When the End of War Is the Beginning of War by Alan Cowell, New York Times
… As European history showed after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, terms of peace that offer no dignity to the defeated sow the seeds of future conflict. In this century - witness the revived bloodletting in Iraq - wars that end on ill-defined terms merely store up the tinder of future conflagration.
So what is to be made of Britain’s drawdown in lockstep with the United States’ from a war in Afghanistan whose aims have shifted inconclusively as lives have been lost? …
Comments
Q: "So what is to be made of Britain’s drawdown in lockstep with the United States’ from a war in Afghanistan whose aims have shifted inconclusively as lives have been lost?" (Same general question re: Iraq.)
A: That these attempts at state-building failed.
Q: So why did these attempts at state-building in Afghanistan and Iraq fail?
A: Because the model that the West attempted to use to achieve state-building in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to wit: it's, the West's, own such model -- was incompatible with the history, culture and religion of the region and, thus, with the wants, needs and desires of the Afghan and Iraqi people.
Conclusion:
It may be too much to ask of certain other people that they:
a. Both form a state and
b. Have this state conform to an alien model (in these instances, the alien political, economic and social model of the West).
Herein, the requirement to do one of these things (to use the Western model) actually ensuring that the other requirement (to form a state) cannot be achieved.