chellaney142_MARCUS YAM LOS ANGELES TIMES_USafghanistan

الـسِـلْــم الأميركي مات في كابول

Aug 17, 2021 Brahma Chellaney

نيودلهي ــ جَـلَـبَ استيلاء الإرهابيين على أفغانستان، في أعقاب خروج الرئيس جو بايدن العسكري المتهور الأخرق، نهاية ذليلة وضيعة لأطول حرب خاضتها أميركا. إنها لحظة فاصلة سيذكرها التاريخ على أنها الواقعة التي وضعت الخاتم الرسمي على شهادة وفاة "الـسِـلْـم الأميركي" الذي طال احتضاره وأسدلت الستار على سطوة الغرب التي دام أمدها طويلا.

في وقت حيث كان تفوقها العالمي عُـرضة بالفعل لتحديات قاسية من قِـبَـل الصين، قد لا تتعافى الولايات المتحدة أبدا من الضربة التي تلحقها هذه الكارثة الاستراتيجية والإنسانية بمصداقيتها ومكانتها على المستوى الدولي. والرسالة التي تبثها إلى حلفاء الولايات المتحدة مفادها أن اعتمادهم على دعم أميركا عندما يكونون في أشد الحاجة إليه لا يخلو من مخاطرة يتحملون المسؤولية عن عواقبها.

في النهاية، اندلعت كارثة أفغانستان بعد أن دفعت الولايات المتحدة حليفتها ــ الحكومة الأفغانية ــ أمام القطار وتحالفت مع الجماعة الإرهابية الأشد فتكا في العالم، حركة طالبان. في البداية أبرم الرئيس دونالد ترمب صفقة شيطانية مع حركة طالبان، ثم سارَعَـت إدارة بايدن إلى تنفيذ الخروج العسكري الذي أملته الصفقة، حتى برغم أن طالبان كانت تنتهك الاتفاق علنا.

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Trump’s Gift to the Taliban Politics
JAVED TANVEER/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s Gift to the Taliban

Brahma Chellaney warns that the US is handing control of Afghanistan back to the same brutal militia it ousted 17 years ago.

12
The Sunni Arc of Instability Politics
Ahmet Baris Isitan/Wikimedia Commons

The Sunni Arc of Instability

Brahma Chellaney argues that only federalism can ameliorate volatility and violence in the Islamic world.

23
Global Terror and the Taliban’s Return Politics
Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Global Terror and the Taliban’s Return

Brahma Chellaney warns that full US military withdrawal from Afghanistan will deliver a rebirth of global terror.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 12 Comments on this article

Redouane Assane Sep 14, 2021

Secular and democratic Afghanistan was a goal? For whom? The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (as it was known before the Taliban victory) was in no way secular, and was one of few countries in the world where hijab was mandatory for women. The population is overwhelmingly conservative and religious - was such a secular regime going to be imposed on them from above? Is that democratic? As for democracy - the record of Afghanistan’s selfish “leaders” shady seizing of power speaks volumes.
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Elizabeth Pula Aug 23, 2021

No, the US "perfidy" does NOT exist. Perfidy, which means at the most simplistic and brief level: deceitfulness and untrustworthiness, is a descriptor of characteristics of personhood or persons. States and nations do not exhibit that characteristic, essentially people do. The use of the word is a nuanced attempt to blame and distortion of reality. There is no loss of America's credibility either. Credibility is also a characteristic of personhood or a person. A state or nation exhibits neither.

RE: "Pax Americana-Pax Americana[1][2][3]" (Latin for "American Peace", modeled after Pax Romana and Pax Britannica; also called the Long Peace) is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the world after the end of World War II in 1945, when the United States[4] became the world's dominant economic and military power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana

You don't want it? Fine. You ain't got it? Fine. You don't need it? Fine.

The US needs to recognize that it is a waste of time too:“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces” (Matthew 7:6)."
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Elizabeth Pula Aug 23, 2021

President Biden has bungled nothing. It is up to the rest of the world to put their money where their mouths are not, and start standing up and walking equitably. The US can not and should not carry the burden that others are not willing to assume. Pax Americana has NOT died. The US needs to protect its own geographical boundaries, and its own peoples. The entire world is under attack as the opening paragraph in italics correctly mentions. The rest of the world needs to recognize their own peoples. The US can NOT do that task for other national leaders. Global corruption is the responsibility of each nation's leadership. Do you want "warlord" rule or contracted and reasonable, rational leadership? Each nation needs to get out of their comfort zone of assuming that someone else will take care of their problems. Co-dependency does NOT produce equitable states on any level of scale. Brutality and destruction of well-being only produces increasing chaos to destroy civil inter-actions of all societies.
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Cary Fraser Aug 22, 2021

The Afghan disaster has revealed an unfortunate reality about American political life - the elite's political myopia and strategic incompetence. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika that came into office in 2001 initiated a series of policies that have eroded both American credibility and its legitimacy over the past two decades.
It is analogous to the Brezhnev era for the Soviet Union.
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Stefan S Aug 22, 2021

Some Pax! America has been at war for twenty years. But, I know what! Let's colonize them and stay for another 100! Why should other nations have to sort themselves out on their own? Best to think about a democratic, secular India...
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Abdella Abdou Aug 20, 2021

