Opinion | Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware: The Afghanistan withdrawal and Taliban takeover mean the terror threat is back. - NBCNewsTHINK
that the U.S. has vastly improved counterterrorism capabilities both overseas and at home compared to 20 years ago. But his withdrawal changes things. To start with, until now we have benefited from an on-the-ground presence providing human intelligence and ensuring a robust response capacity to the discovery of any terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. That is now gone.
Meanwhile, back home, the U.S. is far more divided politically than it was a generation ago, which makes achieving bipartisan agreement on foreign policy far more difficult. And unlike two decades ago, the U.S. is now preoccupied with— domestic as well as the wider array of foreign ones — following the franchising of Al Qaeda and the rise of ISIS.
Back in 2001, the U.S. also wasn’t nearly as worried about peer competition from China or Russia, and it was far less worried about Iran, which is now closer to having nuclear weapons and thus may feel less constrained in intervening directly to further destabilize southwest Asia.
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