The War on Terror has pervaded socio-political rhetoric in the United States for over two decades, intermingling itself over time with the Western democratic ideal, permeating domestic policy and foreign relations. Simply put by Muhammad Ishaque Khan, a scholar of Peace & Counterterrorism Studies, “Afghanistan is an enigma, and no one has yet reached the key which may resolve it” (Khan 2021).
As such, I will not attempt here to offer a decisive analysis of the Afghanistan War, as that would be painfully reductive, but to examine the US’s strategy under the lens of Social Constructivism, which can be defined as the “idea that individuals within societies construct the ‘realities’ of their identity and interest through the dynamic processes of social interaction and social definition” (Wendt 1992). This view acknowledges that social reality plays a crucial role in interactions between logical decision-making actors with competing preferences, proving particularly useful to explore the cultural nuance of Western hegemony, liberal intervention, and democratization.
When the United States abruptly ended its 20-year military and civil presence in Afghanistan under the order of President Biden, Kabul immediately descended into the control of the Taliban amidst disturbing reports of chaos in the sudden absence of American institutions and security forces (Stewart 2021). The Americans left Afghanistan having achieved its immediate goal - the complete destruction of Al-Qaeda, yet, public opinion of the invasion overwhelmingly expressed tepid disillusionment, painting the picture of the United States fleeing with its tail between its legs after overstaying its welcome.
Boots hit the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan under the name Operation Enduring Freedom for the first time in the aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks on the Twin Towers by Al-Qaeda (CFR 2024). President Bush famously remarked “Either you are with us or against us” (“President Declares ‘Freedom at War With Fear,”2001) – a threat not only to terrorist syndicates, but to the United States’ allies abroad. The message was clear: the United States was willing and able to act unilaterally in a manner that was both unprecedented and unparalleled, and anyone unwilling to cooperate was not only an enemy of the United States’ goals, but an enemy of the liberal world order.
It’s needless to say the United States has enjoyed substantial influence in the international system since the end of World War II, but this shift in approach marked its entry into total, unperturbed ideological hegemony. America was preparing to carry out its modern Manifest Destiny, with “democracy as a mission to transform the nature of the international political system” (Younus 2024). The United States had ceased to behave as an actor bound by international norms and law, but as the self-proclaimed architect of a new global democratic order.
Regime change in Afghanistan and installing a stable democratic politic was a developed intention of the twenty-year occupation, offering geostrategic, economic, and ideological value to the United States. Afghanistan physically occupies crucial territory in Central Asia, bordering untapped oil reserves and proximate to critical regional actors – Iran, China, and Russia (Khan 2021). The installation of a friendly democratic government in Afghanistan was a long-term goal, meant to outlast American military presence in the nation and continually serve Western means and ends.
Missteps in the discourse narrative of American presence in Afghanistan blossomed into tangible weaknesses as the new democratic infrastructure was built. The American-backed government in Afghanistan was quickly marred with reports of corruption, inefficiency, and general incompetency (Vittori 2021). The new government also crucially failed to consider the regional dynamics of Afghanistan – the central Kabli government had a low capacity to provide government services to remote villages and towns. Historically, Afghans have been more loyal to local leaders rather than national leaders, with a national identity having been cultivated largely through religious unity under Islam (Younus 2024). There was general agreement amongst Afghans that the government was perhaps out of its element: unable to function effectively and inherently incompatible with its environment.
The American approach to governance in Afghanistan was reductively monolithic - fueled by the potential construction of the “modern Afghan” society through liberal intervention. The US-backed government aimed to “civilize” the native Afghans via democratic infrastructure, essentially installing a government that would socialize Afghans to descriptively American political ideals including liberty equality, private ownership, individualism, free trade, and the rule of law (Younus 2024). However, the US critically failed to adapt to the existing socio-political norms of Afghanistan, exposing the cultural incongruency of liberal interventionism. US-Afghanistan relations consistently operated under the inference of Western socio-political dominance: the assumption that stability in Afghanistan could be achieved via democratic installation alone.
Throughout the US occupation, the government’s institutional inability to provide government services effectively and its ideological incongruence with the established social norms exposed weaknesses that were quickly exploited by remaining Taliban forces in the region.
