The Fall of Kabul - the End of the 9/11 Wars and its Implications

The 9/11 Wars started with a strategic shock and seemingly ended with another last August.  The shock was not the US withdrawal from Afghanistan - one could argue the wisdom of that either way - the shock is the manner in which it was carried out - unilateral and also inept.  

In this short piece I will outline what the implications of this shock may be not so much for the US as for the rest of the world and in particular that part which we still sometimes call the West.  The article will first examine how we got to this point, how and why the so-called Wars of Choice, or Liberal Wars, went so awry and then consider the implications for the West, and the UK in particular, in a world in which liberal hegemony feels much less secure than it once did.  The shock isn't the victory of the Taleban, the shock is the realisation that the US has decided there are limits to its will and ability to project power.  The implications of this are likely to have profound consequences for international politics. 

As we approached the twentieth anniversary of Al Qaeda's attacks on the US, a slew of commemorative documentaries reminded us of the horror of those events and the shock caused by the mass murder, most notably in New York.  Very few people saw 9/11, or anything like it, coming.  Certainly not US intelligence.  Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed funded and planned the attacks from their base in Afghanistan (bin Laden had previously fled Somalia as, ironically, he deemed it to be too dangerous a base for operations).  The 9/11 attacks were the centre piece of bin Laden's 'Near and Far' strategy: he reasoned that in order to takeover Saudi Arabia he first had to project jihadi expeditionary power into the House of Saud's American patron.  The inevitable response to those horrific attacks was not to cow America into inaction but for it to project its expeditionary power into Mullah Omah's heartland, once he refused to give up his 'guest', bin Laden.  This really was an inevitable response - any Non-State Actor or State would have been pulverised for levelling a chunk of Manhattan.  What followed, the initial phase of the war in Afghanistan, was held up by many to be a text book operation - the use of airpower, special forces and local proxies yielded many strategic gains at low cost, though not the capture of bin Laden himself.

People fleeing from the collapse of the Twin Towers

In response to 9/11 Washington devised the 'Bush Doctrine'.  Much of academia and the press were more exercised by US unilateralism, which the doctrine in part emphasised, than they were by the Jihadists' new found ability to commit mass murder, a spectre inflated by the possibility, though perhaps not probability, of AQ or some other group using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) at some future point.  From the Doctrine came the War on Terror, as if a method, or an abstract noun, could be defeated.  The world, and of course Tony Blair, were now faced with a dilemma.  President Bush had decided that the US could no longer assume that so-called rogue states and their terrorist proxies could be deterred by American power and so would have to be compelled into compliance, starting with Saddam's Iraq - they would either yield their WMD or be replaced by more compliant, aka democratic, leaders.  The dilemma for Blair and the others was whether or not oppose US policy or adopt it; to play the role of Greeks to the Romans and have some influence on US policy or oppose and run the risk of both a Western split and/ or being held hostage to fortune to what was really another's policy.  It was at this point that the appetite for 'nation building' took hold with the ambition being to create a permanent cordon sanitaire in which terrorism could not operate or be sponsored.

Liberal wars 

At this juncture it's necessary to digress briefly into some key terms such as 'liberal wars' to progress further.  Liberals are not pacifists, so it does not follow that a liberal war is oxymoronic.  The problem of course is that war itself is illiberal - it's the realm of death, destruction, defeat and compellence.  Additionally, it's the realm of chance - they rarely pan out as expected.  Some of Clausewitz's most famous aphorisms relate to war being akin to a game of cards and that no statesman should embark on a war without a clear idea of how to execute it and how to end it.  In other words, one should be prudent in the use of force, though its utility was also evident enough to him.  These precepts apply to all wars regardless of the ideological impulses that may inform their policy aims, be that realist, liberal, communist and so on.  Wars of Choice meet Wars of Chance.

Some realist scholars, such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer, see liberalism in statecraft as a false consciousness which negates the utility of war and strategy by creating unwinnable wars.  Further, many from both traditional and non-traditional perspectives pointed to the War on Terror as being Manichean and almost eschatological (an endless struggle of good versus evil).  Also, if one steps into the economic and legal dimensions of liberalism, their is a concomitant requirement to defend the 'globalised system', international liberal institutions and human rights, we see not only a never ending mission but a boundless one too - enter into the lexicon: 'the Forever Wars'.

