ISAS Insights

The United States President Donald Trump's reset of Afghan strategy marks an important discontinuity in America’s approach to South Asia. Washington's new strategy, crafted after an agonising reappraisal of American goals in Afghanistan and the means to achieve them, has come in the face of Trump’s own personal skepticism about continuing the American military involvement after 17 futile years. Whether it succeeds or not, Trump's new assertiveness in Afghanistan is bound to intensify the current churn in the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent.