Will more foreign troops bring peace to Afghanistan?

With both U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain calling for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, there have been a slew of articles arguing this will at best not work and, at worst, fuel the insurgency. The Financial Times quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser and prominent supporter of Barack Obama, as saying the United States risks repeating the defeat suffered by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. “It is important for U.S. policy in general and for Obama more specifically to recognise that simply putting more troops into Afghanistan is not the entire solution,” he is quoted as saying. “We are running the risk of repeating the mistake the Soviet Union made . . . Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper.” That theme is echoed in Canada’s Globe and Mail, whose... [read full story]