However, do these taxonomies really capture all the nuances that are at play here?  The first point to make is that if liberalism is a false consciousness then it is a heavily embedded one - it may not exist in Beijing or Moscow but it certainly does in Washington and London.  Second, whilst what we might term 'liberal values' wars may do more harm than good at the aggregate level, we cannot be blind to the fact that the liberal legal and economic dimensions are also likely to create tension with non-liberals.  And here's where it gets complicated.  The argument, for example, for defending the globalised system is that it is a net positive for all - but undeniably it is deemed to be a net positive for the powerful liberal democratic states whose values it reflects.  China is, rightly, berated for its illegal activities in the South China Sea and beyond and so the West projects its power to the other side of the world to send a clear signal.  I think this is right, but here we see the synthesis of liberalism and realism - the via media.  Powerful states, which happen to be liberal democracies, have created and buttress a system which works well for them and their interests.  Non-liberal states bridle against this system as they see it as being inimical to their interests but liberal states will sometimes fight for their interests and allow into their worldview the extremely harsh and illiberal worlds of war, compellence and coercion.  

The rub of the matter during the post Cold War world, was that liberal impulses can create maximalist policy aims, and these may be beyond the capability of the armed forces to achieve unless the commitment is total.  Wars whose aims are primarily driven by ideology or religion are more likely to become maximalist than those driven by raison d'etat and so are more likely to end in failure.  Three caveats to this 'law' need to be added: 

• even wars which are primarily driven by raison d'etat may well have secondary ideological or religious motivations
• in a few cases, a liberal war may still be winnable if the opponent is weak and the other strategic dimensions are favourable
• wars, or shows of force, to defend some liberal institution or other (abolition of slavery, UNCLOS, etc) may be inevitable if revisionist foes will not accept the status quo.

It may therefore be more fruitful to consider further Clausewitz's card metaphor and extend that to that of a poker game.  In poker players fold, see and raise dependent up on the cards they have, the probabilities of the cards they may yet receive, the size of the stakes and their willingness to bluff.  All wars, therefore, require a good appreciation of what the desired end point is, the means by which these might be achieved and how much one is prepared to gamble.  Even in a war shorn of liberal impulses, even when the stakes are very high, one player may fold or lose despite their best efforts or intentions.  The risk for a liberal war player is that they continue to raise the stakes even when their hand is weak - when noble ends include defeating misogyny in an illiberal country, your weak hand or your reducing appetite to raise the stakes (costs), will undermine your policy - you may end up pushing a losing hand. In 2001 the stakes for the US were very high and its commitment total, so much so that it achieved a quick and easy victory.  Thereafter, its attempted creation of liberal democratic states in illiberal territories created a maximalist policy which was not matched by a maximalist effort, as Western polities and peoples concluded the cost-benefit equation did not justify the effort.  

The problem for the 'liberal war' poker player is the impulse of raising the stakes beyond a level which is prudent, particularly if the costs of doing so escalates.  This was not the case in Sierra Leone, probably the most undilutedly 'liberal war' of recent times.  Kosovo also fits into this category, albeit less snugly.  In those cases the armed forces achieved the aim at a limited and bearable cost.  Afghanistan, at least initially was not really a 'liberal war' until the liberal democratic cordon sanitaire was attempted.  Iraq was probably the best example of liberal hubristic overreach as the liberal democratic aim was largely undone by native illiberal sectarianism - Western attempts to minimise 'collateral damage' - to ensure liberal norms were respected - were undermined by sectarian acts to maximise such damage, thus undermining the domestic will of the West to fight.

Royal Marines during Operation Palliser, Sierra Leone.

Thereafter, liberal ends rapidly outstripped the illiberal means the US and the others were willing to expend, and strategy could not close the mismatch between the two.  Biden's Afghanistan exfiltration was therefore an act of cold and calculated realpolitik, a fact somewhat obscured by the cack-handed nature of the departure.

Implications 

To listen to the post Kabul fiasco parliamentary debates was to be transported to a realm of unreality.  The most jarring contribution was made by the former PM, Theresa May, who demanded to know of Boris Johnson why some coalition of the willing could not make good the US vacuum and what the point of NATO was if it could not do so.  This was a remarkable statement from a former PM to another - she was surely aware that the armed forces of the UK and the other NATO allies lack mass and therefore were not sufficient to step into the breach, particularly at the eleventh hour?  Listening to the debate it was hard not to come to the conclusion that Parliament still imagines the UK to be a hegemon, rather than a country that spends barely 2% of its GDP on Defence (a figure which includes pensions and intelligence agencies).  

