The Great Game - 2014 Plus

An article entitled "Karzai's Great Game Gamble" by Gawdat Bahgat and Robert Sharp has been posted on The Small Wars Journal (January 24, 2014). The writers provide us a little history on "The Great Game" played by England and Russia and then apply that to current times (2014 plus) as it relates to the Central Asian nations development of oil and gas resources (and pipelines) and the U.S. "pivot" to a naval presence in the Indian Ocean and Pacific. They then tie in the need for continued U.S. support to Afghanistan with the strategic picture and discuss the refusal of Karzai to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA). They conclude with the thought that we need to wait out Karzai and recognize that signing the BSA later is better than not at all even though it will complicate the life of ISAF and Pentagon planners working the retrograde.