UBC Journal of International Affairs 2022

Contributors

Editor-in-Chief Julian Lam

Managing Editor Gizel Gedik, Tiffany Chang

Editorial Board

Carter Dungate Chloe Masciarelli Divyakshi Nath Léna Faucher

Nicole Mendoza Oskar Steiner Sofia Cuyegkeng Taylor Tang Zohrah Khalili

Authors

Solal Quéré Oskar Steiner Eunsol Kim Sean Thorne

Faculty Reviewers

Dr. Robert Crawford

Dr. Pheroze Unwalla

Dr. Carlo Testa

Dr. Gilberto Agar-Faria

Dr. Robert Farkasch

Dr. Jessica Wang.

Special Thanks

Dr. Jenny Peterson

Dr. Jessica Wang

Table of Contents

Contributors Foreword

18 29

Introduction

Solal Quéré Viva VERDI!

Italian nationalism, Romanticism & Risorgimento in International Relations

Oskar Steiner Thoughtless Theory (and the Neorealist Dream)

Anticolonial Internationalism in

Eunsol Kim Postwar Asia

Solidarity for Self-Determination in the Early Twentieth Century

PERSPECTIVES: Sean Thorne

The Human Factor in Strategic Surprise

The Fall of Afghanistan

Foreword

It is a great honour to introduce the 2022 issue of the Journal of International Affairs. A showcase of some of the most insightful undergraduate student research in the field of International Relations, this year’s issue again reflects the intellectual talent of UBC students. I’d also like to recognize this year’s editorial team, who have worked so hard across the academic year to select papers, organize the review process and ultimately produce this publication. As with all sectors, we in Higher Education have found ourselves faced with many new challenges over the past few years as we adjust to the ways in which the pandemic has affected the ways we teach, learn and research. This year’s authors and editorial team have had to maneuver an ever-changing environment of uncertainty, adapting in many cases to hybrid learning and collaboration as circumstances changed throughout the year. They have also had to grapple with the more substantive issues raised by the pandemic as they relate to the discipline itself—many old global challenges remain (or have been made worse by the pandemic) and new questions related to equity, global cooperation and conflict have also emerged over the past year. This year’s articles all offer analytical insights that can inform our thinking of old, persistent and new global dilemmas alike.

Sean Thorne’s ‘The Human Factor in Strategic Surprise: The Fall of Afghanistan’ provides an assessment of what is known about the state of intelligence leading up to the Taliban’s rapid take-over of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2021. In doing so, the notion of ‘surprise’ is problematized and the complexity of the relationship between intelligence and policy-making is critically reflected upon. Turning towards more historical analyses of International Relations, the issue’s second article, Solal Quere’s ‘Viva VERDI! Italian Nationalism, Romanticism and Risorgimento in International Relations,’ provides a detailed historical examination of the Italian unification movement. Tracing developments from 1789-1848, the paper details the complexity of both domestic and international politics by analyzing the interplay between foreign relations, symbolic rhetoric, and human agency on nationalist and identify based movements. Eunsol Kim’s “Anticolonial Internationalism in Postwar Asia’ also provides an indepth historical analysis, in this case, examining the rise of self-determination and challenges to global imperialism following World War I. Tracing events in Vietnam and Korea in this era, the article provides insight into processes that can and have sparked significant change and in the global system. Finally, in Oskar Steiner’s piece ‘Thoughtless Theory (and the Neorealist Dream)’, the distinction between ‘thought’ and ‘theory’ is critically assessed. The article examines the implications of this dichotomy on understanding international affairs. In doing so, it challenges us as scholars to think critically about how we create and use theory, and the implications for this in terms of being able to understand and thus respond to global challenges.

All of these papers provide a range of empirical, conceptual and theoretical insights that challenge the reader to thinking differently about not only specific cases, but International Relations more generally. We invite you to read, reflect upon and share these articles within your own networks. Congratulations again to all the authors and to the editorial team for an excellent contribution to our discipline.

Dr Jenny H Peterson Co-Chair, International Relations Program

Introduction

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the 2022 edition of the UBC Journal of International Affairs!Now in its 37th year of publication, the Journal of International Affairs is UBC’s oldest undergraduate publication and a testament to perseverance and excellence. The 2022 edition is no exception. Despite the lingering challenges presented by COVID, we received an impressive number of submissions from a wide variety of disciplines, produced a polished final product, and engaged in a thorough review process over several months that showcases some exceptional undergraduate work in the discipline of international affairs.The four papers published in this edition were selected for their argumentative strength, skilled composition, and originality. They address a diverse array of issues from various disciplinary perspectives, from political theory and history to security issues, in a variety of global arenas, ranging from Europe to the Middle East . Together, they offer a response to many of the pressing issues of our time, and chronicle a unique moment in global affairs.I would like to express my gratitude to the students, faculty, and staff who contributed to this year’s edition.

Thank you, firstly, to all of the talented undergraduate students who submitted papers to the Journal of International Affairs this year. I was continually impressed with our editors’ dedication and commitment to their task, as well as their productive and insightful discussions in online meetings. Each of our editors brought a unique set of valuable skills and knowledge to the table which helped to shape the Journal of International Affairs into its current form and will surely serve them well in the future. I would like to offer gratitude to our managing editors Tiffany Chang and Gizel Gedik, for consistently stepping up when required, and to our talented production head, Oskar Steiner. Thank you also to our faculty reviewers who took the time out of their busy schedules to review and offer suggestions to our authors. Lastly, I would like to thank you, our readers, for your continued support and interest. I hope that you find this year’s edition stimulating,compelling, and thought-provoking.

Sincerely,

Julian Lam

Editor-in-Chief, 2021-2022

UBC Journal of International Affairs

Solal Quéré

Viva VERDI!

Italian nationalism, Romanticism & Risorgimento in International Relations

“Oh, mia patria sì bella e perduta!” 1 . Giuseppe Verdi’s 1841 opera Nabucco, this verse is sung whole-heartedly by the Jewish people during the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the First Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem (586 BC). In the context of nineteenth-century Italy, however, this operatic song is commonly interpreted as a metaphor for the Austrian domination of Italy and, by extension, the oppression and division of a people on its very own land. As the embodiment of nineteenth-century Italian Romanticism and nationalism, one can argue that it is a political, social and cultural manifesto, of paramount importance in the context of the Europe-wide crisis of the “People’s Spring”2, particularly in Italy.

Nineteenth-century Italy was not yet the state it is known to be today but only a geographical expression for a peninsula divided into many states or possessions. In fact, the Italian peninsula had not existed as a single entity for over a millennium and a half, since the fall, in 476 AD, of the Roman Empire. Many of the peninsular states were under the direct3 or indirect4 dominion of foreign powers, be it Austria and France

1 “Oh, my country so beautiful and lost!”, from “Va, pensiero”, also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, in Act III of Nabucco. Verdi, Giuseppe. Nabucodonosor: Opera in Four Acts. Libretto by Temistocle Solera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1841.

