My current favorite foreign affairs analyst, George Friedman, writes at Geopolitical Futures. Today he looks at the “Russia paid Taliban to kill Americans” claim and finds it lacking on many dimensions.
Friedman doesn’t completely deny it could have happened, but argues it was not in Putin’s interest to do so. Thus, if it did happen, it was probably some low-level operative on the ground in the region acting on his own initiative, not an act of hostile statecraft.
