State-Building in “the Graveyard of Empires”: Why the Soviet and United States Interventions Failed to Establish Stable Regimes in Afghanistan

• Grass, Kacper ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• Localización: Revista internacional de pensamiento político, ISSN 1885-589X, Nº. 17, 2022, págs. 499-518
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.46661/revintpensampolit.7407
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Construcción de estado en “el cementerio de los imperios”: Por qué la intervención soviética y estadounidense no lograron establecer regímenes estables en Afganistán
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Tanto la intervención militar soviética como la de Estados Unidos fracasaron en sus respectivos esfuerzos por establecer regímenes estables en Afganistán, cuya reputación de resistencia a la ocupación extranjera y las operaciones de construcción de estado le han valido un apodo casi mítico: “el cementerio de los imperios”. Este estudio examina la historia del desarrollo del régimen en Afganistán con un enfoque en el desafío perenne de encontrar un equilibrio entre el grado de poder centralizado necesario para mantener la seguridad y desempeñar funciones estatales, por un lado, y el umbral de tolerancia para el poder centralizado entre la población tribal del país, por otro. El análisis muestra como el régimen comunista altamente centralizado establecido a través de la intervención soviética, así como el régimen democrático excesivamente descentralizado establecido a través de la intervención de los Estados Unidos, representan solo dos capítulos en la lucha histórica de Afganistán para establecer fuentes legitimas y duraderas de poder estatal centralizado.

  • English

    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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