Inviting the Leviathan: external forces, war, and state-building in Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines the role of intervening forces in state-building efforts after state-collapse and civil wars. Based upon a case study from the 30 years of war in Afghanistan, it develops an explanation for failure of state-building attempts drawing upon bargaining theory, macrosociological state-building theory, and strategic thought. The explanation suggests that international state-building attempts condition and shapes a new strategic environment for the local actors. In doing so, the mode of state-building can create incentives for continuing the war or, carried out differently, create incentives for the parties to contribute in building a legitimate state from the rubble of the old state.

Keywords:

• state-building; Afghanistan; war; international intervention; bargaining theory; utility of force

Acknowledgements

A draft of this article was presented at the British International Studies Association conference in Cambridge, UK, in December 2007. The author wishes to thank the participants in that discussion for their valuable comments.

Notes

 1. See, for example, Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990; Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics; and Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State.

 2. Holsti, War, the State, and the State of War.

 3. Lake, ‘Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars: Order, Authority, and International Trusteeship’.

 4. As Lake, ibid., admits there is not an explicit theory behind this model, but practice since the end of the Cold War implies such a model. Two recent RAND reports paint a similar picture of the practice of external state-building, see Dobbins et al. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, as well as Dobbins, The UN's Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq.

 5. Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict.

 6. Paris, ‘Bringing the Leviathan Back In: Classical vs Contemporary Studies of the Liberal Peace’, 425–40.

 7. Downes, ‘The Problem with Negotiated Settlements to Ethnic Civil Wars’, 230–79.

 8. Fearon and Laitin, ‘Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States’, 5–43.

 9. Mansfield and Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War; Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict.

10. Hartzell, ‘Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars’, 3–22; Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars; Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations; Fortna, Peace Time: Cease-Fires and the Durability of Peace; Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence.

11. Lake, ‘Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars’, 5–32.

12. Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, 5.

13. Lake, ‘Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars’.

14. See also George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences.

15. Rotberg State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror; Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences.

16. Lake, ‘Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars’, 6–10.

17. Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War, 11.

18. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990. See also Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence; Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors; Davis and Pereira, Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation.

19. Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe.

20. Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control.

21. Centeno, ‘Limited War and Limited States’, 82–95.

22. Leander, ‘Wars and the Un-Making of States: Taking Tilly Seriously in the Contemporary World’, 69–80.

23. Leander, ‘Wars and the Un-Making of States: Taking Tilly Seriously in the Contemporary World’, 69–80

24. Fazal, ‘State Death in the International System’, 311–44; Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World.

25. Taylor and Botea, ‘Tilly Tally: War-Making and State-Making in the Contemporary Third World’, 27–56.

26. See, for example, Kollock, ‘Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of Cooperation’, 183–214.

27. Waterman, ‘Political Order and the Settlement of Civil Wars’, 292.

28. Creveld, The Transformation of War, 22.

29. Hobbes, Leviathan; Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism, 111–36; Tuck, ‘Hobbes’, 107–238.

30. Millen, ‘The Hobbesian Notion of Self-Preservation concerning Human Behavior during an Insurgency’, 4–13.

31. See also Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War; Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence.

32. Duyvesteyn and Angstrom, Rethinking the Nature of War.

33. See also Sorensen, Changes in Statehood: The Transformation of International Relations; Hobson, The State and International Relations.

34. Lake, ‘Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars’, 13.

35. Leander, ‘Wars and the Un-Making of States: Taking Tilly Seriously in the Contemporary World’.

36. One should note that although the theory has gained ground over the past decade, early work in this tradition was done by Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process; Blainey, The Causes of War; and Iklé, Every War Must End. A second generation of bargaining theorists emerged in the late 1990s. See, for example, Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations of War’, 379–414; Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War’, 469–84; Powell, ‘Bargaining Theory and International Conflict’, 1–30; Filson and Werner, ‘A Bargaining Model of War and Peace: Anticipating the Onset, Duration, and Outcome of War’, 819–38; Smith and Stam, ‘Bargaining and the Nature of War’, 783–813; Powell, ‘War as a Commitment Problem’, 169–203.

37. Reiter, ‘Exploring the Bargaining Model of War’, 27–43.

38. Reiter, ‘Exploring the Bargaining Model of War’, 37.

39. Schelling, Arms and Influence, 126.

40. Posen, ‘The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict’, 79–102. See also Angstrom and Duyvesteyn, ‘Evaluating Realist Explanations of Internal Conflict: The Case of Liberia’, 186–218.

41. Laitin, ‘Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention’, 146–80.

42. Arreguin-Toft, ‘How to Lose a War on Terror: A Comparative Analysis of a Counter-Insurgency Success and Failure’, 142–67.

43. Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban.

44. Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War, 12–22.

45. See also Guistozzi, War, Politics, and Society in Afghanistan.

46. Margolis, War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet, 52–76.

47. See also Gohari, The Taliban Ascent to Power.

48. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan.

49. Arreguin-Toft, ‘How to Lose a War on Terror’, 142–67.

50. Millen, ‘The Hobbesian Notion of Self-Preservation’, 4–13.

51. Schultz, Jr and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, 178.

52. Schultz, Jr and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, 156.

53. See also Gohari, The Taliban Ascent to Power; Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban.

54. Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, 308.

55. Rubin, ‘Rebuilding Afghanistan: The Folly of Stateless Democracy’, 165–170. See also Katzman, ‘Afghanistan: Government Formation and Performance’; Jones, ‘The State of the Afghan Insurgency’; Dahl Thruelsen, NATO in Afghanistan: What Lessons are we Learning and are we Willing to Adjust? and the 2007 SENLIS Afghanistan Report.

56. Rubin, ‘Rebuilding Afghanistan’, 165–70.