2 Merriman, John M. A History of Modern Europe: Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present. New York: WW Norton and Company, 2019.

3 Duchy of Milan, Veneto, Kingdom of Naples, etc.

4 Duchies of Parma, Modena, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, etc.

in the north, or Spain in the south. The mid-nineteenth century saw the rise of the Risorgimento—ie. “national resurrection”5—which aimed at overcoming the foreign rule and unifying Italy, territorially, politically and culturally. This political, cultural and social movement lasted more than fifty years, from the 1815 Congress of Vienna, til the 1870 integration of the Papal States and Rome. The Risorgimento is directly associated with the ideologies of Romanticism, such as patriotism and nationalism, as ideals for the re-birth of Italy as a unified state under a common national identity. The Risorgimento, mostly a nineteenth-century movement, was not formally completed till the late-nineteenth century and the end of the First World War, after Italy defeated the Austrian Empire, with some territories being added late to the country as a whole.6 For the purpose of this paper, this essay will limit itself to the origins of the Risorgimento, starting with the French Revolution and Napoleonic eras (1789-1815) and the Italian Restoration (1815-1830), and culminating with the 1848 Revolutions and the First Italian War of Independence.

This paper will seek to answer the following question: to what extent was the Italian unification movement and its origins a consequence of the concurrent politics on the Continent, in terms of nationalism and Romanticism? As a response, this essay will posit that the origins of the Risorgimento were shaped, over the 1789-1848 period, by the counter-response to the foreign influence of neighbouring nation-states and the symbolic rhetorics used in art, while giving agency back to Italian patriots and political leaders as historical actors in the events. This paper will first analyse the causes that led to the unification of the peninsula, starting with the origins of the Risorgimento in the French Revolution and Napoleonic eras and the Italian Restoration (1815-1830). It will then assess the significance of the Italian “springtime of the people” of 1848-1849, the First Italian War of Independence and French, Spanish and Austrian influences, with particular attention on nationalism’s role in its Romantic significations. To do so, this paper will expand upon existing scholarly literature, including articles and universitypress books, as well as artistic historiography, namely operas, paintings, sculptures, etc., thus embracing a more artistic lens to look at the history of Italy.

Italy’s unification process7 started, quite paradoxically, with series of events coming

5 In Italian, literally the “resurgence”, “revival”, “rebirth”, ie. “national resurrection”. Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 16.

6 Namely, the provinces of Trieste and Gorizia, Venezia Giulia, and Province of Trento, Trenti no, after World War I.

7 By unification process, we comprehend that said unification encompasses a series of success es and setbacks in the view of accomplishing a particular end result. It is not a single momentary action and decision but rather a deliberately built and extensive period in a country’s history, with its particu lar causes and motivations.

from outside the peninsula, the Napoleonic wars8, more precisely in 1796, during the Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars9. This offensive on behalf of a foreign power spurred a wave of Italian nationalism10 as a counter-response, with the notion of Italia coming into force for the first time. Indeed, there was little to no sense of italianità11 before, as each city-state, city-republic, duchy or kingdom into which the region was divided was unwilling to make trade-offs with its neighbours, despite important commonalities.12 Consequently, the peninsula was politically and symbolically shattered: each state was weak or in decline, stricken with political and economic woes, periodic famines, plagues and popular revolts. Efforts made by governments at reforming their states often proved to be inefficient and unpopular, leading to further instability in the region.13 Rising taxing, for instance, or abolishing feudal powers in the Kingdom of Naples was impossible to implement due to the reluctance of local powerholders.14 All of the states shared, however, a uniform, common national identity: a culture and history inherited from Ancient Rome and Renaissance artists and leaders15, many dialects of the same Latin-derived language and a religious unity thanks to the papacy, inter alia. As the people gradually became more aware of it, due to assaults from stronger neighbouring states, the Italian identity was rendered concrete by influential political leaders such as Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. They were active in revolutionary and guerilla movements, with the view of establishing a free and independent Italian nation-state with Rome as its capital. Both of them wanted this national identity to face and counter the foreign oppression of the French, Austrians

8 The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) were a series of military and political conflicts opposing the Napoleonic French Empire and its various allies to diverse coalitions of European powers, most of the time financed and headed by the United Kingdom.

9 The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars (1796-1802) were an ensemble of combats located in the north of the Italian peninsula opposing the French Revolutionary Army to a coalition of European powers: Russia, Austria, Piedmont-Sardinia and other smaller Italian states.

10 “Nationalism - a nation’s wish and attempt to be politically independent”. Cambridge Dic tionary [online]. “Nationalism”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. https://dictionary. cambridge.org/dictionary/ english/nationalism.

11 “Italianità s. f. - l’essere e il sentirsi italiano; appartenenza alla civiltà, alla storia, alla cultura e alla lingua italiana, e soprattutto la coscienza di questa appartenenza”. Translation: “Italian-nessbeing and feeling Italian; belonging to the civilisation, history, culture and Italian language, and above all the awareness of this belonging”. Treccani Dizionario [online]. “Italianità”. https://www.treccani.it/ vocabolario/italianita/.

12 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

13 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

14 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011.

15 Eg. Cicero, Dante Alighieri, Niccolò Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia.

and Spaniards, pushing them out of the territory. Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, orchestrated most of the political manoeuvering of the unification process as a military officer and later Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia16.

Napoleon Bonaparte, upon his arrival, had already regrouped part of the peninsular states into three bigger territories17, thereby playing an important role in the initial Italian unification process and further spreading the idea of a unified country. Additionally, the Napoleonic armies brought with them the seeds of Enlightenment liberalism fostered by the French Revolution, promoting individual freedoms, respect for private property, the rule of law and based on constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. This ideological influence on the behalf of France was both the root and the catalyst to the rising sense of national “self” in the minds of the local middle classes, hamstrung by feudalism’s lingering political and economic structures. Along with the political, fiscal and legal changes that the Civil Code and other Napoleonic reforms18 brought about, a minor Industrial Revolution progressively occurred, especially in the Po Valley, as a consequence of the concurrent technological advancements in the rest of Europe. This was sufficient at least in furnishing the region with the war equipment required for emancipation19. This simultaneously enabled the emergence of secret underground societies such as Mazzini’s Giovine Italia20, a political movement for a united Italian republic, or the Carbonari21 in the south, as nationalist sentiments spread to the intellectuals of the peninsula due to foreign interference.22 As early as 1796,

16 Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, served multiple offices, amongst which: Minister of Agricul ture and Trade (1850-1852), of Finances (1851-1852), Prime Minister of Piedmont (1852-59), 9th Prime Minister of Sardinia (1860-1861), First Prime Minister of Italy (1861), etc.

17 “Piedmont and a large part of central Italy (including Rome) […], a Kingdom of Italy […] in the north-east […] and the Kingdom of Naples”. Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napo leon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 4-5.

