<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > about Afghanistan, and the recent hottest circle of friends is Liu Yu's "Why Did Afghanistan's State Construction Fail?" The article was retweeted a lot among liberal intellectuals, but after reading it carefully, it was not satisfactory. </h1>
Because this article is not actually a new work, but one of Liu Yu's "The Art of Possibility: 30 Lectures on Comparative Politics" in 2020, it will be written no later than the end of 2020.
And what this article discusses is actually seriously outdated. If it was issued in 2001 it would be pretty much the same.
In the article, Liu Yu started from the "Shar Revolution" in 1978, talked about the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and talked about 2019. She summarized four factors affecting the reconstruction of Afghanistan:
First, geographical reasons (mountainous, lack of modern infrastructure)
Second, the intervention of major powers caused by geopolitical location (continuous war under external intervention)
Third, the infiltration of religious extremist forces
Fourth, ethnic strife
Liu Yu concluded that the biggest reason for the delay in rebuilding Afghanistan was the influence of two kinds of extremism: the extremes of the Soviet Union and the Taliban.
Looks like the theory is perfect, right? By removing the two great mountains that weigh on Afghanistan, Afghanistan will be able to build a modern state.
But wait, didn't the Soviet Union already exist? And wasn't the Taliban driven away by the U.S. military? In the past 20 years, the United States has really ruled in Afghanistan!
The United States has been stationed in Afghanistan for 20 years. Even more than the Soviet Union and the Taliban combined to control Afghanistan. In the end, instead of talking about america's failures in the past 20 years, you put the blame on your predecessors?
Let's use an analogy to see how ridiculous this is. The Xinhai Revolution occurred in 1911, if the political situation was stable in 1912 or even 1915, it can still be said that the feudal dynasty was constantly poisonous, but in 1931, if you still governed the country in a mess, could you put the responsibility on Puyi and Cixi?
Therefore, Liu Yu's article avoids the important and light, and completely avoids talking about the responsibility of the United States in the past 20 years.
Afghanistan has not established a modern state in the last 20 years, and the first responsibility lies with the United States, not others. The real question is, why, after investing astronomical sums of money and for so long, is the United States unable to build a slightly decent modern state in Afghanistan?
In fact, there have been relevant international studies on this issue, and the more comprehensive one is "Nation Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq" written by Francis Fukuyama, which mainly analyzes the "nation building" situation of the United States in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2004. There is also John Millsheimer's The Great Fantasy: The Dream of Liberalism and International Reality.
I would advise you to read these books if you really want to understand the reasons for the current situation in Afghanistan.
Or let me make three simple points.
First: Who is responsible for the failure of the democratic and republican parties?
While Biden has been trying to shirk his responsibilities these days, saying that "the goal of the United States is not to help afghanistan rebuild" and "our only important national interest in Afghanistan today is to prevent attacks against the U.S. homeland."
But in fact, he is just trying to throw the pot. If we look at past records, both Democratic and Republican presidents have said that nation-building and power-building are being done in Afghanistan.
In September 2001, Republican President George W. Bush ordered "a plan to transform Afghanistan into a democracy," arguing that the United States needed to undertake a "nation-building mission" and that it was a moral imperative for the United States to cultivate a better regime in Afghanistan.
In 2002, the United States Congress passed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act. You can't say it's just that the Republican Party is hot.
In 2008, Obama stressed that the United States was not engaged in "nation-building" but "regime-building" in Afghanistan. (The scope has been narrowed, but political power building is still an important part of nation-building.)
In May 2012, the United States and Arab countries signed a "Strategic Partnership Agreement" that includes U.S. support for the consolidation of Afghanistan's democratic institutions, protection and advancement of democratic values, support for long-term economic and social development in Afghanistan, and encouragement of regional cooperation.
Wait a minute.
It wasn't until August 2017, in President Trump's new strategy for Afghanistan, that it was acknowledged that "building a nation in Afghanistan on the American model is not a goal."
To be fair, it is true that the Republican Party first shouted the high profile of "building the country in Afghanistan", and although the Democratic Party is not so high on this issue, the actual resource investment is far greater than that of the Republican Party.
