First in a series of 2-4 articles on Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the United States
Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and the United States is scrambling to evacuate Americans. So screamed a headline in the New York Times all of yesterday and so say the images being flashed on television and mobile phone screens. How the Americans are running with their tails between their legs! US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on the air defending the Biden administration’s decision to undertake a rather abrupt withdrawal of American forces and the most striking pronouncement that came from his lips was surely this: ‘This is manifestly not Saigon.’ The very fact that he attempted to disabuse people from recalling the humiliation that the United States suffered on 30 April 1975 as North Vietnamese troops occupied the city and the US sought to evacuate its personnel from its embassy in Saigon suggests the potency of the analogy. Then, and now, the most iconic image from the end game is of American helicopters ferrying US personnel and ‘collaborators’, as the enemy dubs them, to safety—this time to a secure location at the airport the perimeter of which is ringed by American military forces. Then it was the evil communists; now it is the dreaded Islamic terrorists. But it is America, once again, which is fleeing from scenes of chaos—the very chaos that it engendered in the first place.
The United States, the preeminent military power of the post-World War II period, has suffered yet another crushing defeat. Let us not minimize the enormity of this defeat. Many commentators have sought to soften the blow: some are calling it an ‘embarrassment’, others are speaking of the loss of American ‘prestige’, and yet others are speaking of how the US military has been caught flat-footed. It is all this and far more than just the end of the US era in Afghanistan. It cannot suffice to say that the Americans were committed to a withdrawal in any case and that Biden and his advisors only miscalculated if severely the extent to which Afghan security forces would be able to hold back the Taliban. On this view, the present ‘humiliation’ can be put down to failures in strategic thinking and implementation of a policy laid down by Biden’s predecessor, though many American themselves will wonder why a ‘trillion dollars’ have gone down the drain. This is the amount that is being mentioned as the cost of the 20-year war, allowing for expenses incurred in military engagements, maintaining a massive American presence, and nation-building in an attempt, as the Americans saw it, to secure the ‘free world’ from the scourge of terrorism and bring ‘civilization’ to tribal ‘savages’. Such a view shows a complete unawareness of the culture of militarism, which is another form of savagery, which is as intrinsic to American foreign policy and even the American character as the purported love of liberty.
The brute fact of the matter is that, since the end of World War II with the decisive victory of the US and the Allies against the fascists in Germany, Italy, and Japan, the US has not won a war outright, if it has won a war at all. The Korean War (June 1950 – July 1953) ended in a stalemate, marked by an armistice agreement, and its bitter legacy continues to the present day. In Vietnam, the Americans assumed the responsibilities, as it saw them, that the French were no longer able to carry out of stemming the menacing advance of communism. Then, two decades later, in what can be called another protracted entanglement, this time in Iraq, the Americans sought the submission of Saddam Hussein first by bombing Iraq back into the stone age and then, some years later, by cornering the Iraqi dictator and literally digging him out from a hole before he was sent to the gallows. In the process, they not only left the country in shambles, but their ambition to introduce democratic reforms—when they had enough to do in their own country, as the rise of white supremacists and xenophobic militarists has established all too clearly—would have the effect of unraveling entire societies all over West Asia (or the Middle East as the Americans call it). The debacles in Syria, where the atrocities committed by the Western-educated Bashar al-Assad make Iraq under Hussein look tame, as well as the civil war in Libya, precipitated by the US resolve to bring down the government of Muammar Gaddafi, bear the imprint of US foreign policy, even as one recognizes the role of other states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia in creating the unholy mess in which the Arab world is now enmeshed. Now, to cap it all, is the story of twenty years of the presence of American troops dissolving into capitulation to armed tribesmen over a matter of a few days. Some might argue that the US did win the Cold War: if it did so, which thirty years after the demise of the Soviet Union is far from being clear, it is worthwhile asking what the implications might be of winning only a ‘cold’ rather than ‘hot’ war.
