As an International Relations student, I take a fourth year research seminar related to a topic within the discipline.
In my seminar, POLI 464E Intelligence and Politics, I created a research paper with the goal of understanding how human decision-making and political influences contributed to the erroneous decision-making by U.S. policymakers that culminated in the unexpected Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, merely a week after American troops had withdrawn.
By first presenting relevant intelligence estimates from the U.S. Intelligence Community, Congressional Research, and academia, I asserted that ample intelligence was present to suggest that the Afghan government would not survive after the American withdrawal. I then shifted to highlight political and human factors (particularly the widely varying priorities between the Trump and Biden presidential administrations), that put the latter in a lose-lose situation in which a complete withdrawal was the only workable option. This constraint, combined with uncertain variables such as the relative strengths of both the Taliban and Afghan National Army, resulted in massive errors in decision-making that allowed the United States to be completely caught off guard by the speed at which the insurgent group retook the country.
This paper was one of the most insightful projects I had undertaken in my academic career. Drawing on novel events in geopolitics, the research was valuable in that there was at the time only a small volume of academic work focusing on the topic at hand. The paper has since been published in the UBC Journal of International Affairs, and was selected as the Perspective piece of the 2021-2022 Edition - a paper that 'the editors believe demonstrates original thought and a unique perspective on an issue of relevance to international relations.’
In writing this paper, I was able to undertake undergraduate research on a topic that was novel to both global politics and the academic community. This was my first experience going through the process of having my own work peer-reviewed and published, and I'm excited for future opportunities to create meaningful academic work as I pursue graduate studies in International Relations.