In 2009, approximately half of Afghans reported sympathies for armed opposition groups, mainly the Taliban (CFR 2024). This can be attributed in one part to general discontent with the US-backed government and to the Taliban’s narrative of the Western occupation; that the Afghan identity was being endangered by foreigners who had installed an alien government that served its own agenda, not that of the Afghan people or of Islam.
Subsequently, the Taliban launched an ideological campaign under the concept of Jihad (a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam). They framed themselves as the preservers of the Afghan tradition against the onslaught of Western interference that hoped to strip them of their national identity (Younus 2024). Although general Afghan support for the Taliban or other militant groups weaned approaching the 2021 withdrawal of US troops (CFR 2024), the Taliban enjoyed particular popularity in remote villages and among religious-ethnic minorities (the particular groups being underserved by the existing government) (Younus 2024).
Once militarily driven out of Afghan territory, the Taliban had once again garnered notable political notoriety and was invited to the negotiating table by the United States in February 2020 to reach a peace agreement (CFR 2024). This was a notable departure from Bush-era rhetoric that lauded unitary American hegemony, with President Bush famously remarking that the United States doesn’t “negotiate with terrorists” (ABC 2002), and perhaps an admission that the United States’ military might was simply not enough to achieve the societal transformation in Afghanistan that the Americans had envisioned. The peace deal called for a gradual reduction of American troops in exchange for the Taliban agreeing not to conduct terrorist activities on Afghan territory.
Despite reaching an agreement for measured peace, US troops and Taliban forces almost immediately engaged in combat when the Taliban launched dozens of assaults on Afghan security forces, prompting the US to respond with air strikes in Taliban strongholds (Rahim 2020). Taliban leaders argued that American presence in Afghanistan inherently communicated a narrative of undue foreign occupation and advocated for the reconstruction of the Afghan government through an Islamic system.
The Taliban and the US-backed Afghan government eventually re-engaged in lasting peace talks again in 2020, both expressing a desire to end violence in Afghanistan and to build a framework to allow for the departure of US troops (CFR 2024). In November 2020, the United States announced its plan to withdraw half of its troops before the inauguration of President Biden, with Biden announcing in April that the United States would not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement and released a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021, ending the two-decade war. In August of 2021, the Taliban insurgency took control of Kabul with little resistance from both Afghan and US security forces (CFR 2024).
Reflecting on the end of the US’s involvement in the Afghanistan War, President Biden expressed that the United States “should learn from its mistakes” and that the withdrawal marks the end of “an era of major military operations to remake other countries” (“Remarks by President Biden on the End of the War in Afghanistan.” 2021). As such, the United States tepidly walked away from its bold plan to establish a new liberal world order, acknowledging that the dreams of its “modern Manifest Destiny” were perhaps impetuously carried out.
The Western liberal model simply was not as one-size-fits-all as the United States had initially assumed, predicated on the shallow assumption that Afghan society needed to be modernized into Western ideals to achieve lasting peace. Not only was this approach inherently dehumanizing, but the inability of the US-backed government to institutionally acknowledge the Afghan tradition and sociopolitical norms with equity became its Achilles heel. The installed government failed to garner legitimacy from the Afghan people, failed to deliver crucial government services, and ultimately failed to introduce democratic ideals and lasting peace to Afghanistan. Taliban forces utilized this discontinuity in its insurgency efforts, and the United States, who once announced its bold plans to end terrorism in whatever way it deemed fit, was left with little choice but to reflect on its imprudence.
Works Cited:
Muhammad Ishaque Khan, Adeel Irfan, Aneel Waqas Khan. 2021. “Retreat of an Empire or End of an Era; Aftermath of US Withdrawal from Afghanistan”. Competitive Social Science Research Journal 2 (3):2(3),92-105. https://cssrjournal.com/index.php/cssrjournal/article/view/209.
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Wendt, Alexander. “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391–425. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706858.
Vittori, Jodi. “Corruption and Self-Dealing in Afghanistan and Other U.S.-Backed Security Sectors.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 9, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/09/09/corruption-and-self-dealing-in-....