Can the US negotiate with the Taliban?

The US has sufficient power to negotiate with just about any state or non-state actor. Negotiating with non-state actors can be challenging, since the usual terms of leverage (trade & security deals, sovereignty, etc.) aren’t present, and leadership can be fluid and unpredictable. Seeing as the US helped the Taliban build power by arming them in the 1980’s to resist the Soviet military invasion, the US ought to be able to achieve some influence now as well. Here are 79 books and government docs on the US and the Taliban: bit.ly/BC-taliban-us. Materials on the subject are bound to be partisan, so caution is advised.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.