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Tim Bird and Alex Marshall,Afghanistan: How the WestLost its Way (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2011)Pp. 000. NP. ISBN.?Fotios MoustakisPublished online: 07 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: Fotios Moustakis (2012) Tim Bird and Alex Marshall,Afghanistan: How the West Lost its Way (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 2011) Pp. 000. NP. ISBN.?, Defence Studies, 12:1, 147-148, DOI:10.1080/14702436.2012.661987

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2012.661987

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Book Review

Tim Bird and Alex Marshall, Afghanistan: How the West Lost its Way(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011) Pp. 000. NP. ISBN.?

In the last ten years the academic world not only rediscovered the sub-ject of international terrorism which were galvanised by the terribleevents of 9/11, but it also refocused its attention on the political andsecurity situation in country of Afghanistan, which was under the influ-ence of the Taliban. From that time onwards policy-makers, analystsand academics have begun to investigate and publish a number of bookson ‘Terrorology’ and ‘Afghanology’. In most academic publications, theemphasis is an attempt to cover the war in Afghanistan and to offerinsights on tactics, methods and strategies (or a lack of them) that havebeen employed by the NATO forces in the last ten years.

Professor Larry P. Goodson, in his interesting book on Afghanistan’sEndless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of Taliban whichwas published as early in 2001 (University of Washington Press) notedthat ‘the prospects for the future are dismal’. Ten years later, and afterthe US treasury spent $3.7 trillion dollars as a total cost of the US warin Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with no end in sight, the futureof stability of Afghanistan still remains gloomy.

Ten years later, academics and policy scholars are still striving toprovide a holistic account of the battles, weapons, tactics, lessons andthe people involved in this ongoing quagmire. The new book by TimBird and Alex Marshall, Afghanistan: How the West Lost its Way (Yale Uni-versity Press 2011), is another welcome but not essential addition to theliterature. However, the authors attempt to provide clarity on the failureof the international community and especially that of the US to achieveits military and political objectives in Afghanistan.

The book is exceptionally well researched and argued while it isintriguingly informative. The authors attempt successfully in the firstchapter to make sense of the historical and political dynamics of a place inthe ‘Great Enigma’ of a country that is called Afghanistan. However, thefocus of the book is clearly to provide a critical account of what wentwrong in Afghanistan after the ill-fated decision of the George W. Bush

Defence Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, (March 2012), pp. 147–148ISSN 1470-2436http://www.tandfonline.comhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2012.661987 � 2012 Taylor & Francis

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administration ‘to take the eye off the ball’, (see Chapter 4) and to settleold scores, and focus on the removal of Saddam Hussein from power inIraq. Inevitably, the book concentrates on all aspects of the American andCoalition counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine while it logically docu-ments the failings of a range of international (countries such as Britain),regional and local actors.

Ultimately, the book is really attempting to provide a coherent nar-rative of the American strategic mistakes in dealing with operations inAfghanistan. Their analyses and arguments on the American decisionsand ‘incoherent strategy’ which is stated quite a few times in the bookmake interesting reading while most chapters are densely packed withnames and dates. The book also successfully addresses the role of the‘Pakistan factor’ (Chapter 6) in Afghan politics and its political land-scape, while it also sheds light on the reasons why the Pakistani govern-ment and security apparatus has adopted a dangerous balancing actbetween the US, ‘good’ Jihadis and the War on Terror (see p.191).

Even though the book clearly states that it will provide answers (and itdoes so in a very informative way) on how the West, and primarily the USlost its way in Afghanistan, many readers will question why the book failsto provide additional insights as to what does and does not work in thatcountry, or if the war in Afghanistan is already lost. Furthermore, I believethat the authors could have offered a more critical account of the oftendysfunctional relationship between the American military and politicians,which has contributed to an incoherent approach in Afghanistan.

On a whole, the book offers a deeply informed perspective on a dys-functional American strategy and failed policy in Afghanistan over the lastten years. The authors successfully provide a convincing critique of manyof the aspects of the Afghan campaign while they also identify and drawattention to the clumsiness of Britain’s strategic objectives, as well as theincoherent policy of the United Nations which also contributed to theAfghanistan debacle. However, the message of the book is not only clearbut it has been acknowledged in previous academic publications that focuson Afghanistan. ‘Only one actor had the capability to bring genuine coher-ence to the ends, ways and means calculations that should have informedthe international effort. The actor was the US, and it failed to do so.’

FOTIOS MOUSTAKIS � 2012Associate Professor

University of Plymouth atBritannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, UK

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