18 “Under Napoleon, sweeping changes were made to centralise and standardise all branches of administration. Attempts were made to introduce new legal codes, feudalism was officially abolished, and the taxation systems were reorganised; and […] the government augmented its revenues with great effectiveness. State power was further increased by the organisation of new police forces […] and by military conscription. Across Italy, the attack on the political and economic power of the Church was intensified: ecclesiastical lands were put up for sale and the temporal power of the Pope was declared at an end. Religious freedom was introduced, with equal rights given to the Jews. New standardised systems of primary, secondary and tertiary education were set up”. Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

19 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

20 Giuseppe Mazzini’s 1831 Giovine Italia (translation: “Young Italy”), a later yet extremely rele vant society to the cause of the Risorgimento.

21 The Carbonari were the members of a network of Europe-wide secret revolutionary societies, active in Italy, France and Spain in the early part of the nineteenth century, often with patriotic and liberal ideals but lacking a proper political agenda.

22 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal

Italian Jacobins-patriots23 started challenging for democratic forms of government as well as the unification of the peninsula and planned a series of republican conspiracies and uprisings all over the Continent. Gilles Pécout’s article confirms such a claim as to the role of said international volunteers in the wider process of warfare and political nationalisation in the Romantic era24. It asserts that the transnational armed volunteers involved were, in fact, very much aware of the international dimension of the Risorgimento as a revolutionary movement, thereby merging the concepts of nation and internationalism together.

Mazzini, as the earliest revolutionary spokesman and considered to be the de facto leader of the Italian unification movement, stressed the significance of Italian self-realisation without the intervention of the foreign powers Italy had been subject to until then.25 Nevertheless, this claim remains contestable, as history was to indicate the opposite: the Austrians could only be shaken off by incurring political debts with other Euro powers because the Italian revolutionary movement was simply too thin and weak on the ground. It would be unfair, however, if not entirely problematic, to deprive Italian patriots and local political leaders of any historical agency in the unification of their own peninsula and, ultimately, they remain the ones who should take credit for it. In this respect, these Jacobin-patriots inspired the Risorgimento beyond the revolutionary and Napoleonic movements coming from France, and this until quite late in the century. As argued by Lucy Riall, “the French did not bring nationalism to Italy: that… was the task assumed by a later group of Italians [the patriots, amongst others]. Nevertheless, [the foreign] impact on the development of the idea and myth of Italy was decisive.”26

After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814-1815, the Congress of Vienna favoured peace over self-determination, stability over legitimacy and order over national identity. It restored the ancien régime and its monarchical rulers, with north and central Italy under the yoke of the Habsburg Empire, the French long-term rival for hegemony in the peninsula. Everything was therefore arranged to keep France away and Austria in control.

grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

23 The Jacobin club correspeonds to a radical society of revolutionaries from the French Revolu tion that promoted the Reign of Terror and other extreme policies and measures. It was active chiefly from 1789 to 1794. It came to refer, by extension, to any extreme radical and revolutionary group.

24

Pécout, Gilles. “The International Armed Volunteers: Pilgrims of a Transnational Risorgimento”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 4 (2009): 413–26. https://doi. org/10.1080/13545710903281870.

25 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011.

26 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 6.

Italy had a negligible role in redrawing the map of the Continent as compared to other European nations and was slated to be re-divided into several different states.27 Such a fragmentation went against the rising nationalist sentiment for Italian unification. The Italian Restoration consisted of returning the pontifical territories to the Pope, the kingdoms to their absolute rulers28, in other words restoring the status quo, while securing for direct or indirect Habsburg control. As such, Veneto became Austrian while the central Italian Duchies of Parma and Modena as well as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany were ruled by members of the dynasty. Only Piedmont-Sardinia (with Savoy and Nice) remained independent from foreign dominion. Geoffrey Wawro’s article29 assesses this very Austrian-Italian relationship in the building of the new nation from the perspective of the peninsula’s northern neighbour. While Wawro makes clear the unequal balance of power, diplomatic ties and interactions between European nationstates at the time, he also stresses the observed struggle for hegemony over imperial Austrian Lombardy-Venetia. More specifically, he offers an analysis of Austria’s will to crush Italian nationalist sentiment and rising sense of unity and independence, since this would have meant less influence over the region.

If anti-Austrian sentiment was significant all over the peninsula, it did not mean, however, that the people identified their political interests with the ideals of the Risorgimento? Secret societies and sects also benefited from the atmosphere of political instability and economic unrest that the region was experiencing at the time. They proliferated both domestically and internationally as they became closer to many more pan-European liberal movements than ever before, despite the secrecy and the internal ideological disarray. In 1820-1821, a Carbonari-led insurrection burst out in Naples, Palermo and later in Lombardy, leading to merely symbolic constitutional changes. The Holy Alliance30 could not permit such uprisings, however, and decided to interfere by sending an army to put down the revolutions. The Carbonari revolts crumbled in the face of an overwhelming numerical advantage and its leaders went into exile. As argued by Maurizio Isabella, Italian nationalism ought to be conceived in part as the product of political exile, which the author defines as one of the “foundational

27 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011.

28 For instance, the Kingdom of Naples, along with the island of Sicily, were restored to Ferdi nando I, King of the Two Sicilies.

29 Wawro, Geoffrey. “Austria versus the Risorgimento: A New Look at Austria’s Ital ian Strategy in the 1860s”. European History Quarterly 26, no. 1 (1996): 7–29. https://doi. org/10.1177/026569149602600102.

30 Holy Alliance - an 1815-1880s coalition of the monarchist great powers of Prussia, Russia and Austria.

myths of the Risorgimento”31. The very exiled unification patriots and figureheads who published their work abroad after failed revolutions shaped the narratives of the Italian nation’s fight for independence. In this sense, the study of nationalism on the peninsula falls within a broader, pan-European phenomenon, as part of transnational intellectual exchanges and liberal, revolutionary political societies networks. Ultimately, the failure of the 1820-1821 revolutions was due to the political dissent, social clash and geographical disaggregation between the revolutionaries themselves, which aimed to bridge the gap between constitutional moderates and more radical democrats, rural and urban population, the nobility and peasantry, etc.32 No consensus was attained, except maybe in more stable Piedmont, where left and right agreed on avoiding public disorder and on Savoyard monarchical legitimacy. Although the advances of those revolutionary societies were mostly unsuccessful, their role was fundamental in shaping national public opinion.

Subsequently, after a period of further revolutions33 and consequent political reactions, as well as the confident and gradual building of a sense of italianità, the 1848 Révolution de février in Paris once again spread to the rest of Europe, Italy not being an exception. A major uprising broke out in Palermo first, then spread all across the peninsula: Rome, Bologna, Florence, Livorno, Turin, inter alia. It was indeed a Europewide event, with strikes, riots and demonstrations happening in Vienna, Budapest, Berlin and others. In Milan and Venice, the Austria-subjugated people took up arms against their oppressor. The Neapolitans, meanwhile, were in open revolt against the Spanish branch of the Bourbon royal family that ruled over them. The counter-response to foreign domination thus continued to exert its pressure on Italian patriots and Mazzini’s idealised “Italian self-realisation”. Elena Bacchin34 supports such an allegation by offering a case study on incarcerated Neapolitan political activists. While dwelling upon convicts’ experience in Italian prisons, the author emphasises the international dynamics of the Risorgimento, with exiled and political prisoners playing the role of transnational, interconnected actors. Once again, this sheds light on the international

31 Isabella, Maurizio. “Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento”. European History Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2006): 493–520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691406068126.

