Retreat of an Empire or End of an Era; Aftermath of US Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Abstract

The United States (US) president declared ‘end of an era’, during which Washington has been engaged in changing the regimes and putting democratic governments in place. Making Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) after withdrawing from Afghanistan without wasting any time illuminates that economic, political, and strategic advantages attained by China in last two decades are game changing and the US is struggling to handle it unilaterally. While when the US retaliated the September 11th incident it did not give much importance to the international institutions or protocols showing that the US, being the most powerful state, would like to act unilaterally. With spending twenty years and billions of dollars, the US could change little in Afghanistan, as soon as the US withdrew, the Afghan government, institutions and security forces just vanished, providing an easy entry to the Taliban. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is an important event, some would argue to denote it as retreat, it has implications on the future political scenario, and it shows reasonable shift in the current world political balance as well. Afghanistan, in its entire history, has never been a self-sufficient state, it has always been the battle ground of external actors, its future does not seem to be different. New actors will be spreading their cards on the sands of Afghanistan. The former players will be trying to find the ways to spoil the party of new players. In the games being played in Afghanistan, Afghans are the most irrelevant. This research analyzes the 20 years’ status of the United States after 9/11 with the support of international relations theory of Realism followed by future prospects.