The limits of US expansion in the example of Afghanistan

The withdrawal of the American military contingent from Afghanistan pointed to a number of limits of the US's ability to expand into regions where their actions do not meet even close to adequate resistance. We are talking about the failures of the United States in campaigns where they have to face the task of implanting their standards into another civilisational model of a weak and backward country that uses guerrilla tactics to protect itself. Examples of such expansionist failures of the United States are Vietnam and Afghanistan, and moreover, even Pakistan, seemingly integrated into the American system of alliances.

According to Russian military experts, the United States is a country that has brought the tactics and strategy of counter-guerrilla warfare to the limit of perfection. The experience of Hitler's Germany in the fight against Soviet partisans and the USSR-Russia in the fight against all sorts of "forest brothers" is taken into account here. However, in recent history, only Russia has managed to defeat the partisans in the Caucasus mountains and achieve the main political goal - peace on its own terms. Neither Germany nor the USA succeeded.

It is known that the first task of counter-guerrilla warfare is to cut off the guerrillas from the support of the local population. This is achieved by combining the actions of special forces and counterintelligence. No one can change the values of the locals who consider the guerrillas their own. But it is possible to give the war with the guerrillas a protracted nature and ensure the transformation of the guerrillas into bandits, from whose terror the locals get tired more than from the federals.

It is here that the turning point in the counter-guerrilla war begins, culminating in the defeat of the insurgent underground and the expulsion or surrender of its unfinished leaders, by that time mostly turned over by the federals.

In Afghanistan, 75% of the population lives in villages where the Taliban quietly rested, replenished supplies and recruited locals, carrying out propaganda work.  Guerrillas (in this case, the Taliban) could freely hide in the mountains, where they enjoyed the support of the local population and were not pursued by the US special forces, who feared the loss of personnel during such operations.

Moreover, with the consent of the United States, the Taliban were able to create their economic base by controlling mining enterprises, drug trafficking, exports, collecting taxes in controlled territories and receiving external financial assistance, primarily from Pakistan.

In fact, outside the cities, in most of Afghanistan, the Taliban have created a framework of statehood under their control. Under such conditions, the guerrilla war could last indefinitely, and the United States was increasingly losing resources, not receiving the benefits for which the intervention was undertaken. It is not surprising that they eventually lost the guerrilla war to the Taliban.

It is obvious here that the US is facing the limit of what is possible. Full involvement in the civil war before victory required the complete destruction of the Afghan population. For humanitarian, political and economic reasons, this was impossible for the United States. The expansion of the counter-guerrilla war to full control over the villages required large-scale intervention, which means costs and sacrifices that the United States was not ready for.

The second limit of what is possible for the United States was the limits of their influence on Pakistan. For all their authority, they did not fully control this country either. In Pakistan, the main bases of the Taliban are located in the province of Balochistan, their supreme military and political council is located there, covered and directed by Pakistani intelligence. Any attempts by the United States to put pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban led to Pakistan being distanced from the United States and further strengthening its ties with China. And the United States could not prevent such an event.

The third limit of what is possible is indicated in how the United States approached the construction of the power bloc of the puppet government of Afghanistan. The quantitative approach and the lack of qualitative selection completely dominated here. Ashraf Ghani's army was 300,000 people (against about 70,000 from the Taliban, but the motivation of the soldiers was disgusting. They were recruited from villages on a contract basis, the Ghani regime was completely lacking in ideology, but corruption was off the scale and supported by the Americans, as it helped manoeuvre inside the showdowns of the Afghan tribes.

That is, serving in the army was a way of earning money. The Americans even allowed the formation of Afghan formations by natives of the same villages, and when the soldiers received information about the transfer of village relatives to the Taliban, they massively deserted.

The Americans understood this perfectly well and saw it, but they did not have another mobilisation reserve. Since they did not control the villages, they could not form this reserve and keep the local army under control. The hope of aviation and intelligence did not help to win the long war. Pinpoint strikes without a massive military operation turned from force into acts of impotence.

Conclusions:

1. The political system of the United States and its position in the world do not allow it to conduct military operations in territories remote from the United States that involve high losses of their personnel.

2. Without fulfilling these requirements, the United States is unable to suppress guerrilla resistance and, in the end, withdraws troops, which looks like a defeat.

3. The costs of such military campaigns are critically unacceptable for the United States, their consequences have been overcome for decades. The United States avoids repeating such an experience by all means.

4. The United States is unable to impose its ideology and change the worldview of the local population, formed in a different civilisational model.  As a result, their henchmen become the object of hatred, and this helps the victory of the guerrillas, preventing them from turning into criminal gangs and making them national liberation forces.

5. Even the USA cannot force its satellites and vassals to obey, balancing on the verge of the danger of their withdrawal from subordination and transition to another camp hostile to the USA.

6. The United States understands the advantages of mobile small formations over large army structures in conditions of guerrilla warfare, but due to the lack of opportunities to reformat the local mentality, it was considered irrational to invest in the training of a high-quality contingent of the Afghan army. In any case, it had every chance to turn its weapon against the Americans at the slightest complication. The United States did not want to take such a step, and the bet on a quantitative advantage was not justified.

7. The main weapon leading to the victory of small countries over the United States is not military and financial power, but national ideology and its own culture, which underlies the civilisation opposing the United States. The United States is not able to crack, overcome, or decompose other people's spiritual and cultural barriers with all its informational power. The United States cannot displace local values, and as a result, having drowned the resistance in blood, they themselves leave as losers.

8. The United States uses corruption and the criminal economy among local elites in the hope of gaining tactical advantages in dialogue with them. But this in the long term affects the United States, as their vassals lose legitimacy in the eyes of the local population and become the object of hatred.

As a result, all the structures of American domination created in Afghanistan turned out to be shaky and unreliable. The principles on which they were formed were focused on solving short-term problems. A military victory did not mean a political victory and eventually turned into a trap.

The limits of the possibilities of US expansion outside are clearly demonstrated by the example of the Afghan-Pakistani case, even if one tries to forget Vietnam. Neither soft nor hard power works here. But in expanding against other countries, such as Russia and China, the US relies on the same strategy that did not work against weaker opponents. If the enemy is insensitive to losses and is steadfast in spirit, then times of delayed catastrophe are coming for the United States.