32 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011.

33 “In 1831, another wave of revolutionary disturbances swept the peninsula, this time affecting above all the Papal Legations and the central Italian duchies, and the pattern established in 1820-21 can also be discerned in these later events”. Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 15.

34 Bacchin, Elena. “Political Prisoners of the Italian Mezzogiorno: A Transnational Ques tion of the Nineteenth Century”. European History Quarterly 50, no. 4 (2020): 625–49. https://doi. org/10.1177/0265691420960378.

nature of the 1848 popular revolutionary riots.

Moreover, the new forms of communication such as the telegraph and the railway, and the influence of the traditional media greatly amplified such uprisings, violently shaking the monarchies of Europe. In this respect, events in Italy, conversely to what has been argued so far in this paper, threatened the stability of the whole of Europe and the balance of powers established in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, as a prime example of the dynamics of international relations at the time. In reaction to these popular revolts, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, declared war on the Austrian Empire, marking the official start of the First Italian War of Independence.35

However, due to internal division36, the Austrians were victorious and the king had to abdicate to his son. As a result, the Piedmontese were forced to pay significant war reparation37 to Austria. Later wars of independence38 broke out and, with the gradual annexation and integration of the various Italian regions, the country was finally fully unified in 1870.39

All these events had great consequences on the arts, with the coming into force of Romanticism as a pan-European artistic movement, a school of thought that emphasised feelings and emotions over the rationalisation of the Enlightenment of the previous century.40 It allowed for new ways of conceiving one’s self, one’s relation to the natural and human worlds, to develop in the fields of the arts, culture and society as a whole.41 More precisely, this gave rise to Romantic nationalism42, encouraging European people to be proud of their nationality and identity (rather than more a localised or regional one). In the Italian case, this led to the prevalence of “melancholy Romanticism”, the emotional commitment to “Italy’s past greatness”43 and fell within the broader context

35 The First Italian War of Independence (1848-1849), as part of the Risorgimento, was fought by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and allies against the Austrian Empire.

36 Eg. Sicilian early withdrawal, Milanese-Piedmontese disagreements.

37 65,000 francs

38 Second Italian War of Independence or Franco-Austrian War (1859) and Third Italian War of Independence (1866).

39 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011, p. 8.

40 “Romanticism | Definition, Characteristics, Artists, History, Art, Poetry, Literature, & Music”.

2022. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism.

41 “Romanticism | Definition, Characteristics, Artists, History, Art, Poetry, Literature, & Music”.

2022. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism.

42 Romantic nationalism - a type of nationalism where the state determines its political legiti macy as a natural result of the unity of those it administers, incorporating elements such as language, religion, ethnicity, culture and traditions of a country.

43 Riall, Lucy. Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Pal grave Macmillan, 2011.

of Italian irredentism44. Verdi’s Nabucco45 or other liberal-patriotic operas by the same composer, such as La Battaglia di Legnano46 and I Lombardi47, are, in this regard, some of the best instances of Italian Romantic nationalism, in terms of both stylistic and political deliveries. According to Mary Ann Smart48, these gave rise to a new kind of national consciousness in dealing with images of national identity, cultural unity and even colonial oppression. The article focuses on reviews of I Lombardi and makes an argument for how these were shaped by Austrian censorship and self-censorship, as further instances of foreign oppression.

Axel Körner’s publication49, meanwhile, offers a diverging perspective on traditional narratives on opera’s role as a medium for political nationalism in nineteenthcentury Italy and Europe and a bridge between nation-states. He argues that opera must be understood as a means to create cultural and intellectual connections between European peoples and the emergence of a pan-European public, thereby deconstructing the “myth” of mere “national” readings and claims of nationalist sentiments in operas of the time. This article, in bringing a different perspective on the question, shall serve as an illuminating way to nuance some of the essay’s claims. Other relevant artworks analysed in a similar light by Körner include Ugo Foscolo’s Dei Sepolcri50, Antonio Canova’s Mourning Italia turrita51 and Francesco Hayez’s Il bacio52, about which similar criticism can be made. It is quite logical, given this context, that in 1859, the name of the composer Verdi became, despite himself, a sign of rallying amongst Italian patriots through the slogan “Viva VERDI!”, “Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia”53, referring to

44 “Irredentism - a policy of returning land to a country that it belonged to in the past”. Cam bridge Dictionary [online]. “Irredentism”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. https://dictio nary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/irredentism.

45 Verdi, Giuseppe. Nabucodonosor: Opera in Four Acts. Libretto by Temistocle Solera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1841.

46 Verdi, Giuseppe. La Battaglia di Legnano. Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, Teatro Argentina, Rome, 1849.

47 Verdi, Giuseppe. I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata. Libretto by Temistocle Solera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1843.

48 Smart, Mary Ann. “How Political Were Verdi’s Operas? Metaphors of Progress in the Re ception Of I Lombardi Alla Prima Crociata”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 18, no. 2 (2013): 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571x.2012.753009.

49 Körner, Axel. “Beyond Nationaloper. for a Critique of Methodological Nationalism in Reading Nineteenth-Century Italian and German Opera”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 25, no. 4 (2020): 402–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571x.2020.1764244.

50 Foscolo, Ugo. Dei Sepolcri (1806-1807). Italy: Temperino Rosso, 2014.

51 Canova, Antonio. Mourning Italia turrita on the Tomb to Count Vittorio Alfieri. Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, 1807.

52 Hayez, Francesco. Il bacio or The Kiss. Oil on canvas, 110 cm × 88 cm. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1859.

53

Translation: “Long live Victor-Emmanuel King of Italy!”

Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy since 1861. The slogan thus had a two-fold meaning, allowing activists to override Austrian or pontifical political control. The rallying cry was at the crossroads between political, social and cultural movements.

To conclude, the Risorgimento, as a political, nationalist and identity movement, was for the most part triggered by the influence of other countries, at least in its first half (from the 1790s to the 1850s). Neighbouring France, through the 1789 revolutionary ideals as well as the Napoleonic political, administrative, legal and fiscal transformations, did influence, ideologically and materially, the Italian unification process in a significant way. As did other foreign powers, such as Austria and Spain, through political oppression that created, quite paradoxically, a growing sentiment of italianità. The international conferences of the Congress of Vienna, through the redrawing of the European borders, including that of the peninsula, while restoring the ancien régime all around the Continent, shaped the Risorgimento in a similar vein. Yet, this influence is valid to the extent that Italians and Italy itself did ultimately complete the Risorgimento: Italian patriots, free, exiled or imprisoned; members of secret societies; nobles and intellectuals; middle-class masses and peasants; etc. All of these actors contributed in their own right to the creation or “resurrection” of a country at the centre of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Nonetheless, after unification, the newly created state of Italy faced several hurdles standing in the way of national progress. In fact, although the Risorgimento started from the ideals of national identity, patriotism and peoples’ right to selfdetermination, essential elements that Italy had not enjoyed since a very long time, the country was yet to fully become one, not only through new borders but most importantly through a certain sense of unity. A quote from the memoirs of Piedmontese-Italian statesman, novelist and painter Massimo d’Azeglio reads: “L’Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli Italiani”.54

54 Translation: “We have made Italy. We must now make the Italians”. Killinger, Charles L. The History of Italy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 1. Banti, Alberto. La nazione del Risorgimento Turin: Einaudi, 2000.