It will be very difficult for the Democratic Party and Biden to get rid of this "failed Afghanistan construction" hat.
The puppet army swept through the mines in front, followed by the American troops
One of the reasons for America's failure: immediate rule
Although the United States reached out everywhere in the 20th century, although it caused misfortune to most countries, we also admit that they still have successful cases in building in war-torn countries, such as the most famous "Marshall Plan".
The success of the Marshall Plan, in addition to the european countries themselves, a major factor in the success of the United States was the establishment of a special agency to coordinate the implementation of the Marshall Plan, that is, the Economic Cooperation Administration ("ECA").
It is interesting that the Directorate-General for Economic Cooperation (CIPD) is a businessman who has absorbed a considerable number of business and labourers, so he is quite independent and is more able to deal with problems from the perspective of the long-term development of the European economy. For example, the General Administration of Economic Cooperation has repeatedly resisted the intervention of the US Treasury Department, the Ministry of Commerce and even the military.
And what about the U.S. "nation-building" of Afghanistan today?
Statistics from the U.S. Congress show that from 2001 to 2014, the total expenditure of the United States reached 1. $6 trillion, of which the Department of Defense received a grant of 1. $5 trillion (92 percent), and the civil service, the State Department, and the International Development Agency received only $92.7 billion (6 percent).
If we say that we want to engage in nation-building, why is it that the military still controls everything? The Americans did not gradually hand over power to civilian officials after occupying Afghanistan, but still "ruled the world immediately."
It is actually the U.S. Department of Defense that controls Afghanistan's state-building funds
The second reason for America's failure: the lack of grassroots cadres
Chinese all know the term "college student village official", and since 2008, China has begun to promote hundreds of thousands of college students to serve as grassroots management work. Economic effects aside. In order to grasp the grass-roots society, we must send a large number of personnel to the grass-roots level and participate in the governance and production of the grass-roots level. Roads were built to the closed villages, and personnel were sent into the villages to take control of local power.
This is true for China, and it is even more true for the more backward Rural Afghanistan. In fact, even the Taliban understand this, so even before the Withdrawal of the United States, many teachers and judges in the countryside in Afghanistan were actually Taliban people, and the former Afghan government in Kabul had nothing to do about it, but was willing to pay these people.
Why? Because neither the former Afghan government nor the Americans have the manpower to do the hard work at the grassroots level.
From 2009 to 2011, more than 1,100 civilian experts from nine federal government departments worked in Afghanistan, including the Ministries of Agriculture, Justice, Finance, and Homeland Security. This group of people generally only received 30 days of training before going to the grass-roots level, and the work was short-term, often transferred after a few months or even a month. (The general term of office of university student village officials in China is two years)
So some time ago, it was reported that the Taliban gained authority in the countryside by sending itinerant judges to remote villages, while what the United States did was to send a radio to a village. For the rural people of Afghanistan, the Taliban are the UsualLy Seen French, Teachers, Clergy, while the United States is far away, or with corrupt officials in Kabul.
So it's clear who ordinary Afghans identify with more.
The third reason for the Failure of the United States: incoherent policies
The United States has changed four presidents in the past 20 years, and the two parties have taken turns, so the policy toward Afghanistan has also changed again and again. To be sure, changes in policy toward Afghanistan are usually due to changes in domestic political trends in the United States, rather than to the needs of Afghanistan itself.
For example, the training of Afghan police was led by Germany before 2003, but the Americans accused the Germans of slow progress, and since the second half of 2003, the US State Department has been responsible for training Afghan police.
Unlike China's State Department, the U.S. State Department is actually an enhanced version of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where does such a department know how to train the police? So the U.S. State Department outsourced these operations to private military companies such as Blackwater. Outsourcing, we all understand, the transmission of benefits is indispensable.
The U.S. Department of Defense will not do it. First of all, the training of police is not professional in your State Council, and you are still outsourcing, so why don't you do it with my Ministry of Defense?
After a political struggle, an assistant secretary of state at the U.S. Department of State admitted defeat and left his post. Beginning in 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense began training Afghan police.
All along, no one has ever asked the Afghans, how do you really want to train the police?