Lessons from Vietnam
by Franz-Stefan Gady
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Despite many critical voices of the overuse of the Vietnam War metaphor when talking about the war in Afghanistan there are many striking similarities between the last years of the Vietnam War and the Obama administrations attempt to extract US combat forces from Afghanistan. I therefore think it is important, given the upcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon in November and the looming withdrawal of NATO forces from the region, to examine the Nixon administration's effort to win the Vietnam War on the negotiation table and to have in Nixon's words "Peace with Honor".
Download the Full Article: Negotiating with the Taliban
Franz-Stefan Gady is an associate at the EastWest Institute. He has previously worked as an adjunct research assistant at the Institute for National Strategies Studies of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., focusing on regional security issues. He was also an analyst for the Project on National Security Reform, a congressionally funded nonprofit organization founded to reform the national security structure of the United States. He holds an M.A. in Strategic Studies/International Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and has served in the Austrian Army and the Austrian Foreign Ministry, working on various security issues.
Editor's Note: This article first debuted in SWJ Vol 6, Issue 10.