Afghanistan: The Case for a Better Intervention
We should go back, and this time, do it right.
At the outset, I want to be honest. I know that there is no prospect of an international coalition once again embarking on a grand project of transplanting democracy into the rugged soil of Central Asia. There is no political capital, no enthusiasm, and dare I say it, no confidence in our own democracies to think it sensible to try to propagate the same unto others. Our leaders, and many of us in the chattering classes, will wring our hands and rend our garments, but ultimately Afghanistan’s fate is now out of our control. We are not going back.
Nevertheless, we ought to.
Why We Fought
“The lessons of Vietnam and Iran were still too keenly felt, even as the lessons of the 1930’s faded into distant memory.”
I am just old enough to remember, albeit through the eyes of a child, the political climate that surrounded the initial invasion of Afghanistan. Obviously, it was largely motivated by misplaced vengeance; the World Trade Centre, the beating heart of the newly triumphant democratic, capitalist, liberal world order had been dramatically and devastatingly attacked. The death toll was considerable, killing nearly 3000 people in a profoundly terrifying way. It threw the world off-balance, and a vengeful comeuppance was sadly inevitable.
However, alongside this base and ignoble motive, was another more respectable one: humanitarian intervention. Due to a combination of Cold-War complications and old-fashioned self-interest, the West had typically refrained from intervening in the affairs of developing nations, even as governments committed atrocities upon their own people. The international community was too slow to act in Rwanda and Kosovo, to say nothing of their earlier failures in Cambodia and Bangladesh. The lessons of Vietnam and Iran were still too keenly felt, even as the lessons of the 1930’s faded into distant memory.
However, with the approach of the new millennium, the tide had begun to turn. Privileged nations were beginning to understand that their responsibilities did not end at their borders; with great power, came great responsibility. Freed from the risks associated with the Cold War, and seeing the consequences of inaction, they began to awaken to the possibilities, and I would argue, the obligation, of intervening for humanitarian ends. The Blair Government’s rhetoric regarding Kosovo is the most obvious example, but similar forces were also at work in the First Gulf War and the Intervention in East Timor.
So, although the Afghanistan adventure was surely propelled forward by the gusting tailwinds of misplaced vengeance and injured pride, there was also a steady undercurrent of benevolent and humanitarian intent, an honest desire to help end the suffering of Afghani men and [especially] women, living under theocratic tyranny. It wasn’t just empty rhetoric; it was a genuine desire for many (though obviously not all), and felt by policy-makers, citizens, and soldiers alike. Although it has become fashionable to dismiss this humanitarian motive as naïve or even imperialistic, I would argue that it is an ongoing moral obligation, unfairly tainted by half-hearted implementation and racist underestimations.
There is a perception now, that we have a special responsibility to Afghanistan; we wrecked their country, and we ought to clean up the mess we created. I can appreciate the sentiment, and there are political reasons why it would be an especially opportune candidate for intervention. However, our moral duty doesn’t end with Afghanistan. Wherever there is suffering, and where we have the power to alleviate it, it follows that we have a duty to intervene. Anything else is a sin by omission. It might be politically expedient to focus only on our own nation’s problems, and cross our fingers that our neighbours do the same, but ultimately neither morality nor circumstance can be confined by the imaginary firebreaks of national borders.¹
Returning to the question of Afghanistan though, a sceptical voice could justly ask if, in fact, we actually have the power to alleviate Afghanistan’s problems? Surely the last two decades demonstrated our impotence and inability to create the meaningful change we hope for? I would counter that it instead demonstrates the consequences of doing something half-assed.
Why We Failed
Basically, we didn’t try hard enough. This might seem odd, given the 2,500 dead US military personnel (and 40 Australians), to say nothing of the countless others wounded and maimed. It may seem even more unbelievable given the US ultimately spent something in the order of a trillion dollars over the course of two entire decades on the whole project. These numbers might seem high, even exorbitant at first glance, but given the sheer scale of the project and the potential benefits of success, they actually become quite reasonable, even paltry.
