Worth pointing out the author of the piece, Stephen Bryen, is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council (Source : https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/stephen-bryen ). This organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Foreign_Policy_Counci...) seems to have sided with some of the driving forces behind the US-led invasion/occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan. This doesn't invalidate the analysis necessarily, but it feels like this article is coming from someone in an organization that potentially falls in the particularly hawkish part of the policy spectrum.