The most varied opinions have been heard in recent weeks on the American and Western (also Italian) experience, united (unfortunately) by the peremptory tone with which they are often enunciated. From the beginning it was a mistake to go there, most say; but almost as many are those who argue that the withdrawal was premature, and that it was necessary to stay there a while longer to build democracy and defend women’s rights; yet in many cases those who advocate this second thesis have previously condemned the American military intervention, and do not perceive the contradiction. The opposite position is clearly monoritarian, of those who argue that it was inevitable both to invade Afghanistan with weapons in 2001 and to withdraw from it in 2021. This is the Biden line: like almost all American politicians, even those of the Democratic party, the ‘current president approved Bush’s military response to 9/11 attacks, because al Qaeda and the Taliban were complicit, and the American people demanded revenge; but given that Osama bin Laden is now dead and the Taliban are opponents of Isis, it makes no sense, Biden says today, to commit endlessly to Sisyphus’ effort to build an Afghan democracy that could also never be born. The great wrong, or the great merit, of President Biden is to have argued his choices on the basis of national interest and political reslismo, while the majority of commentators prefer to interpret American foreign policy in ideal terms.
In reality, all the theses mentioned here, including the one we defined above as self-contradictory, can be supported with rational arguments; it would only be appropriate to avoid the pedantic tones that are heard too often in the debate, regarding an issue that (if anything) should have taught us to be cautious in judgments.
Try to make a balanced assessment of the Afghan lessons, and to give useful indications for the future, the monographic issue of Limes now on newsstands and in bookstores. If economics has a reputation as a “sad science”, international politics is no less, and bright prospects are not to be expected here, nothing that makes you dream, but this is the time for cold showers, not only for America but also for Italian and European ambitions.
We would like to focus attention on an element of debate that has so far little emerged. The Western military intervention in Afghanistan promoted by Bush was the first of a series, which involved Iraq with neo-conservative motivations, and Libya under the pressure of the democratic interventionism of Obama and Hillary Clinton; It should be noted that the Western war in Libya against Gaddafi has produced even more disastrous results, especially for Italy, and with the aggravating circumstance of hindsight (because the post-Saddam Iraqi chaos was already there for all to see). Clinton wanted to repeat Assad’s experience with Syria, and then President Obama barely held back. All these military interventions have in common that they have been supported by a substantially bipartisan consensus; the democratic / republican interpretative key, or the neoconservative / progressive one, is not useful in explaining American foreign policy. The elite decide all together, with a debate within it, they know how to make war or withdraw, whether to sign a treaty or tear it up, and the mass of public opinion is involved only with slogans.
All these American military interventions also have a second common denominator: they found a justification patch in the evaluation of Middle Eastern experts, reiterated for years, according to which the real problem of Middle Eastern societies is the dictators, not the nature of those societies. Not that it was an intentional instigation to invade this or that country to eliminate the dictator of the day, mind you, but any president who planned or carried out an American invasion, with neo-conservative or democratic motivations, did so with the comfort of authoritative scholars. It seemed likely, also on the basis of the assessments of Middle East experts, that removing the cap of dictatorships was certainly not the panacea, but the first step on a reasonable path towards democracy. The scheme did not work, and together with the community of politicians perhaps also that of scholars could (perhaps) reconsider some of its assumptions.