Staying the Unfavorable Course: National Security Council Decisionmaking and the Inertia of U.S. Afghanistan Policy, 2001–2016 (Research Report)

From 2001 to 2021, despite deteriorating conditions and no apparent hope of military victory, the United States pursued an unchanging policy objective in Afghanistan: to prevent a terrorist group from using the country as a haven in which to plan or launch an attack on the United States. The authors examined the reasons behind this policy inertia through interviews with the senior leaders involved in policy deliberations between 2001 and 2016.