The MP Tobias Ellwood was lampooned on Twitter for saying in another debate that the UK would have to fill the void left by absent American leadership.  Of course this is deluded in many respects (such as lacking sufficient means, even with the support of others, who have even less means at their disposal) but, his point about the British body politic needing a reality check rings true.  To achieve the vaunted ideal of 'strategic autonomy' (something Brussels and Paris also pander for but will not pay for) would require a huge uplift in Defence expenditure.  3% of GDP spent on Defence would require an extra c. £20 billion per annum; but that would only get us into the foothills of strategic autonomy - it might though allow the UK to field something akin to full spectrum of forces with much enhanced strategic effect.  That though the would hardly plug the gap left by an absent America.  Several years ago using percentages of GDP as a measure for what should be spent on Defence was derided by some as 'crude'.  This was both true and absurd.  Of course it's a simple benchmark and hardly a substitute for a policy but these metrics are legion and used to gauge all aspects of public expenditure.  Another benchmark would be what the US spends.  It spends approximately 3.6% of GDP on Defence which equates to c. £500 billion - at 3.6% the UK would be spending c. £72 billion per annum on Defence, or 14% of the current US total.  In short, a US shaped hole could only be plugged if all the other major Western powers (European, Asian and American) spent well over 3% of their GDP on Defence. 

Of course, it may be that there has been something of an overreaction to the US' latest unilateral actions and that it will continue to play its hegemonic role not just in the Americas and East Asia, but also in Europe - the fiasco at Kabul airport may turn out to be a minor rather than a major strategic shock.  Russophobia (justified or otherwise) has been useful in shaping American domestic political narratives and continued membership of NATO is useful to that end.  Also, presumably, the US still derives some benefit and pride from sitting atop the various liberal institutions.  Further, many believe that under no circumstances will the US slip into outright isolationism as the logic of the anarchic international system compels it to balance China - which the recent Integrated Defence and Security Review (IDSR) noted to be a systemic threat to the liberal world order.  On the other hand, the US from Obama to Trump to Biden, has been saying the same thing to the other NATO states for a considerable period of time now - pay more for your own Defence because our focus is increasingly elsewhere.

It is in that context that Biden, along with Johnson and Scott Morrison, revealed his second geopolitical surprise of last summer with the signing of the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact.  The pact will allow the US and the UK to transfer nuclear submarine technology to Australia which in in turn will allow Australia to significantly enhance its naval capabilities in the face of a rising and increasingly assertive PRC.   This caused a temporary diplomatic rupture with Emanuel Macron's France after Australia had cancelled the contract with France's Naval Group, as they were entitled to do.  Though AUKUS and the fall of Kabul were two radically different events, albeit ones which generated significant diplomatic blowback, what links them is that they both represent the crystallisation of a post-Liberal Grand Strategy in Washington (all the more ironic as this is being carried out by avowed liberals).  In part this is driven by an inevitable waning of America's relative strength as China rises and Russia pursues its revisionist agenda.  To realist thinkers and scholars such as Patrick Porter and John Gray, these events represent a welcome return of raison d'etat in American foreign policy which should mean  that in the geopolitical stakes the US will cease to push a weak, liberal hand.  This may be so, however, they also represent a rude awakening for those states that have free ridden on American security since 1945.  These events have illustrated a) that the US will act in its own interests in spite of the multilateral rhetoric to the contrary, and b) that the EU states, Japan and the UK definitively lack the military means to fill an American void and are certainly outgunned viz a viz Russia and China.  Thus, the rest of the West finds itself denuded of power and influence as the three most powerful military states competitively engage in what is an emerging tripolarity which is post-Liberal and certainly not, postmodern. 

AUKUS announced by Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morison 

The question arises what should the UK's grand strategy be as these new power formations take shape?  The UK, US and the rest of the West are likely to generally be in agreement in terms of the need to defend the liberal international system from revisionist challenge.  Thus, for the UK, NATO, AUKUS, FPDA and so on are likely to remain important forums for rallying opposition to challenges to the order.  As the US still, for now at least, underwrites European security it is probable that the UK will still want to be relevant to the US in terms of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities. The IDSR strikes roughly the right balance in terms of the split between the Euro Atlantic and the IPR.  In that context the provision of CSG 21 was a militarily modest, but symbolically significant, deployment.  CSG 21, if nothing else, sent the signal that the UK is interested in the security of the IPR and in extremis can make a contribution to the regional balance of power.  

