We are going to stay long enough to set up their own institutions

“AfPak” is the controversial neologism recently adopted by many in US foreign policy circles to designate Afghanistan and Pakistan as a shared and monolithic “theatre of operations.” While the term has been popularized by Richard Holbrooke and a host of think tank and university papers on the contentious borderland region,NeoAmericanist’s Simon Toner set out to problematize this new iteration of strategy asking what the idea of blurred boundaries reveals about the US, NATO and the domestic political cultures of some of the countries involved. Asked to address what the shifting language in strategy means or reveals, thisNeoAmericanist Forum offers four original, critical papers by scholars across the U.K. and North America, a solicited response by Marilyn Young of New York University, and a series of follow up questions and additional replies for further discussion in our comments section.