First, know thyself. Before adventuring on foreign fields, be sure about what you’re at least trying to do. “We” in the west were not spurred to go into Afghanistan out of concern for the Afghans in 2001, and nor, 20 years later, are we withdrawing because of the Afghans either. Domestic American concerns—revenge in 2001, war-weariness in 2021—have driven everything, as they are wont to do in a democracy. That’s now crystal clear. Clear, too, is the fate of an unlucky people making the switch between occupation and joyless, brutalising theocracy.
But the discussion of our longest modern war has too often been clouded in haze. Western capitals have ascribed to themselves all manner of motives, from human rights and the advancement of women to nation building and even narcotics control. A little knowledge of how, through history, the self-protective instincts of occupying armies end up over-riding any nobler ambitions might have been useful. As CPW Gammell writes, when in the 19th century the British were in charge of Herat, medieval Afghanistan’s city of poets, they laid waste to its beautiful colleges, mausoleums and hospitals as part of a flattening designed to deter a Russian advance.
Anatol Lieven, who has had inside knowledge of the Taliban since he travelled as a young man with the anti-Soviet mujahideen it grew out of, argues that its deep local roots were bound to overwhelm newly-planted foreign arrivals and ideas in the end. On this reading, while Joe Biden’s rapid and arbitrary timetable for withdrawal might have deepened the immediate humanitarian chaos, dragging things out would not have fundamentally altered either the defeat or its consequences.
Some, including such varied political voices as Tony Blair and Rory Stewart, disagree, arguing that after 18 months without British loss of life, more staying power could have changed the course of events. But for his part, Lieven worries that western exhaustion at this “forever war” already condemns us to a dangerous passivity in the face of, for example, the crumbling of certain African states, where he believes there could soon be an urgent practical case for intervening to prevent things from collapsing entirely.
Either way, for better or worse, the Afghan debacle leaves “liberal intervention” sounding almost as anachronistic as “liberal imperialism.” Lawrence Freedman, the international relations expert who wrote the tests for when it could be considered into Blair’s famous 1999 Chicago speech, told me recently that while Afghanistan was never a true humanitarian war and would have failed several tests if assessed as one, the wider project has now had its day: it was the product of a passing post-Cold War moment.
But this reality creates its own problems, because—as the grim scenes from Afghanistan remind us—it is not only engagement, but also inaction and absence that has consequences. So if the west has learned the hard way—to borrow GC Spivak’s phrase—that “white men saving brown women from brown men” was never going to work, does that mean it can do no more than wash its hands of civilians being brutalised? That is the thorny question Jessica Abrahams grapples with from a feminist perspective. She concludes that, even if some problems may be insoluble, many of the worst can be seen off at the pass by the gathering global initiatives to ensure that civilian and female voices are heard in every negotiating chamber. Let’s hope that she is right.
The withdrawal is one more milestone in the broader 21st-century retreat of the western order. Jonathan Eyal and Lieven cross swords on whether the intelligent response to authoritarian China’s rising pre-eminence is to regard it as an adversary, or to engage co-operatively. While the west as a whole grapples with that, more particular dilemmas arise for the UK. Out of Europe, the idea of “Global Britain” as a free-spirited buccaneer only works if the world is structured in a way the country feels at home in. For most of the British establishment, that means an American order. If America itself is losing its taste for imposing one, does that leave our island at sea? Now there is a question that Prospect could well be wrestling with for a while.
PS As regular readers know, I’m moving on from the editor’s chair soon, while remaining involved with the magazine as a contributing editor. This summer we’ve been delighted to reveal that the reins will pass to the legendary former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. He’s committed to Prospect’s thoughtful and pluralistic traditions, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where he takes it next.