In the Euro Atlantic, the threat posed by Russia to Ukraine and elsewhere is pressing.  The main aim here must be to deter Russia and in doing so avoid the appalling prospect of war with the world's largest nuclear power.  The US-Russian dialogue aimed at creating a form of Détente is therefore to be welcomed, though it is far from a given that it will succeed; Russia may ask for more than the West can concede and vice versa.  Against this backdrop the relatively activist approach of the UK government (as evidenced by the decision to send thousands of NLAW anti-tanks weapons to Ukraine)  has been noteworthy and starkly in contrast to  the new government in Berlin, which is ever more dependent on Russian gas.  The UK does have a general interest in ensuring peace in eastern Europe and indeed has a treaty obligation (along with the US and Russia) towards Ukraine.  The UK needs to be clear eyed though that avoiding war with Russia is key.  The West is not in a position to fight a war in the East - this is hardly a state secret.  Thus, if the UK can play a hand with skill and verve, along raison d'etat lines and this can help apply some creative pressure to the Russian position, so be it, so long as the aims are indeed realistic.  Further, increasing the UK's influence with Poland and the Scandinavian countries could also be useful in terms of further normalising the post-Brexit relationship with the EU and its constituent states.  And the prospect of the USA and the UK providing arms, technical and financial support to Ukraine should give Moscow serious pause for thought.

UK anti-tank NLAW missiles being supplied to Ukraine

Militarily the UK's conventional forces should have as a key aim the ability to provide a largely general deterrence in relation to Russia and the PRC. The UK's ability to do this in a credible way is somewhat better in the sea and air domains than it is on the land. Much official thinking seems to privilege fighting in the 'Grey Zone'.  There are obvious conceptual weaknesses with such an approach, most obviously, the fact that it effectively cedes escalation dominance to Russia and China.  It also assumes that Putin sees no utility in war, but recent history suggests that Putin is an arch-Clausewitzian.  The 'role' Putin wishes to play is more akin to Peter the Great's than Mikhail Gorbachev's.  

If the UK wishes its conventional armed forces to be strategically significant it needs to enhance, at a minimum, their offensive hitting power and range (there is also an argument for enhanced defensive missiles).  Which means at a tactical level the acquisition of more, and more capable, long range missiles sooner rather than later.  This would greatly enhance the RAF's and the RN's general deterrence capability in the Euro Atlantic, and in the IPR, when its mobile forces deploy there.  It would also at least match the key assets which adversaries are acquiring to achieve escalation dominance. It is reassuring, therefore, that the new CDS Admiral Radakin is thinking along such lines.

In terms of the British Army, there is insufficient space to properly explore this ever more agonised debate here.  In some respects, the Army is paying the price for the over prioritisation of COIN during the 'Liberal Wars' period.  In some respects it is paying the price for poor procurement and in some respects for a lack of clarity in terms of what it's primary role should be.  As Russia does not pose a land threat to the UK, the function of the Army is to provide expeditionary effect wherever required.  In Europe this could be to effectively plug into a larger allied effort; elsewhere largely the same approach but probably with fewer partners.  And whilst the Army will always need to be able to engage in COIN or COIN like operations, in a renewed age of great power competition it should be geared for peer to peer conflict primarily.  As with the RN and the RAF this is perhaps less about numbers as it is about lethality, whilst accepting quantity has a quality of its own.  Enhancing the lethality and situational awareness of units may go some way to offsetting the negative effects of cuts.  Speed of deployment, though desirable, is arguably less important than hitting power, particularly in an Army with substantially reduced numbers.  Perhaps it's important to think of the Army in this regard as a mobile allied reserve, albeit with smaller units forward deployed.   

The above would have the two-fold effect of enhancing the UK's diplomacy and its war fighting capability.  Paradoxically, this would help the pursuit of diplomatic solutions to geopolitical problems and great power tensions; after all the armed forces are the key 'cards' which the strategist has to play.

Overall, the fall of Kabul has heralded a decisive shift in American foreign and security policies from those of the expansive Liberal Wars age to one which is much more geared to realpolitik and containing China.  In effect, Washington is becoming an Offshore Balancer of the type advocated by Mearsheimer et al.  The irony is, of course, that the wars began with a US intent on unilateralism if necessary and have ended with a US which has acted unilaterally. 

It does not automatically follow that there will be no more so-called liberal interventions, but without US inclination or might they will be conspicuously thin on the ground in the future.  Further, the illiberal challenges posed by China and Russia will reduce the space and appetite for such ventures in the rest of the West, which may increasingly have to look to its own guns in order to maintain its security in what remains an anarchic system and where the systemic challenge to the liberal powers is real and growing.  Ultimately, it may be that the age of Liberal Wars was always contingent upon unipolarity and that the fall of Kabul has heralded the end of that age, to be definitively replaced by the new multipolarity.  The main lesson of Kabul, then, is that the US intends to play a meaner game of poker in the future and the question for the rest of the West is will they be a player or simply be a spectator? My money is on the latter.