Review: The Afghanistan Challenge Hard Realities and Strategic Choices
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201006500121 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Author | Mark Sedra |
| Subject Matter | Coming AttractionsReview |
| 270 | Winter 2009-10 | International Journal |
| Reviews |
international interest in Canada’s unconventional deposits. Nevertheless,
Nikiforuk presents a passionate and irascible argument that deserves to be
read and accounted for in debates about Canada’s—and the world’s—energy
future.
Paul Chastko/University of Calgary
THE AFGHANISTAN CHALLENGE
Hard Realities and Strategic Choices
Hans-Georg Ehrhart and Charles C. Pentland, editors
Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. 250pp,
$39.95 paper
ISBN 978-1553392415
At this critical time for Afghanistan, with the internationally supported
state-building process teetering on the edge of collapse, there is strong
demand for thoughtful analysis of what has gone wrong. This book joins
a number of recent edited volumes (including J. Alexander Their’s The
Future of Afghanistan, Robert I. Rotberg’s Building a New Afghanistan, and
Afghanistan: Transition under Threat, by Geoffrey Hayes and the present
reviewer) that have sought to deepen our understanding of the current
Afghan predicament and contribute to the seemingly unbroken stream
of policy reassessments that NATO governments have undertaken over
the past two or three years. This collection diverges from the others in its
focus on Germany and Canada as two vital members of the NATO military
mission and wider donor assistance effort.
The product of an international conference on “NATO and the
international engagement in Afghanistan,” held in December 2007 with
the support of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the
University of Hamburg and the Centre for International Relations at
Queen’s University in Kingston, this “Canadian-German dialogue,” the
editors write, “is a bilateral distillation of the larger debate, both operational
and existential, within the alliance” (2). The division of NATO into two
tiers—those who engage in active combat and those who don’t—is one of
the emerging legacies of the Afghanistan engagement. Given that Germany
and Canada occupy opposing places in the divided alliance—Canada in
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