Jan 10, 2024

By Dr. Chris Mason

Clear, Hold, [and don’t] Build? The Study of Internal Conflict – Although strategic competition has placed China and Russia at the center of American security policy, internal conflicts in places like Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, and Yemen continue to demand the attention of policymakers. SSI’s Dr. Chris Mason has examined these and dozens of others through his multi-year Study of Internal Conflict

Aug 31, 2021

By Dr. Chris Mason

The Taliban have retaken control of Afghanistan. The quixotic, United States-led, 20-year nation-building project in Afghanistan is over. “I . . . don’t think anyone thought Afghanistan would turn so badly so quick,” a US official is quoted as saying recently. If that is true, then no one read my book, The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Why the Afghan National Security Forces Will Not Hold, which in fact predicted these events in detail six years ago. As I watched yet another foreign country imagined by the United States collapse and another foreign military built by the US Army disintegrate ...