Who Lost Afghanistan? Samuel Huntington and the Decline of Strategic Thinking

Abstract

Numerous reflections exist regarding who should be held accountable and what lessons should be learned from the military withdrawal and political collapse of Afghanistan. This essay argues that the failures in Afghanistan are second- and third-order effects of a failure of strategic thinking on behalf of civilian and military leadership alike. I argue that this failure of strategic thinking is caused, in part, by the overreliance on concepts of civil–military relations espoused by Samuel Huntington. These concepts have been inculcated by a professional military education system that has subsequently developed a generation of officers with an atrophied appreciation for the political aspects of war, and an inability to link operational prowess to the achievement of strategic objectives. This dilemma is aggravated by a similar overreliance on systematic thinking, which further obscures the linkages between the military and political aspects of strategy.