Was the optics of a failed retreat from Afghanistan was a potent symbol for the war or a stain on an otherwise productive intervention?
History is constructed retroactively so it’s always difficult to determine momentous events when they’re happening. That being said, the fall of Kabul very much felt like a historic moment to me. I’ve had time to reflect on the events of August 15th and have pondered the aforementioned question: is the optics of a failed retreat from Afghanistan was a potent symbol for the war at large or a stain on an otherwise productive intervention?
To answer this question we have to start by going back to the start of the conflict. The reason for starting the war was to stop terrorist attacks like the ones on the 11th of September 2001 by making sure Afghanistan didn’t host anti-American terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, and was the centrepiece of the larger War on Terror. A fairly common critique of the American involvement in Afghanistan is that there was a lack of clarity as to what the mission was; was it to topple the Taliban regime, to establish a US-style democracy in Afghanistan, or was it to stop terrorists from perpetrating attacks like the ones in 2001? I personally agree with this critique though I wonder if the biggest problem wasn’t structural, a lack of purpose for the USA after the end of the Cold War. After its archnemesis fell in the early nineties the US became the world’s unchallenged superpower which for the last fifty years had built its identity at least partly on being different from the Soviet Union. After the Soviet empire fell suddenly and quickly the US had to think of new ways to conceive of itself and after the 11th of September attacks it had a new foe: Islamic terrorism. The problem is that terrorism, unlike communism, isn’t an ideology but a tactic to achieve political goals. Terrorism can’t be fought but groups responsible for attacks can so the world’s mightiest military was used to eradicate an ideology rather than a rival military force. The question isn’t why didn’t the US win, but how could they win?
It’s impossible to know how the world would’ve looked like had the US never invaded Afghanistan in 2001, but I don’t think al-Qaeda would’ve managed to commit more large-scale terrorist attacks like the ones in 2001. That kind of attack was in my view most likely an uncharacteristically well planned and executed attack, the likes of which a relatively small terrorist organisation based on the other side of the world couldn’t reliably pull off. Radical organisations which favour violence levied at innocents over debate are difficult to recruit to. I wonder if a twenty year war wouldn’t make people more likely to adopt radical anti-American beliefs than if the Taliban regime would have been left alone. The idea that every state on Earth has a responsibility to protect people from human rights abuses is laudable, and an ideal we should strive towards but the Afghan case shows that good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. The war in Afghanistan was an abject failure on multiple counts: it failed to keep Afghanistan from being a safe haven for Islamic terrorists, it failed to create a stable democratic Afghanistan, and its violence and strife might very well have created fertile ground for radical Islamic groups to recruit from.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Suliman Sallehi from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson