Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion

On Tuesday, February 20, the Clements Center for National Security, the UT-Austin History Department and the Naval ROTC hosted Robert Rakove, Lecturer in International Relations at Stanford University, for a book talk on his recent release Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion.

Robert Rakove is a historian who studies U.S. foreign relations, focusing particularly on the Cold War era. He is a lecturer in Stanford University’s Program in International Relations, and has previously taught at Colgate University and Old Dominion University. His first book, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. He completed his second book, Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan before the Soviet Invasion, a study of the U.S.-Afghan relationship and the Cold War in the Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion and was published by Columbia University Press in 2023. He received his doctorate in History in 2008 from the University of Virginia, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University, at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, and at the Hoover Institution.