China now seems the most likely actor to take a position in the post-withdrawal Afghanistan, while it remains to be seen whether Beijing wishes to engage in a conflict that the USSR and NATO had difficulty in controlling before it
Afghanistan has been a priority area for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s as a result of the growing influence of the two adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People’s Republic ...
... Stoltenberg,
the number of forces that will remain in Afghanistan as part of the
Resolute Support Mission in 2016 will be approximately
12 thousand troops
.
These figures differ insignificantly from the current level of foreign military presence in Afghanistan. According to NATO data, as of October 2015, troop numbers and contributions amounted to 13.1 thousand servicemen from 40 countries, of which 1.8 thousand (13%) are from countries that are not members of the Alliance.
Source
:
Afganistan Resolute Support. Troop Numbers and Contributions
Military presence
REUTERS/Erik de Castro
Maria Nebolsina:
...
1. More cohesion in NATO?
According to the balance-of-threat assumption the lack of unambiguous threat decreases cohesion of military alliances, whereas ... ... back at best. At worst, one can fail as the U.S. did in Vietnam. You just cannot combat these guys from the sky!
3. Whither Afghanistan?
Well, it's pretty simple. A president of Kabul is not a president of Afghanistan. Almost entire south-east ...
Interview with Farkhod Tolipov, Director of Caravan of Knowledge
Interview
Afghanistan’s presidential elections on April 5б 2014 did not deliver an outright winner, and the second round is scheduled ... ... no better than his predecessor, will fail to stabilize the domestic arena, where security remains the key concern. Besides, NATO is set to withdraw most of its contingent from Afghanistan by the end of this year, giving way both to fresh risks and new ...
The New Five-Year Plan for Russia-NATO
No conceptual document of the Russian Federation – neither the
National ... ... NATO continued practical cooperation in what they considered critical areas, such as Afghanistan. It became clear that even facing such a conflict situation, Russia and... ... the European missile defense issue should be resolved within the framework of Russia-USA relations, and NATO is well aware of this. As the Permanent Representative of Russia...
... shall once again attempt to analyze the U.S. experience, primarily in terms of its potential impact on the military evolution of NATO.
The 2003 War
Most past campaigns ended with seizure of the enemy capital, dismantling of its military and state institutions,... ... Washington has fully achieved its
declared goal of toppling the Saddam regime.»
The technological gap was not as wide as in Afghanistan, where NATO faced poorly-trained and scantily-equipped Taliban troops formed less than 10 years before. The Iraqi ...
A New Great Game and ideological conflict
The divergence of Russian and Western views on the future of Afghanistan and Post-Soviet Central Asia can become one of the main obstacles on the way to cooperation after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014. This paper contains the analysis of these divergences as well as proposals on concrete spheres of cooperation.... ...
There is a difference in geographical outlook on Central Asia development prospects that Russia and the West (especially, the USA and UK) have. These positions have developed because of their specific interests and specific historical experience. These ...