References

Bacchin, Elena. “Political Prisoners of the Italian Mezzogiorno: A Transnational Question of the Nineteenth Century”. European History Quarterly 50, no. 4 (2020): 625–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691420960378.

Banti, Alberto. La nazione del Risorgimento. Turin: Einaudi, 2000.

Cambridge Dictionary [online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. https:// dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/.

Isabella, Maurizio. “Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento”. European History Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2006): 493–520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691406068 126.

Killinger, Charles L. The History of Italy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Körner, Axel. “Beyond Nationaloper. for a Critique of Methodological Nationalism in Reading Nineteenth-Century Italian and German Opera”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 25, no. 4 (2020): 402–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571x.2020.1764244.

Merriman, John M. A History of Modern Europe: Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present. New York: WW Norton and Company, 2019.

Piccininno Marzia & Sciotti, Elisa (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico). “Viva Verdi!” Europeana. Accessed 28th November 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/w-verdi-long-live-verdi.

Pécout, Gilles. “The International Armed Volunteers: Pilgrims of a Transnational Risorgimento”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 4 (2009): 413–26. https://doi. org/10.1080/13545710903281870.

Riall, Lucy. “Chapter 1-Risorgimento, Reform and Revolution” & “Chapter 6-Nation, Identity and Nationalist Politics”. In Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

“Romanticism | Definition, Characteristics, Artists, History, Art, Poetry, Literature, & Music”. 2022. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanti cism.

Smart, Mary Ann. “How Political Were Verdi’s Operas? Metaphors of Progress in the Reception Of I Lombardi Alla Prima Crociata”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 18, no. 2

(2013): 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571x.2012.753009.

Treccani Dizionario [online]. “Italianità”. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/italianita/.

Wawro, Geoffrey. “Austria versus the Risorgimento: A New Look at Austria’s Italian Strategy in the 1860s”. European History Quarterly 26, no. 1 (1996): 7–29. https://doi.org /10.1177/026569149602600102.

Cited artworks

Canova, Antonio. Mourning Italia turrita on the Tomb to Count Vittorio Alfieri. Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, 1807.

Foscolo, Ugo. Dei Sepolcri (1806-1807). Italy: Temperino Rosso, 2014.

Hayez, Francesco. Il bacio or The Kiss. Oil on canvas, 110 cm × 88 cm. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1859.

Verdi, Giuseppe. I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata. Libretto by Temistocle Solera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1843.

Verdi, Giuseppe. La Battaglia di Legnano. Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, Teatro Argentina, Rome, 1849.

Verdi, Giuseppe. Nabucodonosor: Opera in Four Acts. Libretto by Temistocle Solera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1841.

Oskar Steiner

Thoughtless Theory(and the Neorealist Dream)

The more intricate a modern science becomes, the more it will become a formally closed system of partial laws. It will then find that the world lying beyond its confines lies, methodologically and in principle, beyond its grasp.

Georg Lukács (1923/1971)

In his 1990 article “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Kenneth Waltz proposed that in the social sciences there exists a fundamental distinction between Thought on the one hand (some loose assemblage of observations lacking in coherence and generalizability) and Theory1 on the other (an organized effort to bound the sphere of study, systematize relationships, deduce laws and craft generalizable abstract truths). It is the purpose of this paper to critically revisit Waltz’s dichotomy and retrace its logical underpinnings with an eye towards internal coherence—all with the intent of assessing the implications of such a statement for the pursuit of knowledge in global affairs. Deconstructing the motivating factors behind Waltz’s differentiation, I suggest that the Thought/Theory dichotomy rests on an artificial distinction between the useful and the useless as narrowly defined within the bounds of neorealism’s mechanistic

1 For clarity, Theory and Thought are capitalized when directly referencing the notions as con strued in Waltz’s article. A lack of capitalization indicates a conventional usage of the terms.

ontological system.2 This masks the fundamentally social nature of such a project. Understanding the Thought/Theory distinction as a social construction, it is observed that the divide results in a dangerous reification of Theory, destroying agency and severely constraining capacity for original thought.

Beginning by recounting a brief history of economic thinking, Waltz offers us something of a parable. In the “pre-theoretic era”3 of economics, Waltz asserts, there was only Thought. Thought, despite its best intentions, “could only cast about for sequences and associations.”4 At most, it could “hope to formulate plausible explanations of particular outcomes” and had “no way of relating the parts of an economy to one another and to the economy as a whole.”5 Then came the systematizing light of Theory. Theory discarded “useless facts”6; it cut through noise, drew boundaries, and asked (as Waltz would have it) unprecedented questions like “how does this thing work?” and “how does it all hang together?”7 Theory, it would seem, saved economics from the perils of Thought—it must thus be the task of any self-respecting international relations theorist to offer their discipline a similar salvation. For Waltz, ‘Thought’ is flexible, contingent, expansive, particular and distracted. ‘Theory’ is solid, independent, reduced, general, and lucid.

It is not hard to discern Waltz’s disdain for the “helplessness” 8 of mere Thought, and it is here in fact that the fulcrum on which Waltz’s argument rests may be found. Theory is to be valued precisely because of its helpful ability explain events a priori, leaving behind the helplessness of a posteriori understanding. “A theory cannot fit the facts or correspond with the events it seeks to explain,” Waltz writes. Rather, Theory is useful because “[it] may help one understand, explain, and sometimes predict the trend of events … to understand how a given system works.”9 Thought is useless, Theory is useful. It is important here not to conflate usefulness with practicality or applicability. Indeed, Waltz quite clearly asserts that practically applying Theory “in any realm is a perplexing and uncertain matter.”10 ‘Usefulness,’ it would appear, requires further articulation.

2 By this I refer to the mechanical manner in which neorealism frames states as fundamental units arranged in such a way as to constitute a whole (the global system).

3 Kenneth Waltz (1990). “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Journal of International Affairs 44(1); p. 22.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Waltz (1990) p. 23.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Waltz (1990) pp. 30-31.