The Money
Simply put, the humanitarian ‘end’ is to remake Afghanistan as liberal, plural, and democratic.² That would be a straightforward success. Clearly, to be these things, a nation also has to be reasonably wealthy. There are no stable democracies (of reasonable size) which are poor, while rich democracies tend to be quite stable (except, perhaps, France). So, it follows that during this process of democratisation, we were going to have to inject enough cash into Afghanistan to boost it from being one of the world’s poorest countries, to having at least moderate affluence. Afghanistan possesses significant natural resources which could shoulder some of that burden, but ultimately much of the cost would fall on taxpayers in the West. Basically, a cost is to be expected.
Furthermore, this cost ought to be high — extremely high, in fact. To put it in perspective, Australia’s annual GDP is about a trillion US dollars. This is the total amount of value we produce in a given year, and we consume essentially the same amount. So, to be clear, a trillion dollars a year is what’s required just to maintain Australia in its present state, and afford some modest capital improvements. To think that you could spend only that same amount of money, spread over twenty years, on a country with almost twice the population of Australia, in a region with some very expensive pre-existing challenges, and that they would suddenly become well-off was extremely unrealistic.
And naturally, this is all assuming that the money is spent on economic and social development. If much of the budget gets diverted to drone strikes and bribing local warlords (acts which are completely counterproductive to the project of development and democratisation), the cost only inflates, while the chances of success get slimmer.
I appreciate that there are plenty of other demands for the money. Given that politicians are punished relentlessly at the ballot box for sending money abroad, perhaps it is surprising that there was any money spent at all. However, I strongly suspect there is an element of racist thinking that contributed to this stinginess as well. It is difficult to imagine Western policymakers taking such little care in how the money was directed, and thinking that so little was required, in a comparable situation where the country in question was majority white.
The West has been successful in setting up foreign democratic regimes in the past. Germany, Japan, South Korea and [arguably] Israel are all significant success stories. What these examples have in common is massive economic infusions and resultant economic development. But when the time came, where was Afghanistan’s Marshall Plan?
The Casualties
According to AP, there has been about 7,500 deaths of foreign combatants (military personnel plus contractors) in Afghanistan since 2001. Additionally, almost 500 aid workers and reporters have been killed in the same period. While this is an undeniable tragedy (or rather, 8000 undeniable tragedies), it pales into insignificance compared to the death toll for the Afghans themselves: 66,000 in the Afghan military and police; 51,000 Taliban and opposition fighters, and 47,000 civilians.
Whilst I do not, and cannot, deny the great sacrifice made by the individual soldiers who served in Afghanistan as part of the foreign intervention, it has to be admitted that the international coalition, as a whole, didn’t actually sacrifice all that much. Eight thousand deaths is the consequence of a misplaced comma in the federal health budget of the United States. In some modern conflicts, eight thousand casualties is the margin of error, not the totality of the death toll.
So given that we sacrificed relatively little, and the Afghans sacrificed so much, is it any wonder that they feel that this war wasn’t really for their benefit? That their police, military and even civilians were merely pawns in a game played for Western interests? As grim as it is, if our goal is really altruistic in nature, and the wellbeing of the Afghan people and society is our goal, the death toll shouldn’t be 90% Afghan and 10% us; it ought to be 10% Afghan and 90% us.
Hopefully, a less militaristic approach could reduce deaths significantly across the board, but I am nevertheless aware that a successful intervention would result in the preventable deaths of many people sent to Afghanistan; soldiers of course, but also aid workers, school teachers, reporters, and builders who would otherwise live a [presumably] full and happy life. It’s a grim calculation, but I would much rather Australia lost 4,000 lives and actually succeeded in Afghanistan, as opposed to wasting only 40 lives, but achieving nothing.
The Time
I will be the first to acknowledge that twenty years feels like a long time. However, in the scheme of political and economic development, it is the blink of an eye.
I am sure it would have been met with outrage by all, if it had been honestly articulated at the outset, but this project was always going to take decades. Building a lasting democratic order is a multi-generational project for any nation, let alone one without a strong pre-existing sense of nationhood. Regional and tribal loyalties are still paramount in Afghanistan, and would likely undermine any attempt at central government in the short-term. In practice, democratic institutions would have to be first implemented at a local and provincial level, and only very slowly centralised by an increasingly competent and legitimate national government. This process is arguably still ongoing, centuries on, in federated states like the US and Australia.
And of course, given that Afghanistan will always be vulnerable to its powerful and belligerent neighbours (especially Russia, China and Pakistan), even under the best of domestic circumstances, an international coalition would have to be ready in the wings to support and guarantee an Afghan state for the foreseeable future.
