Contrasting models of American intervention and their legacies

The chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport of Americans and their allies in August 2021 provided graphic proof of the defeat of the world’s only superpower at the hands of Islamic militants. After 20 years of an ambitious and costly crusade, Washington abandoned Afghanistan, a collection of backward but fiercely independent tribes, to the Taliban, the ragtag guerrillas whom in 2001 it had swept out of power in two weeks.

The hand-wringing over America’s humiliation and responsibility for the cruel fate that awaits millions of desperate Afghans has just begun. But one conclusion is incontestable: Washington’s attraction to military intervention in Third World countries, a favorite tool of the “neoconservatives” during the Cold War, has been discredited, becoming a national embarrassment and politically untenable. The Pentagon’s alternative is “over the horizon” warfare, fought with drones and other long-range weapons but no American “footprint” on the ground. But if hundreds of thousands of soldiers, diplomats, spies and contractors living among the locals for 20 years could not achieve Washington’s “mission,” remote electronic surveillance and long-range weapons are not likely to succeed. The tragic results of the mistargeted retaliation by drone for the suicide bombing at Kabul airport should be a powerful lesson on the unintended consequences of such tactics.

The temptation to intervene militarily in distant and unfamiliar countries is a new feature of American policy. The nation’s history is replete with warnings against foreign entanglements. Until the Second World War, xenophobia and isolationism remained powerful themes in America’s politics. The roots of modern-day interventionism can be traced to the beginning of the Cold War when expansionist Soviet behavior prompted American policy makers to counter with the strategy of “containment” of an ideologically defined adversary: communism.