Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor in International Relations at LSE. He was appointed to a Chair in International Relations at the School in 2002. His more recent publications include a new edition of EH Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis and a collection of his own essays entitled The Post-Cold War World, which was published in 2018. In 2019 he published a new edition of JM Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in 2021 he edited and brought out EH Carr’s 1945 long out of print classic Nationalism and After. His most recent book, Agonies of Empire: American Power from Clinton to Biden, was published in 2022. He is currently completing a volume for Polity Books called Comrades: Xi Jinping, Putin and the Challenge to Western Liberal Order.Irene Bucelli is a Research Officer at the LSE School of Public Policy and programme coordinator for the Beveridge 2.0: Redefining the Social Contract initiative. She is also a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at LSE where her research focuses on multidimensional inequality, poverty and deprivation.

• EditorContributors1 Introduction Before and After the Towers Afghanistan’s Forty Year CrisisMichael Cox2 Afghanistan Learning from HistoryRodric Braithwaite3 Three Sins The Disconnect Between de jure Institutions and de facto Power in AfghanistanMichael Callen and Shahim Kabuli4 Self Defence and its Dangerous Variants Afghanistan and International LawDevika Hovell and Michelle Hughes5 Why Did the Taliban Win Again in AfghanistanFlorian Weigand6 The Rise and Fall of Women’s Rights in AfghanistanNargis Nehan7 Women War and the Politics of Emancipation in AfghanistanAfzal Ashraf and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe8 Human Trafficking in Afghanistan What Hope for ChangeThi Hoang9 Opium Meth and the Future of International Drug Control in Taliban AfghanistanJohn Collins Shehryar Fazli and Ian Tennant10 Operationally Agile but Strategically Lacking NATO’s Bruising Years in AfghanistanSten Rynning and Paal Sigurd Hilde11 Joe Biden’s Realism US Restraint and the Future of the Transatlantic PartnershipLeslie Vinjamuri12 China’s New Engagement with Afghanistan after the WithdrawalFeng Zhang

Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor in International Relations at LSE. He was appointed to a Chair in International Relations at the School in 2002. His more recent publications include a new edition of EH Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis and a collection of his own essays entitled The Post-Cold War World, which was published in 2018. In 2019 he published a new edition of JM Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in 2021 he edited and brought out EH Carr’s 1945 long out of print classic Nationalism and After. His most recent book, Agonies of Empire: American Power from Clinton to Biden, was published in 2022. He is currently completing a volume for Polity Books called Comrades: Xi Jinping, Putin and the Challenge to Western Liberal Order.Irene Bucelli is a Research Officer at the LSE School of Public Policy and programme coordinator for the Beveridge 2.0: Redefining the Social Contract initiative. She is also a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at LSE where her research focuses on multidimensional inequality, poverty and deprivation.

• EditorContributors1 Introduction Before and After the Towers Afghanistan’s Forty Year CrisisMichael Cox2 Afghanistan Learning from HistoryRodric Braithwaite3 Three Sins The Disconnect Between de jure Institutions and de facto Power in AfghanistanMichael Callen and Shahim Kabuli4 Self Defence and its Dangerous Variants Afghanistan and International LawDevika Hovell and Michelle Hughes5 Why Did the Taliban Win Again in AfghanistanFlorian Weigand6 The Rise and Fall of Women’s Rights in AfghanistanNargis Nehan7 Women War and the Politics of Emancipation in AfghanistanAfzal Ashraf and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe8 Human Trafficking in Afghanistan What Hope for ChangeThi Hoang9 Opium Meth and the Future of International Drug Control in Taliban AfghanistanJohn Collins Shehryar Fazli and Ian Tennant10 Operationally Agile but Strategically Lacking NATO’s Bruising Years in AfghanistanSten Rynning and Paal Sigurd Hilde11 Joe Biden’s Realism US Restraint and the Future of the Transatlantic PartnershipLeslie Vinjamuri12 China’s New Engagement with Afghanistan after the WithdrawalFeng Zhang

Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor in International Relations at LSE. He was appointed to a Chair in International Relations at the School in 2002. His more recent publications include a new edition of EH Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis and a collection of his own essays entitled The Post-Cold War World, which was published in 2018. In 2019 he published a new edition of JM Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in 2021 he edited and brought out EH Carr’s 1945 long out of print classic Nationalism and After. His most recent book, Agonies of Empire: American Power from Clinton to Biden, was published in 2022. He is currently completing a volume for Polity Books called Comrades: Xi Jinping, Putin and the Challenge to Western Liberal Order.Irene Bucelli is a Research Officer at the LSE School of Public Policy and programme coordinator for the Beveridge 2.0: Redefining the Social Contract initiative. She is also a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at LSE where her research focuses on multidimensional inequality, poverty and deprivation.

• EditorContributors1 Introduction Before and After the Towers Afghanistan’s Forty Year CrisisMichael Cox2 Afghanistan Learning from HistoryRodric Braithwaite3 Three Sins The Disconnect Between de jure Institutions and de facto Power in AfghanistanMichael Callen and Shahim Kabuli4 Self Defence and its Dangerous Variants Afghanistan and International LawDevika Hovell and Michelle Hughes5 Why Did the Taliban Win Again in AfghanistanFlorian Weigand6 The Rise and Fall of Women’s Rights in AfghanistanNargis Nehan7 Women War and the Politics of Emancipation in AfghanistanAfzal Ashraf and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe8 Human Trafficking in Afghanistan What Hope for ChangeThi Hoang9 Opium Meth and the Future of International Drug Control in Taliban AfghanistanJohn Collins Shehryar Fazli and Ian Tennant10 Operationally Agile but Strategically Lacking NATO’s Bruising Years in AfghanistanSten Rynning and Paal Sigurd Hilde11 Joe Biden’s Realism US Restraint and the Future of the Transatlantic PartnershipLeslie Vinjamuri12 China’s New Engagement with Afghanistan after the WithdrawalFeng Zhang