Given that political and media cycles are so fleeting, it is perhaps surprising that we had the stomach to stay in the fight for as long as we have. However, if we want to actually win fights like this, we must acknowledge that twenty years is probably just the opening round.
Why We Should Return
Given the necessity of such significant costs, you might be puzzled as to how anyone could think a humanitarian intervention would be worth it. Recall that I discussed the moral imperatives above, and that the alternative to intervention is a continuing cycle of poverty, intolerance and oppression for 38 million people. Whilst I think that is already enough to the justify the cost, there are significant auxiliary benefits as well.
Firstly, there is a strategic advantage to recruiting another country to the side of freedom and democracy, especially one in Central Asia. Russia and China seem to be doubling down on oligarchy and oppression, and are themselves looking to expand their sphere of influence wherever they can. I cannot say whether we are headed towards a Cold War, a Hot War, or some hellish new temperature, but in any event it never hurts to have more friends and allies.³
Secondly, the effects of a successful intervention in Afghanistan would be felt well beyond its borders. Currently, petty tyrants and kleptocrats sleep soundly, knowing that the forces of justice won’t come a-knocking. They know the international community hasn’t perfected the recipe for regime-change, and will continue tolerating them. Even when international authorities actually bother to seriously complain or make ultimatums, they rarely follow through with meaningful disincentives. Imagine instead that a multinational coalition actually started to practice what it preached in Afghanistan, and successfully created a democratic and stable nation against long odds. This would provide a very powerful warning to the world’s despots that we mean business — they would be put on notice to change, or at least ameliorate, their ways. We would demonstrate we have both the means and opportunity to end oppression and injustice; Assad and Erdoğan would be falling over themselves not to provide us with motive.
Thirdly, this could be an opportunity to improve our own democracies. Done properly, the intervention and development of Afghanistan would be a genuinely international effort, with contributions from the free nations of the world. The US might have responsibility for Kabul, while the Swedes administer Kunduz province, and the Chileans oversee Kandahar. In this way, the new Afghan state could borrow the best of each political tradition, and discard the worst, as well as adding their own unique political culture into the mix. Rather than being a sickly sapling of American democracy, it would be a vigorous and flourishing hybrid of international best practice. In time, it might take root in the lands of its antecedents, just as Australian democratic innovations, like the secret ballot, eventually found their way back to the UK.
Conclusion
Afghanistan has already entered our consciousness as a modern-day Vietnam; an exercise in futility, hubris, and needless violence. This is largely deserved. After twenty years, we have failed to produce even our most modest goals, and often became our worst selves in the process.
However, it would be wrong to blame this on the idea of humanitarian intervention, or its moral foundations. As I hope I’ve demonstrated, success in Afghanistan was, and still is, both possible and extremely desirable. We didn’t become our worst selves because of the policy — rather, the policy failed because we succumbed to our worst selves — becoming vengeful, self-interested, and short-sighted.
As I stated at the outset, we are not going back to Afghanistan — at least not soon. However, if history teaches us anything, it’s that there’s likely no shortage of atrocities, corruption and oppression on the horizon. There will be many occasions in the future where we will be morally obligated to intervene abroad, and it is crucially important that we learn the right lessons from the blood-stained soil of Afghanistan.
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Many thanks to Jack Soric, Genevieve Campbell, Raphael Wixted and Marco Faravelli. Although none of you agreed with me, I appreciate you taking the time to honestly and thoughtfully engage with my arguments. Both myself, and this essay, are the better for it.
¹ I do not deny that national governments have a special and exclusive duty to serve their own citizens. However, those citizens themselves have obligations to their foreign neighbours, and taking action via their national government is often the best way to make good on those obligations.
² To clarify, the point of a humanitarian intervention (or any moral act) is to increase happiness and ease suffering, and thus far, liberal democracies (while imperfect) seem to be the best political structure for achieving those ends. While I acknowledge that many of my peers disagree, curiously few of them seem keen to personally move to illiberal or undemocratic polities, so I recommend taking their carping with a grain of salt.
³ Importantly, I mean a real friend and ally, not merely a puppet which allows the building of NATO airbases in exchange for cash and protection. That has been a mistake of Western interventionism for far too long.