10 Waltz (1990) p. 29.

As with any grand theory, neorealism—although perhaps the ‘structural realist’ label may here be more illuminating—makes fundamental assertions as to the composition and ordering principles of reality. Waltz takes great pains to highlight that neorealism departs from alternative approaches to IR largely along these lines. Neorealism sees structure; it sees individuals, states, and the system which contains them. There are parts, which make up other parts, which constitute the whole. Causal links exist both between these units and the system at large, whose ordering principles may be deemed ‘laws.’11 In other words, the neorealist ontological system is deeply mechanistic.12 The job of Theory is then to expose this machine-like structure, to lucidly discern where one unit ends, and another begins and discover the regulatory tendencies of the system. The usefulness of Theory then, comes not from its immediate practical applicability, but the extent to which it may depict the machine in its most pure form— the degree to which it can provide structural blueprints for optimization given certain primordial constraints. While Waltz may concede to see Thought as more ‘accurate,’13 it is, for him, less true. Usefulness is thus a distinct property describing Theory’s ability to be instrumentalized in pursuit of some systemic explanation of the mechanistic world order. This being said, the corollaries of constructing a hierarchical divide between Thought and Theory must be thoroughly discussed as the boundaries Waltz draws are in fact inextricably political ones. This challenges neorealism’s pretensions to scientific objectivity—by confounding validity with mechanistic usefulness, Waltz ushers in an implicit political program.

Firstly, for something to be useful, we must logically conceive of some specific ends in which it may be useful in relation to—to assess a tool we must have a goal. In this case, it would appear that the usefulness of Theory emerges in relation to notions of explanatory power and systemic prediction, which accordingly become ends in themselves. Yet, such a superficial understanding of ends artificially isolates the theorist and obscures the context in which explanation and prediction inextricably take place. This is because, for the most part, Waltz offers scant consideration or justification for why prediction and explanation may be desirable ends on their own. The two are, on the whole, presumed to be an independently adequate pursuit for the IR theorist to follow in the absence of any external motivation. Such an outlook utterly neglects the socially situated nature of scientific inquiry and precludes any discussion of the ends

11 Waltz (1990) pp. 32-37.

12 Robert Cox (1985) draws direct parallels between neorealism and classical mechanics, suggest ing that neorealism’s positivist method has indeed been defined by “the effort to conceive social science on the model of physics (or more particularly, physics as it was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before it had assimilated the principles of relativity and uncertainty).” (p. 51).

13 Waltz (1990), p. 27.

to which prediction and explanation may subsequently be applied. By conceptually rendering all IR theorists neutral, apolitical agents interested only in explanation and prediction, space to acknowledge, determine and imagine the inevitable political and social ends to which their theory may be applicable is closed off; Theory assumes what must instead be constantly decided. Theory thus takes on a passive character as statusquo ends fill the normative void. By eschewing the ability to actively consider sociopolitical objectives, Theory becomes a receptacle for hegemonic ideals—as Robert Cox identifies, “neorealism implicitly takes … the power relations inherent in it as a given element of the national interest, and therefore as part of its parameters.”14 In this sense, theory is not depoliticized but repoliticized in line with Gramscian notions of hegemony,15 albeit with a massive sacrifice of agency on the part of the theorist. When the usefulness of a theory cannot be conceived of beyond its ability to describe and identify the existing system, the system itself is invariably reinforced.

Such a development must in fact be understood as a challenge to the internal logic of neorealism, as it ironically renders usefulness a deeply political metric, compromising the supposed universality of Theory. Usefulness, when defined only with regards to a theory’s capacity for mechanistic explanation and prediction, comes to refer near exclusively to a statement’s ability to conform to status-quo patterns of behaviour—lest its explanatory power be compromised. As Theory is a “necessarily slender explanatory construct,”16 theorizing is an exercise in reduction and simplification (again, eliminating the “useless facts”17). This means that data or knowledge contradictory to the status-quo can be dismissed as superfluous or inconsequential with relative ease. Information may only be incorporated into Theory insofar as it can be appropriated to explain alreadyexisting patterns of political or social behaviour; insofar as it is compatible with the collection of assumptions and abstractions that happen to be canonized. Theory thus paradoxically departs from its stated goal of explanation and prediction, as it becomes an active participant in upholding the sociopolitical system it purports to uncover.

As argued, Waltz’s distinction between Theory and Thought implicitly rests on the respective usefulness of one as opposed to the other. However, the definition of

14 Robert Cox (1981). “Social forces, states and world orders” in Approaches to World Order (pp. 96-97.) Cambridge University Press.

15 Thomas Bates (1975) articulates Gramscian hegemony as “political leadership based on the consent of the led … secured by the diffusion and popularization of the worldview of the ruling class” (p. 352). In the absence of any conscious effort to challenge such a worldview, said political leadership inev itably directs lines of academic enquiry. For more discussion on the relationship between hegemony and IR theory see Robert Cox (1983) “Gramsci, hegemony, and international relations: an essay in method” in Approaches to World Order, Cambridge University Press.

16 Waltz (1990) p. 32.

17 Waltz (1990) p. 23.

usefulness at play destabilizes Waltz’s dichotomy as it is 1) only applicable in relation to a narrowly mechanistic ontological framework which prohibits alternative conceptions of the global space and 2) in its apparent rejection of normative considerations, must necessarily treat status-quo ideals as fundamental or pre-ordained. What we are left with is a deeply artificial distinction contingent on the specific ontological and epistemological preferences of a singular historical school at a given moment in time. Waltz’s Thought/Theory dichotomy is, at its core, a tenuous social construction cloaked in the language of truth and universality, yet whose valorized ideal of Theoretical IR has dire implications for the pursuit of knowledge in global affairs.

As a first consequence to address, the Theory/Thought distinction freezes IR into a reinforced, inflexible body of work incapable of accounting for change or changing itself. As Theory seeks to find immutable constants in the international system, it is an enterprise in generalization and decontextualization. This means that for historical knowledge to be incorporated it must again be useful, that is, it must be made to illustrate the timeless nature of the mechanism’s function. This means that for Theoretical purposes, history has to be read in a selective manner where historical developments are no longer historical but anonymous and temporally isolated incidences. By de-historicizing history in this way, the implicit consequence of Theory is that avenues for change are precluded. As nothing has ever changed before, nothing may ever change now. Rob Walker frames it well: “As a discourse of eternity, [IR Theory] is prone to various manifestations of the claim that the basic realities … conform to a few unchanging rules.”18

To reiterate, Theory is distinct from Thought because it is useful, and it is useful because it offers a unifying picture of the underlying mechanism (to the ends of explanation and control). Once the fundamentals of this mechanism have been apprehended, however, the work of IR comes not in discovering new mechanisms, but in finessing and elaborating upon canonical understandings whose initial precepts have become codified. New knowledge must thus be integrated into this canon of work to be deemed capable of forming Theory. By conflating validity with conformity, the existing is true and the new is false. IR Theory becomes incapable of change, meaning that “the construction of a canonical tradition of international relations theory may be understood … as an attempt to legitimize a specifically twentieth-century understanding [of affairs].”19 The valorization of Theory as proposed by Waltz accordingly works to render neo-realist IR an anachronism, itself composed of anachronistic historical

18 R. B. J. Walker (1995). “International Relations and the Concept of the Political” in Booth, K., & Smith, S., International Relations Theory Today, (p. 315) Polity Press.

