MAUD WEIS

POWER IN WORLD POLITICS

KAI HEBEL
ESSAY 2
DATE: 18-10-2020

The US Withdrawal from Afghanistan: A Power Analysis

Introduction

This February, the US government and the Taliban came to a historic agreement. After 19
years of US presence in the region, the government has agreed to withdraw all its troops
within 14 months.1 Even though this withdrawal seems like a positive development, the
violence in the region is increasing, which presents an unclear image of Afghanistan’s future.
What made the US withdraw from Afghanistan and what went wrong with US’ military
strategy in Afghanistan in the first place? The answer to both of these questions is power.
This essay will link the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan to three theories of power.
First, this essay uses Posen’s theory of the command of the commons to give a history of the
US engagement in Afghanistan and to explain why the war has dragged on for so long. It then
argues that the US strategy for the war in Afghanistan was based on a Mearsheimerian
conception of power, which made the strategy too military centric instead of focussed on
securing long-term peace. Finally, Habermas’ theory of communicative power is used to
explain the difficult legitimacy position of the US. This essay can help us to gain a better
understanding of the situation in Afghanistan, which is vitally important at this turning point
in history.

Theories of Power

Posen argues that US hegemony is based on their command of the commons. 2 In other words,
the US has the military control over sea, air and space, which is largely due to the superiority
of US economic resources.3 The US gets more military use out of the commons than other
states, and would be able to win a contest over these commons with any other state. 4 Even
though these commons allow the US to send troops across the world rapidly, this does not
1
Thomas, “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy: In Brief,” 1.
2
Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” 7.
3
Ibid., 10.
4
Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” 8.

1
mean that the US enjoys primacy over the entire planet. There are still contested zones:
foreign territories where the US has to use conventional combat. 5 Here, local actors have
strong political interests in the war, have a ready supply of males of fighting age, and often
have had the opportunity to study US fighting tactics. But more importantly, they enjoy
home-court advantage.6 Local actors are more familiar with the fighting terrain, and their
military tactics are adapted to these circumstances. While the US has the military capacity to
win almost any fight in open country, they have reportedly lost wars on different terrain such
as cities, mountains or jungles.7 These guerrilla wars often take time and require a large
number of ground troops, which can quickly become too costly for the US. 8 The US therefore
prefers to use selective engagements in order to conserve great power peace.9

Mearsheimer offers a realist theory of power and argues that power is based on the material
capabilities that a state possesses.10 He claims that states’ power comes from latent power,
which is made up of mobilizable wealth, technological development and population size, and
military power.11 The balance of power in the world is thus merely a reflection of the balance
of military power, and if one seeks to increase their chance of military success, increasing
material capabilities is the way to go. However, material capabilities are not a completely
reliable predictor of military success. Mearsheimer blames this on non-material factors, such
as strategy, intelligence or weather, which sometimes provide combatants with decisive
advantages.12

Habermas draws on Arendt’s theory of power to explain the concept of communicative

power.13 This is the power to act in concert with other actors. As a result, power originates
from all parties involved, and at the same time becomes bigger than them. The creation of
consensus is essential in this process, as this allows the parties to practice power, by i.e.
creating laws that have validity. Law works as a medium connecting communicative power
and administrative power. Before an agreement can wield communicative power, it has to be
written down in the form of law. State agents must show that they act according to these laws

5
Ibid., 22.
6
Ibid.,” 23.
7
Ibid., 30.
8
Ibid., 32.
9
Ibid., 45.
10
Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 55.
11
Ibid., 56.
12
Ibid., 58.
13
Brunkhorst, Kreide and Lafont, The Habermas Handbook, 113.

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in order to be seen as legitimate. 14 This legitimacy then allows a state to wield administrative
power.15 Legitimacy comes mainly from the citizens, who monitor the effects of government
policy and express their disagreement once they see the negative effects increasing. 16 Once
the public sphere starts to voice its dissent and problematise the issue, it gains communicative
power to influence the government.17 Successful policy-making thus takes into account this
communicative power coming from society. If we analyse power, we must thus pay attention
to the communicative conditions by which it is produced.

