Departures With Robert Amsterdam

The rapid collapse of Kabul in the final weeks of the US withdrawal has forced a reckoning of not only Washington's failure in the region, but broader questions about US foreign policy and what the Biden administration wants (or is actually able) to achieve. This week Departures with Robert Amsterdam is pleased to welcome a return guest for this special emergency podcast, Prof. Alexander Cooley of Barnard College, who is a highly regarded expert on Central Asian politics and the coauthor of the excellent book, "Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order." According to Cooley, Biden's mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal should be understood in the context of his own history on this area of this world, including his opposition to previous surges, and his insistence that the pullout had to happen now without any extensions, without any further excuses to be further, inextricably drawn into a permanent military presence. Robert Amsterdam offers the comment that US policymakers have allo