19 Ibid.

readings. IR becomes temporally anchorless, retreating further into the realm of the eternal, unable to register change in any sense of the term. To the extent that it takes on neo-realist definitions of Theory, IR becomes inflexible and rigid in its self-imposed exile.

Importantly, this ossification of IR Theory supports a second process, whereby Theory—stabilized and isolated—may increasingly become a distinct, discrete thing. As Theory is made unchangeable, as it is given its own self-supporting system of logic, it takes on a certain autonomy. Theory ceases to refer strictly to the cumulative work of the relevant scholars and may instead become an actor in its own right. Concomitantly, our ability to conceptualize action on the world stage becomes increasingly constrained by Theory, subservient to its prescriptions and explanations. This process is one of reification, and it is the most challenging issue posed by the valorization of Theory as separated from Thought.

Reification, in standard terms, refers generally to a situation in which an abstraction comes to be understood as something concretely existing. Etymologically, the term derives from the Latin res, most simply translated as ‘thing.’20 To be reified then is to be made a thing, to be made real—lifted from unreality. Reification, however, possesses a more complex (and disputed) meaning in the context of social philosophy. Most notably, perhaps, is Georg Lukács employment of the term, elaborating on the Marxian notion of commodity fetishism to investigate the social implications of capitalism. While Lukács was specifically interested in reification vis-à-vis the commodity form, his theory offers a generalizable framework which offers stark parallels to the social position of Theory which has been previously identified.

At the core of Lukács’ reification lies an inversion of the subject-object dichotomy, wherein objects take on subjective qualities and subjects objective ones. What does this mean? With reference to the commodity in a capitalist system, Marx had previously identified that there exists “material relations between persons and social relations between things.”21 That is, through the process of production the commodity form comes to possess a social significance, while social relations become increasingly mediated through material exchange. Lukács observed two sides to this phenomenon:

20 T.F. Hoad (1996). “Reification” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford University Press.

21 Karl Marx (2013). “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” in Moore, S., & Aveling, E. (trans.) Capital; Volume I (p. 48) Wordsworth.

“Objectively, a world of objects and relations between things springs into being (the world of commodities and their movements on the market) … Subjectively where the market economy has been fully developed—a man’s activity becomes estranged from himself, it turns into a commodity which, subject to the non-human objectivity of the natural laws of society, must go its own way independently of man just like any consumer article.”22

As reification proceeds with the expansion of the capitalist system, Man (the subject) becomes objectified, rendered “a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system”23 The commodity form (the object) takes on subjective qualities, as the fetishization of its production leads to a society increasingly governed by “abstract special laws functioning according to rational predictions.”24 The innate autonomy we possess as subjects is delegated in favour of the ordering logic of the commodity “which extends to all fields, including the worker’s ‘soul’, and more broadly, human consciousness.”25 Most significantly, reification of this sort succeeds because its most fundamental operation is to ensure that “a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’,” meaning that the structure in question takes on “an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and allembracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people.”26 The socially constituted nature of reality is erased as reification eternalizes the logic of the object.

The parallels between Lukács’ theory of reification and the social situation of Theory are discernable. Theory, as a socially constructed representation of some underlying reality, may be understood in a similar manner to Lukács’ interpretation of the commodity. Marxist thought takes care to distinguish that the commodity is distinct from the object that is commodified—a table, for example, becomes a commodity only when cast in a specific set of social relations and put up for market exchange; upon which the commodity form comes to represent the physical object it has subsumed. Similarly, as I have demonstrated, Theory exists as a socially constructed object working to offer a particular representation of underlying reality. Importantly, in both cases,

22 Georg Lukács (1971). “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” in Livingstone, Rodney (trans.) History and Class Consciousness; Studies in Marxist Dialectics (p. 87) The MIT Press. Origi nally published 1923 as Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein – Studien über marxistische Dialektik.

23 Lukács (1971) p. 89.

24 Ibid.

25 Gajo Petrović (1991) “Reification” in Bottomore, T. (ed.) A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Second Edition (p. 464) Blackwell Publishers.

26 Lukács (1971) p. 83.

as the social object is necessarily an abstraction, it possesses an internal logic that is also abstracted, corresponding to some idealized structure in which the object may be most fully realized. For the commodity, this idealized structure is the competitive, apolitical, equilibrating capitalist economic system. For Theory, it is the anarchic, statebased world system driven by a perpetual struggle for power and survival. When the object this structure emanates from becomes fetishized as such, the structure leaves our imaginations and becomes an active project to uphold. Much as Lukács observes an inversion of the subject/object relationship with regards to ourselves and the commodity, I suggest we see a similar development in relation to Theory. This idealized structure takes on the status of the subject, meaning that we, as the real subjects, increasingly see ourselves in an objective manner. Theory casts the actor in strictly mechanical terms, an object whose actions must take place within the confines determined by the subject, that is Theory. As Man, Lukács wrote “is progressively rationalised and mechanised, his lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his activity becomes less and less active and more and more contemplative … towards a process mechanically conforming to fixed laws and enacted independently of man’s consciousness and impervious to human intervention.”27 Indeed Waltz so much as openly proclaims this as his ambition when he writes that “neorealism establishes the autonomy of international politics,” and “develops the concept of a system’s structure” which “constrains [states] from taking certain actions while propelling them toward others.”28 In this way, as Lukács observed, the end effect is to obscure the social origins of reality and render every relation a purely structural one. Waltz’s specific ideal of Theory, given its mechanistic and instrumental underpinnings, results in a reification that destroys the agency of the IR theorist and colonizes the imaginary.29 Rendered unable to identify the social foundation of international action, Theory becomes thoughtless—mere computation— and devolves into what Walker astutely identified as an “anti-political apology for brute force and cynicism.”

30

27 Lukács (1971) p. 89

28 Waltz (1990) p. 29.

29 French heterodox economist Serge Latouche (2015) coined the phrase ‘colonization of the imaginary’ with reference to the reification that has transpired vis-à-vis neoclassical economics. Indeed, Waltz draws explicit parallels at the beginning of his article between neorealist IR and neoclassical eco nomics which—taken along with how aptly Lukács’ analysis of capitalist reification may be applied to IR—suggest considerable similarities between the two disciplines. While IR has, in recent years, experi enced somewhat of a renaissance, economics remains thoroughly stuck in the neoclassical canon. Why IR (at least to some degree) has been able to see beyond the shackles of Theory while economics osten sibly has not, is a stimulating question that lies, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper.

30 R.M.A. Crawford (2000). “The roots of diversity in political and social theory; competing vi sions of progress” in Idealism and Realism in International Relations, 1st ed. (p. 33) Routledge.

