Book Review: The New Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1999–2019
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020211066333 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
fighters were motivated in ways that Afghan and American security forces were not.
Rooted in Islam and an Afghan cultural hostility to external occupation, the Taliban
embodied properties intrinsic to the country’s history and identity. In the end, this
political movement had the motivation, authenticity, and opportunity to defeat a more
powerful opponent that had none of those features. Rightly, Malkasian notes that
culture is a necessary, but not sufficient, explanation of why the US did not win in
Afghanistan. It is, however, the overarching one and interacts with contingent factors to
explain multicausal defeat.
There are two final disquieting questions. Firstly, was failure inevitable? Malkasian
says no. Events carried outcomes but did not determine what came next. It is true that
US options narrowed in a path-dependent manner, but nothing in 2001, 2006, 2015, or
2019 was destined to happen. Hence the tragedy of Afghanistan. It did not have to end
this way. And finally,was it worth it? Malkasian does not expli citly say no, but it is clear
enough that this is where he lands. Whatever benefits to the Afghan people that came
after 2001 need to be tabulated against how fleeting they may be, how revenge and the
perception of security was bought at an enormous cost in human life and suffering.
Ultimately, Malkasian’s judgement is damning: “foreign intervention was a blight on
the peace and well-being of the people of Afghanistan”(460).
Explaining the multi-causal failure in Afghanistan should occupy civilian and
military minds for generations to come. In that sense, Carter Malkasian’sThe American
War in Afghanistan should be included in the testimony of history alongside George C.
Herring’s account of America’s now-second-longest war. Any future leader, telling
tales of easy victory, would be wise to keep a copy close by.
ORCID iD
Aaron Ettinger https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1761-7184
Cunliffe, Philip.
The New Twenty Years’Crisis: 1999–2019
Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020. 155 pp. $27.95 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-2280-0102-7
Reviewed by: Jennifer M. Welsh, (jennifer.welsh@mcgill.ca), McGill University
Though many students of International Relations (IR) are taught that thinkers such as
Kenneth Waltz are the “fathers”of the realist tradition, the British historian E.H. Carr—
writing on the eve of World War II—was arguably the first to consciously articulate
realism as a distinct approach to understanding international politics. Carr’s great
achievement in his famous book, The Twenty Years’Crisis: 1919–1939, was not so
much his formulation of a structural theory of international relations, which
610 International Journal 76(4)
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