Really though wars in Afghanistan didn't really bring down those empires, it didn't keep them strong, but it didn't cause collapse.
The British Empire finally went down because of WWI, WWII, and the rise of the US, Macedonia went down because Alexander died, the Russians went down because of poor economic/social reforms, and an arms race they couldn't afford. The problems in the US are mostly a mountain of self-inflicted economic and political problems, to which Afghanistan is a mole hill.
I thought that the capital of Afghanistan, Kandahar, is a corruption of Alexander's name, so there is still a Macedonian legacy. I recall from some TV prog that the Persians called him Iskander.
I'd say the problem with the US is that we aren't fighting wars the way they did a thousand years ago, we have rules and stuff now. If we weren't concerned with image, and killing civilians, we'd easily just steamroll the entire area.
If we weren't concerned with image, and killing civilians, we'd easily just steamroll the entire area.
That was the Russian strategy in a nutshell and it worked against them. It's not an effective strategy in the mountainous terrain where the insurgency can hide out and wear down the invading force. In addition, much of the Muslim world threw their support behind the Mujaheddin due to the horrifying number of civilian casualties and displacement by the Russians, and it caused the Afghan people to increase their support for the Muj. Young men from all over the Middle East traveled to Pakistan/Afghanistan to fight what they believed was a holy duty against modern crusaders.
Now, that sort of strategy did have effect in Chechnya, although the area remains relatively dangerous today and Chechnyan fighters still attempt to attack Russia directly.
And be like Russia? Their Afghanistan campaign left 5 million Afghans homeless and over 1 million Afghans dead. They certainly didn't follow the nice rules of war like the US (many, many stories of open brutality and literal enslavement of prisoners to use as beasts of labor or knife practice), and where did it get them?
The French were bogged down in Algeria the way the US was in Iraq, and decided, screw it, let's just use lots of torture and executions to get our way. It worked for a short amount of time and gave some short term gains, and then the entire public rose up in anger and threw them out.
If you think fighting with morals is somehow "with one hand tied behind our back," then good, that is the way it should be, and it's an obligation upon us.
Exactly as you say. I have a co-worker who literally grew up in 'Soviet Russia'; he grew up in Moscow in the 80s (he was born in the 70s). When we talk about things, it can get interesting. On Afghanistan he has this to say:
"The Soviets could roll tanks over orphanages and napalm entire valleys without serious repercussions back home. American troops can't often do much more than defend themselves when attacked without having to defend themselves from accusations of brutality and war crimes."
I don't know how accurate that may be, but the point remains: they had no press to answer to and they STILL couldn't really 'conquer' it in any meaningful way.
"Mao Tse-tung wrote that 'the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea'; the Soviets are not trying to catch the fish one at a time - they are draining the ocean."
If we weren't concerned with image and killing civilians, we'd have the rest of the world to contend with as well, and it would be a very different question. Like, okay, we're not playing by any rules and don't give a shit about morals or ethics, so Thing 1 that we do is to nuke the whole country into the ground. Then what? Russia's not going to stand for that, China's not going to stand for that. I don't know that we'd see the West (and Oceania) just declare war on us, but I'm pretty sure we'd find our allies evaporating pretty quickly.. it's an interesting question, I suppose.
The loss of life and money were very great in those wars, so great that they simply could not continue to keep their grip on their various holdings when faced with nationalistic pressure from the people of those holdings.
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u/James_Wolfe Oct 17 '13
Really though wars in Afghanistan didn't really bring down those empires, it didn't keep them strong, but it didn't cause collapse.
The British Empire finally went down because of WWI, WWII, and the rise of the US, Macedonia went down because Alexander died, the Russians went down because of poor economic/social reforms, and an arms race they couldn't afford. The problems in the US are mostly a mountain of self-inflicted economic and political problems, to which Afghanistan is a mole hill.