Niu Xinchun: What else can the huge U.S. military do?
Author: Niu Xinchun is the director and researcher of the Middle East Research Institute of the China Academy of Contemporary International Relations
Source: World Knowledge, No. 20, 2021; World Knowledge
WeChat platform editor: Zhou Yue
On August 31, 2021, with the last aircraft evacuated Kabul, the longest military operation in U.S. history came to an end. The debate about who lost Afghanistan has resurfaced, and various explanations are all over the place. At a rough overview, the vast majority of people around the world consider the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and even the entire Middle East to be a failure, which can be divided into eight categories:
First, the "theory of the failure of democratic transformation" - the attempt to impose the political model of the country on other countries is doomed to failure; second, the "theory of failure of national reconstruction" - the theory of the inability of extraterritorial forces to dominate the national reconstruction of other countries; third, the "theory of american decline" - the strength of the United States is no longer what it used to be, and it is unable to take large-scale and sustained foreign actions; fourth, the "theory of the imperial cemetery" - the Middle East has been the graveyard of the buried empire since ancient times, and whoever comes and who fails, from Alexander the Great in 330 BC to the United States in 2021, Fifth, the "strategic goal swing theory" - the US Afghanistan strategy oscillates between counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, national reconstruction, democratization and other goals, lacking clear and achievable goals - this is the logic of the Biden administration; sixth, the "strategic center of gravity shift theory" - the United States should focus on coping with China's rise, withdrawal from Afghanistan is a strategic shift, have to give up small and big; seventh, "theory of the defeat of the war of aggression" - the Afghan war, the Iraq war are both foreign wars of aggression launched by imperialism. The unjust war is bound to fail; eighth, the "theory of the ineffectiveness of military counter-terrorism" -- that force cannot eradicate terrorism, and military counter-terrorism can only become more and more fearful and create more contradictions.
Some people say that as long as one of the above eight narrative logics is true, the US military operation will inevitably fail, not to mention that the eight scenes appear at the same time. Obviously, these statements are not only aimed at Afghanistan or even the Middle East, but people only use the small stage of Afghanistan to interpret the situation of US military operations overseas since the end of the Cold War. The War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan are the biggest setbacks encountered by the United States in overseas military operations since the Vietnam War, and the anti-war and war-weary sentiment of the American people is at an all-time high.
The United States cannot fight terrorism, imperial expansion, national reconstruction, democratic export, and military strength in overseas military operations, so what can the United States do in overseas military operations? What else can be achieved? Biden said U.S. military operations abroad must have clear, achievable goals, but said nothing could be achieved. An American scholar lamented that the US military has carried out regime change in Iraq and participated in national reconstruction, but has not been able to achieve strategic goals; the US military has carried out regime change in Libya, did not participate in national reconstruction, and has also failed to achieve strategic goals; the US military has not carried out regime change in Syria, nor has it participated in national reconstruction, and ultimately failed to achieve strategic goals.
Whether there is a problem with the strategic goals set by the United States, or the problems with overseas military operations themselves, or the two are mutually causal. As early as the end of the 1990s, US Secretary of State Albright lamented that the United States has the most powerful military in the world, but it cannot solve any of the problems it faces. Since then, the United States has experienced a series of military failures, which may be behind a larger and more essential assumption: the effectiveness of war as a tool of national foreign policy has been greatly reduced, and the strategic goals that war can achieve are becoming less and less. There is a view in the "theory of democratic peace" that modern wars are more than worth the losses, and the reason why there are wars is because the decision-making mechanism of the state is not democratic and does not reflect the real national interests. It may be a bit extreme to say that all foreign wars are more than worth the losses, but it should be a valuable point of view that war as a political tool has weakened and that war can achieve fewer and fewer goals.
On September 1, 2021, Jeremy Shuri, a professor of history at the University of Texas, wrote to The New York Times that Afghanistan is just the latest in a long list of U.S. military failures, and that the United States must acknowledge the limitations of its military function and return to the history of having a small army in peacetime. The United States has the most powerful military in the world, with 200,000 troops stationed overseas and an annual budget of $700 billion, and although military operations overseas have been repeatedly frustrated, the impulse to fight is repeatedly frustrated. There is still no hope for whether the United States will return to the era of having a small military. The Biden administration's global military posture assessment is nearing completion, and shrinking the Middle East strategy and shifting the focus to the Indo-Pacific are the basic trends. In this regard, people have reason to wonder whether the fate of the US overseas military operations in the Middle East, which has been repeatedly defeated, will be different in the Indo-Pacific? What role war can play in the competition of great powers is a big question that deserves serious consideration and debate. After all, "soldiers, the great affairs of the country, the land of death and life, the way of survival, must not be unaware." ”
*Disclaimer: This article only represents the personal views of the author and does not represent the position of this official account
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