Creating a Failed State – The US and Canada in Afghanistan (review)

Reviewed by: Creating a Failed State – The US and Canada in Afghanistan Julian Schofield Creating a Failed State – The US and Canada in Afghanistan by John W. Warnock. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008, 209 pp. This volume provides a comprehensive and popular discussion of international developments leading up to and including Canada’s current involvement in [End Page 266] Afghanistan. John Warnock argues that major power interests and elite political interests in Canada have produced policies that are creating a failed state in Afghanistan. He concludes that Canada should focus on providing health care, housing, food, and agricultural development rather than the heavy emphasis on military operations. The text itself consists of nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides a broad overview of the deleterious consequences of US counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. Chapter 2 explores the concept of a failed state and critiques its polemics. Chapter 3 gives a balanced historical summary of Afghanistan. Chapter 4 examines US strategic interests in Central Asia. Chapter 5 is an historical survey of the US reaction to al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks. Chapter 6 presents a history of the creation of the current regime in Afghanistan. Chapter 7 discusses women’s rights in Afghanistan. Chapter 8 discusses Canada’s role in Afghanistan up until early 2008. Chapter 9 examines different policy options and attempts to ascertain the state of public opinion and the emerging unpopularity of the direction of Canada’s Afghan policy. The discussion of the politics of women’s rights (Chapter 7) is the strongest in the book. It provides an insightful anthropological, historical, cultural, and political survey of a hot button issue in both Canada and Afghanistan. Women’s rights are in many ways key to the policy justification pursued by the Canadian government, as well as one of the principal causes of local resistance to foreign occupation in Afghanistan. Warnock convincingly outlines the complexity and difficulty of naively and precipitously imposing social reforms. However, throughout the book he recalls periods in Afghanistan where wide-ranging reforms were at least begun, and in some cases (1964) successfully implemented, by indigenous elites. Chapters 2 and 3 are also well argued. Exploding the failed state concept and exposing the US’s neo-liberal development project in Afghanistan, Warnock briefly shows how state-led industrial development was successful in the past. His historical survey is also parsimonious and provides an excellent context to show how contemporary Western policy is in part a recurrence of previous colonial enterprises. Creating a Failed State is intended for a non-academic audience. Consequently there are many controversial claims that have no citation and need more than the bibliographic discussion provided at the end of the text. Many of the claims made in Chapter 3 (on 9/11) come from the online “9/11 Truth Campaign,” which is academically suspect, in my opinion. For example, it is implied that Timothy McVeigh’s associate was not Terry Nichols but a “Middle Easterner,” and that Terry Nichols had received training from the al Qaeda-associated Abu Sayyaf movement in the Philippines. There are also the usual insinuations that 9/11 was preceded by stock manipulations, suggesting widespread insider knowledge of an imminent al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center. Warnock proposes that Canada return to its role of peacemaker and disengage militarily. This is the commonsense approach most of our NATO allies have taken. However, he does not examine the political repercussions this would have with the United States. Warnock assumes that the Afghans prefer a negotiated solution to end the current insurgency, to exclude warlords from government, and to achieve state-directed industrialization, and that they are capable of establishing their own system of governance. In these assumptions I believe he is correct. He exaggerates the extent of failure as much as the Canadian establishment has exaggerated its success. The insurgency in Afghanistan is at a persistently low level of intensity. Consequently, he criticizes the “no choice” strategy of remaining involved in a war without end. If citizens continue to volunteer to serve in Afghanistan and there is no major political upheaval against this policy, especially in Quebec, then this is an eminently sustainable policy, however pointless. Warnock attributes this to...

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