US Intervention in Afghanistan

After the attacks of 9/11, the US Congress authorized the president to use all “necessary and
appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11
attacks.18 As it was known that Al-Qaeda operated from Afghanistan under the protection of
the Taliban, the US prepared to invade the country. The strategic goal was “to remove the
Taliban from power in Afghanistan and destroy al-Qaeda as an effective terrorist
organization.”19 The US used its command of the commons to communicate via satellites and
deliver precision-guided munition via the air. This model was highly effective, and within
two months the Taliban forces were scattered. 20 The policy then changed to “long-term nation
building”, but Washington provided little to no guidance on how this could be achieved. 21 At
the time, US officials rarely mentioned the setbacks in the war. They admitted that the
violence from the Taliban was increasing, but they continuously claimed that the US was
making progress and that their strategies were sound. 22 In confidential US government
documents that recently came to light, these US officials acknowledge that their (especially
long-term) strategies were fatally flawed and that there is a strategic stalemate going on since
2017. 23 The new Afghan government and army turned out to be too weak to deal with the
problems of corruption, warlords and Taliban insurgency in the country. 24 As a result, the war
in Afghanistan has never truly ended, and in recent years the Taliban has regained more and

14
Brunkhorst, Kreide and Lafont, The Habermas Handbook, 114.
15
Ibid.
16
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, 351.
17
Ibid., 362.
18
Grenier, “United States: Examining America’s Longest War,” 49.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 50.
21
Ibid.
22
Whitlock, “At War with the Truth.”
23
Ibid.; Thomas, “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy: In Brief,” 8.
24
Kolenda, “Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan,” 998.

3
more territory and casualties continue to rise. Disconcertingly, 2019 was the bloodiest year of
the war in Afghanistan so far.25 Additionally, the Taliban now controls 75 of the 398 districts
in Afghanistan, with another 187 districts being contested territory. 26 While all this is going
on the US signed an agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, with the promise that the
US will withdraw all its troops within 14 months.27

When we link these facts to Posen’s theory of power, it becomes clear that the US’ command
of the commons initially helped to secure a fast military victory. However, as the war
dragged on and became more like a guerilla war, the US started losing control of the region.
Posen has shown that guerrilla wars in foreign territories can be problematic for the US,
because they take time and require a large number of ground troops. As the Afghanistan war
is now the longest war in US history, with a total military expenditure of $778 billion, we can
safely say that Posen was right. 28 Additionally, the Taliban fighters have home-court
advantage, while the US army reportedly had too little information about the situation on the
ground to make adequate strategy decisions. In conclusion, the Afghanistan war has affirmed
Posen’s argument. While the US has command of the commons, it can still lose an all-out
war.

Strategy

When the US went into Afghanistan, its short-term strategy was to oust the Taliban regime,
destroy Al-Qaeda and bring peace to Afghanistan.29 This strategy was highly military centric,
and once the US had overthrown the Taliban regime, they believed they had achieved a
decisive military victory and that the war was over. 30 To win meant a short-term military
defeat, not a long-term peace. In practice however, the fall of the Taliban revealed an array of
festering problems in Afghanistan, which the US recognised too late. Therefore, the army
officials had difficulty in changing their strategy. 31 Goodson has also argued that the US put a
lot of focus on counter-terrorism, but that this contradicted key elements of a state-building
strategy.32 The flaws in the US strategy show that the US was too focussed on a military
25
After 1989. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, “Afghanistan.”
26
Roggio and Gutowski, “Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan.”
27
Thomas, “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy: In Brief,” 14.
28
From October 2001 until September 2019. BBC Reality Check Team. “Afghanistan war: What has the
conflict cost the US?”
29
Grenier, “United States: Examining America’s Longest War,” 48.
30
Kolenda, “Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan,” 994.
31
Ibid., 1000.
32
Goodson, “The U.S. and Afghanistan after 2014,” 225.

