Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist, economist, and writer, presented a thesis and later published a book The End of the History and the Last Man in 1992, explaining the end of the Cold War (1945-1990) which reached its climax after a hefty politics of words.
Fukuyama, while supporting his argument, said the worldwide spread of liberal democracies might signal the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. Though his views were harshly criticized by Samuel P. Huntington in A Clash of Civilizations, there needs be a new thesis to prove both wrong. Because the people of Afghanistan rejected the idea of liberal democracy and fought with them until the USA was fractured internally by the QaNon and by the Populist fractions, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan externally.
US President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out US troops and civilians from Afghanistan helped the Taliban to control Kabul. According to the CSIS research, when the USA invaded Afghanistan the Taliban was displaced from their key positions and was too weak to withhold their Islamic government formed in 1996. Four American presidents, the CIA, and the NATO forces made clouds of mistakes in invading, resisting, attacking, and making Al-Qaeda surrender to the forces. The so-called liberal democracy (according to Fukuyama) was not able to guide its people about the real situation in Afghanistan. It spends billions of dollars along witfh using Artificial Intelligence specialist drones and lethal weapons but goes in livain.
Initially, the population of Afghanistan was considerably larger than that of any other country involved in a post–World War II US intervention: in 2001, Afghanistan had almost twice as many people as wartime South Vietnam. Typically, the troop-to-population ratio is an important determinant of the success of a stabilization operation. The USA deployed almost 800,000 troops in Afghanistan for about 39 million people. The ratio was too low to withstand the new decade’s challenges. The Bush Administration intentionally did not intend peacekeeping and state-building in Afghanistan. It was more prone to eliminate the Al-Qaeda terrorists presenting and plotting against the West. So, the miscalculation of troop levels meant the facade of a filthy pro-US democracy and a failed system to win the war in the 21st century.
Secondly, Afghanistan’s terrain was more complicated than Vietnam and Iraq. As said by the late Lt Gen (retd) Hameed Gul, the USA and NATO forces are cake and burger eating forces, which could only fight in the West, and would be crushed in the difficult terrain and mountains of Afghanistan. So, the inability of the sole superpower to fight a guerilla war was more prominent than in the Vietnam War.
The sole superpower USA started dominating the world by stick and carrot diplomacy. But it lasted for almost two and a half decades before China challenged its hegemony by surpassing it in Purchasing Power Parity, and in terms of exports. Therefore, ideological powers must realize the nature of the world and avoid any mess like the three superpowers did in Afghanistan and termed this country as the “Graveyard of Empires”
Thirdly, the USA went into the wrong hands when it found itself isolated in the Afghan War and lost the trust of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI. From 2003 onwards, it was speculated that the ISI was playing a dual role when the USA pushed the Pakistan civil and military agencies to Do More.
Then it depended on the West-led AF President Hamid Karzai, the AF warlords, hand mostly on India to find and target the offshoots of the Taliban . It depicts the failed strategy to catch terrorists residing in Afghanistan. Moreover, the world’s last surviving political and economic system’s failure to trust others and deep-diving into the wrong hands due to its flawed steps led them to lose the war.
Fourthly, according to the Brooking Institution, military-led organizations are not equipped or trained to engage effectively in civilian-centered missions, such as fostering national identity, forming political institutions, and installing democratic practices of accountability. It followed the same strategy as the USSR in the 1980s. Even the USSR’s installed government stayed in power for almost three years after the USSR’s withdrawal. But the puppet government of the USA presided by Ashraf Ghani only stayed in power for a week. So, the thesis by Francis Fukuyama that, “there can be no progression from liberal democracy to an alternative system”, seems proven invalid.
Fifth, the truth of the matter is that the end of the American era had come much earlier. As the US State Department responded to the fall of Kabul, there were three major miscalculations, Time, the trust put in the US forces to halt the Taliban. Because the time of the withdrawal was not suitable, as it was noticed that the USA lost the war a long ago. The USA, after neutralizing Al-Qaeda should have returned to their country and left the fate of the AF on the Afghan people, it didn’t embrace this.
From 2002 to 2004 was the accurate time to leave Afghanistan after completing the mission. Additionally, when the USA saw no progress, that the Taliban were increasing their numbers, attacking security forces more, and the production of opium was more than it was in the Taliban’s regime. Then the USA placed themselves in this deep quagmire and the will was not supported by the time. As stated earlier, trust was the utmost thing needed to win the unwinnable war, and the Pentagon has lost it in 2004 and onwards.
Liberal democracy, which is said to be better able to provide humans their rights, promote liberal values, and free media and the will to speak, was not aimed to externally extrapolate these objectives. The USA always tried to serve and save their interests in installing governments, plotting coups d’état outside the West. This hypocrisy was useful in 19th and 20th-century wars, not in the 21st century when everyone lives in a globalized world. The flow of knowledge, information, and national or international interests are within everyone’s reach.
The USA’s top military and civil bureaucracy spread false news and propaganda in the USA that it was winning the war. This was one side of the coin; the other side was darker and bleaker. The military missions were losing their support from the public. The 1400-page report on Afghanistan created a public mess. Because for Americans, the journalists, military commanders, civilian leadership, and policymakers all lied for themselves and for face-saving on an international level. A plethora of reports were published on a weekly and monthly basis to portray a positive image of war and reconstructions, and it was failing and dropping down the hill as past powers like Europe and the USSR did.
Finally, societies evolve at a rapid speed, and presenting one thesis as accurate and precise would be neglected and flawed in this well-informed world. The human’s quest for power increases with time. But a diverse and polarized world would not accept the rule of one power. According to a Muslim sociologist, Ibn e Khaldun, Societies or States and Civilizations have a 100-year period to evolve from Establishment to Expansion and then to Decline. Therefore, the state’s relations must be fluctuating and flexible over time. Europe from 1492 to 1914 colonized and expanded itself to more than 80 percent of the world. But 1it lost its control after WW II and more than 60 countries got independence after 1960. The USSR’s heyday lasted for 69 years from 1922 to 1991 but it was torn apart by the West.
Then, as lamented by Fukuyama, the sole superpower USA started dominating the world by stick and carrot diplomacy. But it lasted for almost two and a half decades before China challenged its hegemony by surpassing it in Purchasing Power Parity, and in terms of exports. Therefore, ideological powers must realize the nature of the world and avoid any mess like the three superpowers did in Afghanistan and termed this country as the “Graveyard of Empires”.
