State-Building in “the Graveyard of Empires”

Why the Soviet and United States Interventions Failed to Establish Stable Regimes in Afghanistan

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46661/revintpensampolit.7407

Keywords:

Afghanistan, Military intervention, Regime stability, State-building

Abstract

Both the Soviet and United States military interventions failed in their respective efforts to establish stable regimes in Afghanistan, whose reputation for resistance to foreign occupation and state-building operations has earned it a near-mythical moniker: “the graveyard of empires”. This study examines the history of regime development in Afghanistan with a focus on the perennial challenge of finding a balance between the degree of centralized power necessary to maintain security and perform state functions, on the one hand, and the threshold of tolerance for centralized power among the country’s tribal population, on the other. The analysis shows how the highly centralized communist regime established through the Soviet intervention as well as the excessively decentralized democratic regime established through the United States intervention represent just two chapters in Afghanistan’s historical struggle to establish legitimate and enduring sources of centralized state power.

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Author Biography

Kacper Grass, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Kacper Grass is a PhD student and graduate teaching assistant at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as well as the editor-in-chief at the Factory for Innovative Policy Solutions, a Netherlands-based think tank. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and Hispanic studies from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree in political science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he published his thesis Direct Military Intervention and Stability in the United States’ Backyard, 1965-1995. Since then, he has actively pursued research in political science and international relations, publishing articles such as Geopolitics in the Western Hemisphere After Trump: Has the United States Abandoned Hegemony in Latin America? in the International Journal of Political Thought.

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Published

2022-12-27

How to Cite

Grass, K. (2022). State-Building in “the Graveyard of Empires”: Why the Soviet and United States Interventions Failed to Establish Stable Regimes in Afghanistan. International Journal of Political Thought, 17(1), 499–518. https://doi.org/10.46661/revintpensampolit.7407

Issue

Vol. 17 (2022)

Section

Estudios Varios

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Copyright (c) 2022 Kacper Grass

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