4
victory instead of on long-term peace. They assumed that once the military power was back
in the Afghan government’s hands, the problem would be solved. Furthermore, when this did
not go as planned, the US’ solution was not to change their strategy, but to send more
troops.33 This shows that the US officials had a Mearsheimerian conception of power. It also
shows the flaws of this conception of power. Even though Mearsheimer admits that non-
material factors can affect military outcomes, in the case of Afghanistan these non-material
factors seem to play a larger role than military capabilities. When it comes to military
capabilities, there is no doubt that the US had the upper hand. After the 2001 invasion, the US
army was able to scatter the Taliban forces in two months and Afghanistan was ‘free’.
According to a Mearsheimerian analysis, the US had more material capabilities which gave
them military power that allowed them to oust the Taliban. However, can we truly speak of
power if the US was unable to create a stable peace in Afghanistan? In conclusion, the US’
narrow understanding of power as military power led them to a flawed military strategy that
failed to bring lasting peace to Afghanistan.

Legitimacy

The American public is growing increasingly weary of the war in Afghanistan. In a 2019
survey conducted by the University of Maryland, 44% of the respondents stated that the US
should decrease the number of troops in Afghanistan, while 34% said that the number of
troops should remain the same. Only 3% was in favour of increasing troops. 34 The US public
has so far been fairly supportive of the war, but it can be argued that this is due to the falsely
positive information that the US government has spread about the status of the war. If the
calls for an end to the war would increase and the US government would ignore these signals
from the public sphere, it would risk losing its legitimacy to the communicative power of the
public. Therefore, the US government finds itself forced to seek an end to the war in
Afghanistan, although not necessarily in the very short term.

On the other hand, the international community is looking at the US as well. When the US
went into Afghanistan, they did so with promises of peace and successful counter-terrorism
actions. The fact that this has failed could undermine US legitimacy in the international
community. Former US diplomat James Dobbins has argued that a precipitous departure from
Afghanistan will mean a blow to American credibility and the weakening of deterrence and
33
CBC News, “Obama sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.”
34
Scarborough, Telhami and Rouse, “American Attitudes toward the Middle East,” Question 57.

5
the value of US reassurance elsewhere.35 The US currently holds a strong position in the
international community, and international agreements, such as agreements to tackle climate
change, are often powerless without US support. 36 The US aspires to be a singular hegemon
and there seems to be an unspoken agreement that the US is the legitimate leader of the
liberal international order.37 This international consensus holds communicative power, and
the US has often drawn on this power to gain administrative power. For example, this power
allowed the US to bypass the UN Security Council when it wanted to invade Iraq. A loss in
Afghanistan would undermine this power, and this might explain why US presidents in the
past have continued to send troops to Afghanistan. In conclusion, the US government is torn
between maintaining domestic legitimacy and maintaining international legitimacy. When
Donald Trump came into office, it seemed that domestic legitimacy had won the upper hand.
Trump and his America First policy send the message that the costs of US hegemony far
outweigh the benefits.38 Trump does not seem to be interested in US hegemony, and since the
war in Afghanistan is no longer serving national security interests, he is bringing more and
more troops home.39

Conclusion

This essay has linked the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan to three theories of power.
It used Posen’s theory of the command of the commons to argue that the war in Afghanistan
has dragged on for so long because the US is fighting outside their command, against actors
who have home-court advantage. Then, this essay has argued that the US strategy for the war
in Afghanistan was based on a Mearsheimerian conception of power, which made the
strategy too military centric and not focussed on securing long-term peace. Finally,
Habermas’ theory of communicative power is used to explain the difficult legitimacy position
of the US. On the one hand, the US citizens exercise communicative power to force their
government to withdraw from Afghanistan. On the other hand, the loss of the Afghan war
could seriously damage US legitimacy in the international community, as this shows the loss
of their ‘hegemonic’ position.

35
Dobbins et al., “Consequences of a Precipitous U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan,” 2.
36
Clark, Hegemony in International Organization, 3.
37
Stokes, “Trump, American hegemony and the future of the liberal international order,” 133.
38
Ibid., 134.
39
Thomas, “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy: In Brief,” 1.

6
This paper fits in the wider academic field that seeks to understand the war in Afghanistan.
This war is definitely one of the most complex conflicts of our time, and it is still ongoing.
Essays such as these can help us to better understand the conflict, so that we might be able to
figure out a better strategy than that of the US.

7
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