Russia’s Afghanistan Strategy

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In The Media

Russia’s Afghanistan Strategy

Over the last couple of years, the gap between the Russian and U.S. strategies in Afghanistan has grown. Russia increasingly believes that the U.S. approach isn’t working and is convinced that it must be prepared to deal with an unstable Afghanistan on its own.

By Julia Gurganus

Published on Jan 2, 2018

Program

Russia and Eurasia

The Russia and Eurasia Program continues Carnegie’s long tradition of independent research on major political, societal, and security trends in and U.S. policy toward a region that has been upended by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Leaders regularly turn to our work for clear-eyed, relevant analyses on the region to inform their policy decisions.

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Project

The Return of Global Russia: A Reassessment of the Kremlin’s International Agenda

The Kremlin’s activist foreign policy is expanding Russian global influence at a time when the United States and other Western countries are increasingly divided or consumed by domestic problems. The Return of Global Russia project will examine the Kremlin’s ambitions to become a player in far-flung parts of the world where its influence has long been written off, the tools it is relying upon to challenge the liberal international order, and practical Western policy options for how and when to respond to this new challenge.

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Source: Foreign Affairs

For the last decade and a half, Russia and the United States have had largely similar aims in Afghanistan: preventing chaos and the reemergence of a safe haven for terrorists. That convergence has allowed the two countries to work together. But beneath the surface, there are important differences. Although both want stability, they define it in very different ways. The U.S. approach is founded on creating a strong central government in Kabul and a well-equipped and well-trained national security force; Russia, meanwhile, works with a wide range of actors, some of which compete directly with the government in Kabul. Moscow has even reached out to the Taliban, legitimizing a group that continues to threaten the security of both the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO forces.

Read Full Text

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs.

About the Author

Julia Gurganus

Former Nonresident Scholar, Russia and Eurasia Program

Julia Gurganus was a nonresident scholar with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focus is on trends in Russian foreign policy and Russia-U.S. relations.

Recent Work

Paper
Russia’s Global Ambitions in Perspective
- Julia Gurganus, Eugene Rumer
Article
Russia: Playing a Geopolitical Game in Latin America
- Julia Gurganus

Foreign Policy United States Afghanistan Russia

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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