The Obama Administration’s State-Building in Afghanistan

Grzegorz Gil

Abstract


The article is focused on armed state-building in Afghanistan during the presidency of Barack Obama (2009–2017). The Afghan war was strongly debated in the early Obama administration, divided into proponents of an Al-Qaeda-focused approach (the Biden approach) with its limited military presence and those supporting a stronger military footing (the McChrystal approach). While the first Obama term employed counterinsurgency (COINtainment), the second employed a “non-kinetic” model and a phased withdrawal. Thus, the US has shifted its role from a regime-changer (but not a game-changer) with an anti-Taliban attitude to “Afghanistan good enough”. Finally, the author argues that there were only some enclaves of state-building “in” Afghanistan as the country is extremely resistant to international engineering. The US’s inconsistent, back-and-forth approach to Afghanistan should also be assessed in the context of the Taliban’s re-emergence.


Keywords


Afghanistan, intervention, Obama administration, state-building

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/teka.2017.12.2.85
Date of publication: 2018-09-17 14:22:17
Date of submission: 2018-09-17 13:26:28


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