Audrey Kurth Cronin Thinking Long on Afghanistan: Could it be Neutralized? Having crushed the al- / Qaeda leadership, the United States and its NATO allies should exit Afghanistan without leaving behind the kind of instability that prompted their intervention in the first place. No other sub- / region of the world contains such a dangerous intersection of radical ideologies, clashing interests, and regional nuclear arsenals. Further proliferation, lucrative drug corridors, and exploitable mineral wealth will make future Afghan conflicts more dangerous than ever. Yet under our current approach, the United States is failing to protect its interests as it withdraws from Afghan territory and the neighbors prepare to pounce. Although it defies current practice, the United States urgently needs not short- / term but long- / term thinking. Washington must craft a lasting political strategy for managing Afghanistan and the region from afar. For decades, the rational long- / term political solution for Afghanistan has been a strategy called neutralization. After the 1979 Soviet invasion, British Foreign Secretary Peter Carrington called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the establishment of a neutral Afghanistan, a proposal then adopted by the European Community (now the European Union). 1 U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote to Yugoslav President Broz Tito, co- / chairman of the group of non- / aligned nations, offering to guarantee Afghanistan’s neutrality in the Cold War if Soviet troops pulled out. U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski reiterated the offer to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and suggested a UN peacekeeping force composed of Islamic troops from neutral North African Audrey Kurth Cronin is Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of How Terrorism Ends and Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria. She can be reached at acronin2@gmu.edu. The author thanks the Tobin Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts for financial support of this research. Copyright # 2013 Center for Strategic and International Studies The Washington Quarterly • 36:1 pp. 5572 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2013.751650 THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY j WINTER 2013 55