Why America is losing its wars.
Stephen Walt declares the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "lost" and offers a rationale:
'More broadly, these wars were lost because there is an enormous difference between defeating a third-rate conventional army (which is what Saddam had) and governing a restive, deeply-divided, and well-armed population with a long-standing aversion to all forms of foreign interference. There was no way to "win" either war without creating effective local institutions that could actually run the place (so that we could leave), but that was the one thing we did not know how to do. Not only did we not know who to put in charge, but once we backed anybody, their legitimacy automatically declined. And so did our leverage over them, as people like President Karzai understood that our prestige was now on the line and we could not afford to let him fail.'
This is very true, but it also underscores a point I have tried to make repeatedly since these wars began. Namely, that Washington defined the terms of victory, and those terms were inflated and untenable. There was no reason for the U.S. to "lose" the war in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban and routing al-Qaeda, but by staying and constantly moving the goal-posts in the direction Walt describes above, a "loss" became baked-in.
But it also reflects where and how wars are fought today. The U.S. was able to "create" or rather, rebuild, institutions in Japan and Germany because both were functioning, coherent states before they were defeated. They also suffered unimaginable devastation. The U.S. was (thankfully) not going to fire bomb Iraqi cities or drop atomic bombs on Kandahar. Nor was it "at war" with Afghanistan or Iraq before invading and occupying either country. At best, it was at "war" with regimes that only partially represented their countries or sub-national movements that had taken root in those countries.
What's more troubling about both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is not that the U.S. was defeated in its over-reaching ambitions but that large segments of its foreign policy making class choose to paper over this (because they were complicit) or are in a mad-rush to find the next arena for their adventurism.