Writing in the left oriented site Counterpunch.org of august 19, Ron Jacobs presents a different view on the Taliban from that of Mr. Chellaney. He for example says “The Taliban are not crazy. They are primarily Afghans who are sick of foreign occupation. The crazy ones are the foreigners who thought they could occupy a people and a land and turn them into puppets of the US.” He also contends, despite their portrayal as crazies in the media, “the Taliban are much more than an armed militia with beards and big guns. Their version of Afghan nationalism and religious belief incorporates Afghans from all walks of life.” Not sure which versions of the Taliban will prevail. But it is reasonable to assume that the Taliban have learned the hard way from the failure of their ways. They will most likely moderate their views in order to survive in a new world.
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Mirek Fatyga Aug 17, 2021

Afghanistan is the beginning of an end to an attempted imperial breakout by the US, not to Pax Americana which is still remembered by our generation from the Cold War. This attempt went way beyond Pax Americana.

Unfortunately, upon the demise of the Soviet Union, US attempted what it has been accusing the Soviet Union of trying to do, namely land invasion of the Middle East with an intent to establish a system of satellite states which would also, conveniently, control a large portion of world oil supply. Afghanistan has always been a side show in this plan, which impacted the course of the war as it was never clear what exactly was the US trying to accomplish there. Afghanistan was an excuse for a much broader war that ensued, largely failed, and left the Afghanistan mission dangling aimlessly. Those who actually bought into the freedom story are paying the price now.

Ironically, this failure may restore, over time, Pax Americana.

It is useful to remember how the reality of Pax Americana emerged. In the 1930-ies, after Hitler came to power, he sent a delegation of German lawyers to the US to study southern racial segregation laws as an example for Germany. Ironically, Germans thought that some of these laws were too extreme for Germany. A book has been written about this episode so it is quite well documented. Fortunately for the US, it had FDR to keep things together, also aided by the decision of the Empire of Japan to attack the US territory directly. The attack allowed FDR to put the US firmly on the right side of history and to radically reset the US economic system, finally pulling the US out of Great Depression. But it could have gone either way, as an example of Argentina shows. Another fortuitous accident of history was the state of military technology at the time which made US mainland untouchable throughout the war. These accidents of history allowed the US to emerge as a temporary hegemon which lasted militarily until the Soviet Union got nukes and economically until ~1970-ies.

In summary, the US became the beacon of hope and freedom by comparison with unspeakable horrors inflicted on Europe and Asia by the Nazis, Comrade Stalin and the Japanese, aided by couple accidents of history. It took the US another 20 years, and pressure from the cognitive dissonance of being an alleged beacon of freedom to partly, grudgingly reform the racial laws that Hitler found so enticing.

This could happen again, unfortunately. Whether current period is the end of Pax Americana depends, to a considerable extent, on what goes down in the rest of the world. US can become, once again, an oasis of freedom by comparison. In this case, if the US can maintain internal cohesion, it may return to its prior role of being a sanctuary, an example, and a military backbone for liberal Democracies.

The defining problem of the XXI-st century is and will remain coping with the consequences of the population growth during the second half of the prior century. The consequence of this growth is severe pressure on resources which causes social pressures throughout the world. In the Western world the scarcity puts downward pressure on living standards, while in the developing world it puts an invisible lid on the development that is available. In both cases some form of populism, a response to inequality, is likely. The only cure for this scarcity is technological development of substitutes ,but this technological development is likely to consume the rest of this century. The prize goes to these societies which can maintain cohesion n the face of the pressure. The Gold Star goes to those who can also maintain a decent society and some measure of Democracy and rational governance. I no longer automatically bet on the US being the Gold Star winner, but I do not count it out either.

And the wild card if nobody wins the Gold Star? Thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads, on top of missiles ready to go at the moments notice, germs in secret labs, who knows what else. Maybe Aliens can save us? Are you there, ET?
- David Lentz Aug 20, 2021
  
  yes the struggle will be against entropy as you elude to. Crop failures and drought will restructure the world. A world of 8 billion people. The mind reels
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Peter Schaeffer Aug 17, 2021

So sad, so true.
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Sambit Datta Aug 17, 2021

This opinion piece discounts a number of alternative scenarios that can unfold from the strategic American withdrawal. There is strong precedence of the CIA using potent
State and non state assets to further American geopolitical interests. This “defeat” and sudden vaporisation of the Afghan state, in my view, is a simplistic reading- rather it is a “recalibration”. Beijing should be most worried. Over the next decade CIA funded fighters from talib style jihadis will cross the Wakhjir pass into China’s Achilles heel, Xingkiang, and foment Uighur rebellion. Pakistan, the eternal geopolitical prostitute, will come under American influence once again to rebalance its dependence on Chinese largesse. The question for india is: what price will Pakistan ask of the Americans. Kashmir?
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Harsh Ray Aug 17, 2021

This self-inflicted defeat and humiliation are a reminder why wise political leadership is so critical to shaping any country's destiny. Reckless decisions wreak damage that often is irreparable.
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الـسِـلْــم الأميركي مات في كابول

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Trump’s Gift to the Taliban

The Sunni Arc of Instability

Global Terror and the Taliban’s Return

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