Is the US Creating Opportunity for China in Afghanistan?
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist at The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on […] More
Troops
Afghanistan: How Six Good Reasons Can Still Lead to a Bad Decision
Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office where his focus was on South Asia and […] More
Afghanistan’s Great Gap
OPINION — The Biden administration is reviewing not just the February 2020, Trump administration agreement with the Taliban that calls for all U.S. forces to […] More
Why Pakistan Really Wants the US Out of Afghanistan
Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is a Visiting Professor of War Studies at […] More
The Latest
The Captains are Confused in Syria
The recent announcement of plans to keep 200 U.S. “peacekeepers” in Syria has been met with a mixture of relief and confusion. Relief, as the […] More
The Taliban and the Trump Card
U.S. and Taliban officials have agreed to a framework for a possible deal that could see a Taliban guarantee that Afghanistan will not be used […] More
Trump’s Team on Syria Weighs Risk
Reports that President Trump has ordered a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria are not inconsistent with prior messages we’ve heard from the President this […] More
Trump’s Thanksgiving Message
OPINION — The media should be satisfied with President Trump’s telephoned “visit to the troops overseas” from his Mar-a-Lago resort on Thanksgiving Day, and not […] More