Through interviews with key policy practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic, this study reveals the complex picture of counter narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. It highlights the key points of cooperation and contention, and details the often contradictory and competitive objectives of the overall war effort in Afghanistan. Western counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan failed dismally after opium poppy cultivation surged to unprecedented levels. The Anglo-American partnership at the centre of this battleground was divided by competing and opposing views of how to address the opium problem, which troubled the well-established Anglo-American relationship.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and elite interviews with key protagonists that reveal candid recollections, Sally-Ann Treharne highlights the pivotal moments in Reagan and Thatcher's shared history from a new vantage point.

Introduction: How drugs made war and war made drugs -- Drunk on the front -- Where there's smoke there's war -- Caffeinated conflict -- Opium, empire, and Geopolitics -- Speed warfare -- Cocaine wars -- Conclusion: The drugged battlefields of the 21st century .

Donald Trump and the Trump administration radically altered a number of international policies and behaviors of the United States, and changed the position of the United States on many international agreements, including environmental agreements, trade agreements, military agreements, and human rights agreements. This book studies of the effect of those actions, and Trump’s style of behavior, on the standing of the United States in the global community. In eighteen individual case studies the authors examine traditional relationships between their countries and the United States prior to the Trump election, including areas of tension and traditional areas of agreement and cooperation. They address expectations about what the outcome of the 2016 American election would be, and the immediate reaction to the election’s outcome. They explore how responses to American policies varied in their country, and whether any American initiatives were especially controversial. And they explore how the relations between their nation and the United States changed over the Trump years. The authors reflect on whether anything was permanently lost or gained by the end of the Trump years, and speculate on the lasting consequences of Trump foreign policies and international behavior for America’s standing overseas.

Covers the entire range of the history of U.S. foreign relations from the colonial period to the beginning of the 21st century. A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations is an authoritative guide to past and present scholarship on the history of American diplomacy and foreign relations from its seventeenth century origins to the modern day. This two-volume reference work presents a collection of historiographical essays by prominent scholars. The essays explore three centuries of America’s global interactions and the ways U.S. foreign policies have been analyzed and interpreted over time. Scholars offer fresh perspectives on the history of U.S. foreign relations; analyze the causes, influences, and consequences of major foreign policy decisions; and address contemporary debates surrounding the practice of American power. The Companion covers a wide variety of methodologies, integrating political, military, economic, social and cultural history to explore the ideas and events that shaped U.S. diplomacy and foreign relations and continue to influence national identity. The essays discuss topics such as the links between U.S. foreign relations and the study of ideology, race, gender, and religion; Native American history, expansion, and imperialism; industrialization and modernization; domestic and international politics; and the United States’ role in decolonization, globalization, and the Cold War. A comprehensive approach to understanding the history, influences, and drivers of U.S. foreign relation, this indispensable resource: Examines significant foreign policy events and their subsequent interpretations Places key figures and policies in their historical, national, and international contexts Provides background on recent and current debates in U.S. foreign policy Explores the historiography and primary sources for each topic Covers the development of diverse themes and methodologies in histories of U.S. foreign policy Offering scholars, teachers, and students unmatched chronological breadth and analytical depth, A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present is an important contribution to scholarship on the history of America’s interactions with the world.

Through interviews with key policy practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic, this study reveals the complex picture of counter narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. It highlights the key points of cooperation and contention, and details the often contradictory and competitive objectives of the overall war effort in Afghanistan. Western counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan failed dismally after opium poppy cultivation surged to unprecedented levels. The Anglo-American partnership at the centre of this battleground was divided by competing and opposing views of how to address the opium problem, which troubled the well-established Anglo-American relationship.

Oscillations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan have long been associated with how the state was perceived, such as after the Taliban imposed a cultivation ban in 2000-1. The international community's subsequent attempts to regulate opium poppy became intimately linked with its own state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded development in poppy-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar. Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinizes how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explains how these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition endured in some areas while in others opium production bans undermined livelihoods and destabilized the political order, fuelling violence and rural rebellion. Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan. Far from being the passive recipients of violence by state and non-state actors, Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities have played in shaping the political terrain, including establishing the conditions under which they could persist with opium production.