New Books In World Affairs

The plight of Afghanistan remains as relevant a question as ever in 2016. Just what did the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the international occupation of this country accomplish? Will an Afghan government ever exercise effective control over its territory and build a modern, prosperous integrated nation-state? How will Afghanistan evolve in light of the Taliban’s enduring strength and the rise of groups like the Islamic State? What role can regional powers like Pakistan and China play in the future of this nation? Timothy Nunan (Harvard Academy Scholar for International and Area Studies) offers news ways to think about these questions in his book Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Unlike many existing works, Nunan does not limit his analysis to how Afghanistan became an important aspect of great power politics or Cold War rivalries. Instead, he offers a fascinating history of how ideas about international development and humanitarianism pl