How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan

by Amin Saikal

An incisive, authoritative account of the West’s failures in Afghanistan, from 9/11 to the fall of Kabul
 
In 1958, Richard Nixon described Afghanistan as “unconquerable.” On 15th August 2021, he was proven right. After twenty years of intervention, US and NATO forces retreated, enabling the Taliban to return to power. Tens of thousands were killed in the long, unwinnable war, and millions more were displaced—leaving the future of Afghanistan hanging in the balance.
 
Leading expert Amin Saikal traces the full story of America’s intervention, from 9/11 to the present crisis. After an initial swift military strike, the US became embroiled in a drawn-out struggle to change Afghanistan but failed to achieve its aims. Saikal shows how this failure was underlined by protracted attempts to capture Osama bin Laden, an inability to secure a viable government via “democracy promotion” efforts, and lack of wider strategy in the “war on terror.”
 
How to Lose a War offers an insightful account of one of the US’s most significant foreign policy failures—and considers its dire consequences for the people of Afghanistan.

Genres: Politics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 25, 2024

About the author

Amin Saikal is Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Public Policy Fellow, and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Shah (Princeton) and Modern Afghanistan. He lives in Canberra.

Reviews

[Katie Putz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another entry in the growing canon of Books About Afghanistan. This one is an excellent overview of the war that doesn't get bogged down in the tactics (which are important but perhaps not the most relevant when trying to assess what went wrong and how from a higher level.) Saikal notes the weakness of the Bush administration's "light footprint " plan and frankly its duplicity (he doesn't use that word but he goes cast doubt on whether the Bush administration ever had any real intentions in Afghanistan other than to use it to legitimize its wider foreign policy goals). He includes not one but two chapters titled "Dysfunctional Governance" for the administrations of Karzai and Ghani; and chapters on state-building failures and strategic blunders.

Ultimately, you lose a war by losing sight of the mission and never committing to it in the first place, by ignoring the political context and engaging in rank hypocrisy.

Work read, naturally. My interview with the author will be out eventually. The content of the book might not surprise anyone who has paid attention, but it really lays it out in a concise and digestible format without eschewing nuance. The historical context chapter is something I wish the Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden administrations had read before ya know, marching off to war.

[Otis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author knows his subject matter, that's for sure...however I found this an extremely hard read which was bogged down in, at times, unnecessarily intricate and protracted details which didn't really link back to the central thesis.

I'm not ignorant about this topic at all, but I'd really only recommend for Afghanistan historical geopolitical and cultural science experts. Way too in-depth for a casual observer of the history of the conflict

[Paulina Stewart-Aday · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not gonna lie…did not finish this. I made it halfway and then realized I was utterly lost and had no idea what I’d read so I gave up, buuuuut if I had a better baseline knowledge of US/Middle East relations and international organizations, I probably could have kept up.