What should be unambiguously clear now is that military power, indeed overwhelming military power, has limitations and indeed is even a liability. There is a lesson in this for other powers, especially China, though one should never underestimate the human tendency to forgo what historians fondly and sometimes wistfully call ‘the lessons of history’. The US never fully acknowledged its military defeats and the generals only took back the lesson that they would not fight a war with one hand tied behind their back. American counter-insurgency operations would henceforth be focused on developing tools and the skills required to fight guerrillas and what are called non-state actors. In the operations against the al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and other jihadi outfits, the Americans thought that they had learnt something about how to engage non-state actors. However, none of this should be allowed to obscure the fact that overwhelming military power does not necessarily confer advantages as it once did, even when the asymmetry of firepower is astronomical. What is seldom mentioned about the American triumph over Germany, in contrast to the wars that the US has fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, is the element of the shared culture between the US and Germany as one of the torch-bearers of ‘Western civilization’. This had a great many implications: the US forces were never viewed as alien in Germany, just as the Taliban, whatever one might hear in the Western press about the dislike for them among common Afghans, have capitalized on the shared culture between them—even allowing for differences between Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and the handful of other ethnic groups—and the myriad other insurgent groups and political parties. The newly appointed Taliban mayor of Kunduz, Gul Mohammed Elias, is reported to have said that ‘our jihad is not with the municipality, our jihad is against the occupiers and those who defend the occupiers’. The return of the Taliban, to which I shall turn in a subsequent essay, owes much to this consideration, not merely to realist political assessments of foreign policy, geopolitics, military strategy, and the like.
A Polish translation of this article by Marek Murawski is available here.
A translation into Georgian by Ana Mirilashvili is available here.
Lal Salaam: A Blog by Vinay Lal 
Thanks professor! Now first off, I should admit that I wasn’t following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban extremely closely as it was occurring, so I was not aware of Antony Blinken’s comment on how this withdrawal was unlike that of Saigon. This was definitely both shocking and completely not shocking for me to learn. On one hand, one of the first things I could recall seeing following the fall of Kabul were these side-by-side images on social media comparing the withdrawal of American troops from Kabul to that of Saigon. And these comparisons were quite pervasive, as least on the social media sites that I browse, so clearly Americans aren’t necessarily falling for Blinken’s rather ridiculous statement. On the other hand, when one considers the entire history of American exceptionalism and its pervasiveness up to this day, it should be of no shock that the U.S. Secretary of State refuses to admit yet another obvious failure their behalf, and a quite tragic one too. Like in your other essay about the return of the Taliban, I believe you make an excellent point about how the personal/cultural disconnect between American troops and Afghans (in comparison to the connection between the Taliban and Afghans) was one of the main factors that spelled disaster in the U.S. occupation. This may be a somewhat simplistic take on my behalf, but I feel that it was quite delusional for military leaders to believe the U.S. had even a decent shot at their nation-building aspirations despite their complete linguistic and cultural disconnect with the people of Afghanistan, topped off with America’s unfamiliarity of Afghanistan’s geographical terrain and their over-reliance on technology (as you described in your other article regarding this issue).
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What an analysis! I grew up convinced that America stood as the sole superpower of the world, head and shoulders above the other nations. I was taught that the US had never lost a war (save the Vietnam War, and even then it was more presented as a withdraw rather than a loss), and that it was our duty to spread democracy across the globe. Clearly, none of those facts were indeed facts at all, but rather nationalistic opinions. The withdraw from a 20 year war in Afghanistan is often presented as the US tapping out of a situation in which it could not be of any further help, but this article insightfully presents it exactly how it is: a blatant failure of the American military power, exactly in the way the Vietnam War was. The drain of money and resources required by 20 years of heavy military presence and bombings across the world, the loss of citizen and American lives, and the utter failure at creating a “better” (aka more Western) society out of the Middle East are nothing short of humiliating for the present-day American Empire.
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What strikes me most about this essay is the United States’ inability to learn from its past failures. By conceptualizing itself as a benevolent superpower responsible for spreading democracy and “saving” non-Western societies from themselves, America has mired itself in a series of intractable conflicts. Americans love to speak of the progress on human rights at home and abroad since the 1960s, but from the perspective of this essay, it seems to me that there has largely been continuity. Against all rationality, American leaders cling to the illusion that they are the world’s moral police.
