[In this book, the author] examines the entire ... military history of Afghanistan - a history of defying foreign powers for some 2,500 years, beginning with the Persian Empire and Alexander the Great. Later, invading armies from India, Arabia, and the steppes all attempted to control the "crossroads of Asia." The Mongols' Genghis Khan descended on the Hindu Kush during the medieval period, wreaking havoc, and both Tamerlane's raiders and Babur's Moghuls marched through Afghanistan's mountainous reaches. Never once did the Afghans acknowledge defeat. In the modern era, Victorian Britain suffered its worst catastrophe while attempting to subdue the region ... In the Cold War the Soviet Union fought for an entire decade in Afghanistan, only to suffer its first, and last, defeat. Now the world's only remaining superpower has arrived in Afghanistan. Has America's relatively easy victory of 2001-02 proven its military superiority, or are the Afghans merely eyeing the newcomers as closely as they have foreign armies in centuries past, knowing time is on their side? This ... military history of Afghanistan illuminates the context into which American forces have been drawn - a cautionary tale, perhaps, about the dangers that may lie ahead.-Dust jacket.