As the Taliban rapidly crushed US-backed Afghan forces, many politicians, pundits, and military leaders expressed surprise at having overestimated an ally's will to fight - and underestimated the enemy's.
Similarly in 2014, after the Islamic State (ISIS) routed US-backed Iraqi forces, president Barack Obama endorsed the intelligence assessment that "predicting the will to fight…is an imponderable."
That attitude reflects political and military leaders' continual discounting of r...
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Already a member? Login hereScott Atran is an anthropologist and founding fellow of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the University of Oxford. This article was first published in the 3 September 2021 issue of SCIENCE, Vol. 373, reprinted with permission from AAAS.
Scott Atran is an anthropologist and founding fellow of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the University of Oxford. This article was first published in the 3 September 2021 issue of SCIENCE, Vol. 373, reprinted with permission from AAAS.