In fact, I believe that this conception of benevolent superiority extends much further back in the past than the end of World War II. Like many other Western nations in the mid-nineteenth century, the United States believed that it had an inalienable right to expand, and that people harmed or dispossessed by that expansion were actually fortunate to be exposed to American civilization. To me, it seems almost inevitable that ideas like Manifest Destiny would eventually develop into attempts as “moral” hegemony on a world scale once the United States’ predominance was enshrined in organizations like the U.N. Security Council.
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This was a very interesting analysis on the events that unfolded almost two years ago in Afghanistan. I remember watching Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s announcement from the State Department after confirming the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The emotions that I felt were mixed because I knew Afghanistan was a failed campaign from the beginning and I was happy the US was finally pulling out. I think at the moment, though, I was feeling much more excited cause I thought this was some sort of political victory (or at least an act of progressivism) for President Joe Biden– again from my memory, this was something that was constantly discussed and no President before Biden was able to execute a withdrawal. Back to the essay, I find the historical analysis very interesting. The fact that the United States did not learn from its past is so profound, yet not a surprise. I think the issue lies in the incompetence of our elected leaders and I would like to further examine what we can do as a nation to prevent incompetent leaders who will make these incompetent decisions (like invading Afghanistan or Vietnam).
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The failure of Afghanistan and its comparison with the failure in Vietnam was widely discussed in the media when US forces and NATO allies announced withdrawal. This striking resemblance in the attitude of resistance from Afghanistan and Vietnam’s local population indicates that US has not done the proper homework before outlining the war plan. Also, if we look closely the objectives in both the wars were very vague. The US forces acted in complete disregard for the local customs and values. Locals, even if they didn’t like the previous rulers as in Afghanistan, didn’t like the US disregard for the customs. You rightly pointed out when you said that you cannot win a war without local’s support.
Another important point to follow is that this retreat of US in Afghanistan sent unprecedented shock to the US led global order and perceived US invincibility is now seen as a myth. Competing powers like China, Russia and Iran are making bolder moves because US was defeated by ill-equipped and ill-trained Taliban. This perception was more important than the outcome for the United States. Also, as the book Afghanistan papers indicate that US spent huge amount of taxpayers money but most of it was used to fill the pockets of private contractors and elites of Afghanistan. This was the main reason behind US failure to nation building in Afghanistan.
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One thing that stood out to me from this article was a theme that runs through several of the conflicts and wars the United States has engaged itself in the 20th century– the idea of “the other.” In many instances, especially post-World War 2, this otherness is racial, ideological, or some combination of the two. An instance of this that came to mind was the treatment of the Japanese versus the German during World War 2. The professor’s essay mentions that Germans and Americans did have some hared culture through the lens of “Western civilization.” On the other hand, Japanese-Americans were confined in internment camps over the duration of World War 2, potentially due to a lack of shared culture– “otherness.” After World War 2, The United States’ intervention in regime change in several countries, under the guise of liberation seems to be more of a continuation of their belief in manifest destiny and that the United States knew what was best for the “other.” People in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East, as well as several Latin American countries where the United States was involved in coups, were depicted as primitive and savages, justifying their use of military and intelligence to intervene in those countries, rather than address issues of inequality within the United States itself. And despite the fact that many of the outright military conflicts the United States has been in during the late 20th and 21st century have failed, the engagement of US military power in the Middle East indicates that they will continue to maintain their belief in their moral and ideological superiority and attack the “other” for their ideological differences rather than addresses issues within the United States itself.
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I truly love the point of view in this essay, I view this as a true eye-opener. I probably much as others was victim to the idea that the US is the best military in the entire world, where the US is the win. With this, I can see that is not entirely true. I love how labeling or considering the end of the Vietnam War, or the exit of the US in this, can be seen as a failure by the US. I truly agree that this is what it is. They spent twenty years in this country fighting a war for them and “helping” to leave when it all hits the fan. I truly believe that the US has wasted so much valuable time and money and even to say many lives and show nothing truly significant. I truly believe that the US should be embarrassed that they spent even twenty years to make a better country and took 20 years which is so long as is and truly left without anything to show. To make it seem worse, they left during a time when the country needed the most help. This is an embarrassment to the US Citizens because this country had nothing to show for the time spent there.
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