Petraeus’s strategic whizzes at the start of the surge, in early 2007, and writes so well that you’d never imagine he’s spent his whole career in government, the military, and academia. Kilcullen is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, which has provided Obama with foreign-policy advisers and advice.

This week, Kilcullen agreed to do an e-mail Q. & A. on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he’s spent a lot of time, and where the most pressing foreign crisis awaits the new Administration. Though Kilcullen is still an adviser to the State Department, he emphasized that his views are his own. And they are characteristically blunt…

Read the Q&A at The New Yorker.

Also – Dave will be a guest of CNN this Sunday (1 PM ET) on Fareed Zakaria’s show GPS – the subject – counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.