Stephen Biddle discusses how domestic politics still clashes with strategic imperatives in U.S. Afghan policy.

The most realistic and acceptable alternative models of governance in Afghanistan are decentralized democracy and a system of internal mixed sovereignty.

Stephen Biddle examines recent combat experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq and argues that the efficacy of U.S. air power is constrained by the proficiency of indigenous allies on the ground.

The replacement of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan with a counterinsurgency expert could shift momentum, but CFR's Stephen Biddle says it might also anger Afghans who oppose U.S. special operations tactics.

Iraq is currently in the early stages of a negotiated end to an intense ethnosectarian war. As such, there are several contingencies in which recent, mostly positive trends in Iraq could be reversed, threatening U.S. national interests. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Stephen Biddle assesses four interrelated scenarios in Iraq that could derail the prospects for peace and stability in the short to medium term and posits concrete policy options to limit U.S. vulnerability to the possibility of such reversals.

CFR's Stephen Biddle says President Obama's decision to add four thousand troops to train Afghan troops is "a reasonable first step" but that Obama faces huge challenges in standing up a viable Afghan army.

Stephen Biddle, a senior defense and counterterrorism analyst, says that President Obama's schedule for reducing and then ending the U.S. deployment in Iraq "is a reasonable compromise between several conflicting demands."

Experts from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution propose a new, nonpartisan Middle East strategy drawing on the lessons of past failures to address both the short- and long-term challenges to U.S. interests.

This monograph assesses the claim that future warfare is a matter of nonstate actors employing irregular methods against Western states through a detailed analysis of Hezbollah’s military behavior, coupled with deductive inference from observable Hezbollah behavior in the field to findings for their larger strategic intent for the campaign.

The situation in Iraq is improving. With the right strategy, the United States will eventually be able to draw down troops without sacrificing stability.

From the September/October 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs: The next U.S. president will face problems that will require strength and a renewed sense of national purpose to solve.

This audio includes readings of selected articles from the September/October 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs.

“Having recently returned from a research trip to Iraq, we are convinced that a total withdrawal of combat troops any time soon would be unwise,” write Stephen Biddle, Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack. Although recent success in Iraq has prompted more calls for withdrawal, a continued American presence is needed to preserve the fragile peace in that country.

diyaCFR military expert Stephen Biddle sees improvements in Iraqi security forces but worries about an erosion in stability if the U.S. military presence is sharply reduced.

Iraq's prognosis is better today than it has been for a long time, argues Stephen Biddle.

CFR experts offer their analysis of President George W. Bush's final State of the Union address.

Stephen Biddle argues that if the U.S. sees the reduction in violence in Iraq as an opportunity to bring its troops home, much of what has been gained could be lost.

Stephen Biddle, CFR’s top defense analyst, cites positive developments in Iraq on Sunni security cooperation and reconciliation efforts from the Shiite-led government.

Lawrence J. Korb of the Center for American Progress and CFR's Stephen Biddle debate the accuracy of American military statistics on violence in Iraq.

Gen. David Petraeus’ assertions about falling casualties in Iraq are supported by a range of objective sources. But his testimony to Congress does not establish whether the decline is attributable to the surge or to sectarian cleansing.