‘The Fall of Afghanistan: An American Tragedy’

ABSTRACT

The conventional view has been that Trump and Biden made the correct decision to withdraw the US from Afghanistan, but the actual departure was flawed. On the contrary, the US should not have withdrawn and the actual departure was not a failure. The withdrawal was against the US’ larger strategic interests beyond counterterrorism. If it withdrew, it should not have done so unconditionally, for both its interests (including humanitarian) and assets were substantial. The US should not have negotiated with the Taliban absent the Afghan government, thereby undermining the government’s and its security forces’ will to fight. Thus, the success of the Taliban’s revolution owed more to the Afghan government’s collapse than its revolutionary mobilization. In withdrawing from Afghanistan, the US showed that it failed to learn lessons from its withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, which led to internal political decay in Iraq, the re-emergence of terrorism, and larger strategic setbacks for Washington. More broadly, the US failed to appreciate how its withdrawal of support for regimes dependent on it often facilitates the coming to power of hostile revolutionary movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Afghanistan
• Trump
• Biden
• Taliban
• revolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Endgame: The Inside Story of Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012): 659.

2. Tallah Abdulrazaq and Gareth Stansfield, “The Enemy Within: ISIS and the Conquest of Mosul, The Middle East Journal 70, no. 4 (2016): 526.

3. Ryan N. Mannina, ‘How the 2011 US Troop Withdrawal from Iraq Led to the Rise of ISIS,’ Small Wars Journal (December 2018).

4. Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘America’s Failed Strategy in the Middle East: Losing Iraq and the Gulf,’ Center for Strategic & International Studies: 2 January 2020.

5. Farideh Farhi, States and Urban-Based Revolutions: Iran and Nicaragua, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990): 15.

6. Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990, (New York: Free Press, 1996): 32.

7. Jeff Goodwin and Theda Skocpol, ‘Explaining Revolutions in the Contemporary Third World,’ Politics and Society 17, no. 4 (December 1989): 503.

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

9. For examples, see Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, (NY: Random House, 1978); Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

10. See The Asia Foundation, Afghanistan in 2019: A Survey of the Afghan People.

11. Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, (Princeton University Press, 2012): 322, 328.

12. Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History, (NY: Oxford University Press, 2021); Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s Longest War, (NY: Norton & Co., 2012); Barfield, Afghanistan.

13. Ariel Merari, ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency,’ Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 4 (1993).

14. Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walters, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism,’ International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006).

15. Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: 458.

16. David H. Petraeus, ‘Afghanistan Did Not Have to Turn Out This Way,’ The Atlantic 8 August 2022.

17. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, ‘What We Need to Learn: Lessons from the Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction,’ August 2021: vii.

18. T.X. Hammes, ‘Raising and Mentoring Security Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ Orbis 60, no. 1 (2016).

19. Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: 303.

20. Yuen Yuen Ang, China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

21. On not paying enough attention to economics, see Michael Mousseau, ‘Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,’ International Security 27, no. 3 (2002).

22. Julie Ray, ‘Taliban Returns, Majority of Afghans Seek an Exit,’ World 4 April 2022.

23. Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: 450, 451.

24. On the importance of early industrialization for successful development, see Michael L. Ross,” Oil, Islam and Women,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 1 (February 2008).

25. Moreover, the killing of Zawahiri likely depended on intelligence on the ground given to the US, and this asset was probably due to the US’ long presence in the country.

26. Rita Katz, ‘The Taliban’s Victory Is Al Qaeda’s Victory,’ Foreign Policy: 13 September 2021.

27. Brian Brivati, ‘“No End of a Lesson”: The End of Liberal Internationalism and the New Isolationism,’ in Brian Brivati, ed., Losing Afghanistan: The Fall of Kabul and the End of Western Intervention, (Great Britain: Biteback Publishing, 2022): 181.

28. Quoted in Laurence Teillet and Ahmad Ali Shariati, ‘Did NATO’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan Inspire Vladimir Putin to Invade Ukraine?’ Jurist 20 April 2022.

29. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, ‘The Case for Offshore Balancing,’ Foreign Affairs (July/August 2016).

30. UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, ‘Human Rights in Afghanistan: 15 August 2021- 15 June 2022.’

31. Mearsheimer and Walt, ‘The Case for Offshore Balancing.’

32. Robert Snyder, ‘Realist or Just Anti-Liberal? Trump’s Foreign Policy in Retrospect,’ Paper presented at the International Studies Association, March 2022, in Nashville.

33. Evan Osnos, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, (NY: Scribner, 2020).

34. Dina Badie, ‘Groupthink, Iraq, and the War on Terror: Explaining US Policy Shift toward Iraq,’ Foreign Policy Analysis, 6, no. 4 (October 2010).

35. As evidence that the US sent signals that it did not intend to stay long, the US built in plywood. See Elliot Ackerman, The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, (New York: Penguin Random House, 2022).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert S. Snyder

Robert S. Snyder is a Professor of Political Science at Southwestern University.