So, to recapitulate. Waltz posits that there exists a clear distinction between Thought and Theory. Theory, he suggests, is inherently superior and the mark of a mature social science. Why? Because, at its core, Theory—with its models and laws— helps us approach knowledge in an a priori sense instead of being invariably resigned to interpretation after the fact. In other words, theory lets us explain and interpret. It helps us, it is useful. This usefulness, however, is defined solely in relation to Theory’s ability to approach a representation of the underlying mechanistic world order. By avoiding a discussion of the ends to which such a representation might be utilized, however, Waltz fails to situate his Thought/Theory distinction in a social context or offer avenues for normative determinations. In this way, usefulness invariably becomes a political metric passively supportive of status quo ideals. Theory is said to be important because it is useful, but usefulness is revealed to be a decidedly less universal and intellectually legitimate metric than is presumed by Waltz. Consequentially, the valorization of Theory (as narrowly defined by Waltz) severely constrains the knowledge that may be admissible to international relations Theory (it must, after all, be ‘useful’). This ossifies the discipline, as it hardens around a single, stagnant canon. This results in reification, that is, the subject/object relationship is inverted and the social relations underpinning all action are obscured. The Thought/Theory divide thus facilitates a situation wherein Theory comes to dictate behaviour instead of functioning as an explanatory object, limiting the agency of the theorist and actively handicapping their relevance. The irony here is that a construct justified on the basis of its supposed instrumental utility becomes less used by the theorist than the theorist is used by it. The theorist’s goals, methods, worldviews and conclusions are, to an extent, predetermined by that autonomous body of Theory which is divorced from social reality. As Theory establishes itself—ossifies and reifies—it shoots its one-dimensional tendrils further into our psyche, limiting thought to the acceptable parameters.

References

Bates, Thomas R. (1975). “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 36(2); pp. 351-366

Cox, R.W., (1996). “Social forces, states, and world orders: beyond international relations theory” (1981). In Sinclair, T.J (ed.) Approaches to World Order (pp. 85–123). Cambridge University Press.

Cox, R.W., (1996). “Gramsci, hegemony, and international relations: an essay in method” (1983). In Sinclair, T.J (ed.) Approaches to World Order (pp. 124–143). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cox, R.W., (1996). “Realism, positivism, and historicism” (1985). In Sinclair, T.J (ed.) Approaches to World Order (pp. 49–59). Cambridge University Press.

Crawford, R.M.A. (2000). “The roots of diversity in political and social theory; competing visions of progress” in Idealism and Realism in International Relations, 1st ed. (p. 33) Routledge.

Hoad, T.F. (1996). “Reification” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford University Press.

Latouche, Serge (2015). “Decolonization of the Imaginary” in D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., Kallis, G. (eds.), Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (pp. 117-120) Routledge.

Lukács, Georg (1971). “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” in Livingstone,

Rodney (trans.) History and Class Consciousness; Studies in Marxist Dialectics (p. 87) The MIT Press. Originally published in 1923 as Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein –Studien über marxistische Dialektik.

Marx, Karl (2013). “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” in Moore, S., & Aveling, E. (trans.) Capital; Volume I (p. 48) Wordsworth.

Petrović, Gajo (1991). “Reification” in Bottomore, T. (ed.) A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Second Edition (p. 464) Blackwell Publishers.

Walker, R.B.J. (1995). “International Relations and the Concept of the Political” in Booth, K., & Smith, S (eds.) International Relations Theory Today, (p. 315) Polity Press.

Waltz, Kenneth (1990). “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Journal of International Affairs, 44(1); pp. 21-37

Anticolonial Internationalism in Postwar Asia

Solidarity for Self-Determination in the Early Twentieth Century

The First World War of 1914-1918 dealt a tremendous blow to the existing world order dominated by European empires, but its most cataclysmic impact can be traced to the movements of the turbulent postwar era rather than the duration of the Great War itself. The postwar era oversaw the weakening of the European colonial powers, who had unwittingly jeopardized the rationale of Western superiority in the humanitarian disaster of the First World War, and the subsequent response from Asian peoples to “overthrow the power of the West”1. The magnitude of the destruction in the First World War dismantled the hegemony of the “elite-to-elite transmission” of the civilizing narrative put forth by White European colonialists, facilitating the entrance of the public spheres into the escalated assault on the colonial order”.2 In short, the unprecedented conflict on the European fronts left lasting repercussions far beyond the continent itself. One of the most prominent changes in the twentieth century is the ascendant ideology for national self-determination, demarcating the character of the century from previous ages dominated by global imperialism.

1 Alexander Guchov, “The Third International and Colonial Propaganda,” Slavonic and East European Review 10 (1931): 509.

2 Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civi lizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 2 (March 2004): 37.

In this paper, the “complexly interlaced relationships of mutual support, collaboration, [and] inspiration”3 postwar Asia will be analyzed to support the argument that the internationalism of the anticolonial movement was effective in promoting ideologies of self-determination, and shaped an understanding of the resistance to the racialized international order in the twentieth century. In particular, the cases of Korea and Vietnam will be studied in detail as examples of two distinct approaches to anticolonial resistance.

The unexpected call for Asian autonomy was largely fueled by Woodrow Wilson’s infamous “Fourteen Points” speech, despite the fact that the U.S. President never intended the advocacy for states’ self-determination to address the “colonial question” beyond the remnants of the former European empires.4 The seizure of Asian colonial states by the victors of the World War, described as “hungry claimants,” unquestionably defied the expectations of the postwar independence sought by the elites of Asia;5 the adoption of Wilson’s claim was based on the seemingly conclusive appeal to the egalitarian nature of the message, fostering an imagination of the postwar world order in which state power did not determine the viability of national sovereignty. The rhetoric served as an initial converging point for the formation of an “alliance against institutionalized suffering” written into the past colonial eras.6

This formation of a borderless network through a common struggle is crucial to understanding the formation of anticolonial movements in Asia; it would be impossible to accurately study the development of the so-called “long-distance nationalism” ascendant on the continent without following the proliferation of anticolonial ideologies and action in the immense network tied together in opposition to colonial oppression.7 The technological and infrastructural developments that characterized the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the consequent rise of internationalism, became a vassal for the proliferation of mutual support in the postwar era. In some cases, such as India and Indochina, it was solely the opposition to European colonial rule that provided the grounds for solidarity; in other cases, local cultural roots or

3 Rosalind C. Morris, “Remembering Asian Anticolonialism, Again,” The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 2 (May 2010): 348.

4 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolo nial Internationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 17.

5 S.E.M. Stobart, “Self-Determination: Three Episodes,” The Living Age (1897-1941) 4032 (Octo ber 15, 1921): 166.

6 David Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance: Culture, Liberation, and Transformation (Toronto: Uni versity of Toronto Press, 2008), 185.

7 Morris, “Remembering Asian Anticolonialism,” 369.

religious universalism shared amongst colonial states served as a factor for unification, seen in the cases of Pakistan and Indonesia.8 The former is particularly relevant to the discussion because the shared characteristics of humanitarian, economic, and political violence experienced by the colonies in relatively close proximity formulated a concurrence of national identity, with national traumas of suffering and agony at its cores.

The case of the anticolonial movement in Korea is unique due to the fact that the peninsula was colonized by imperial Japan, an Asian state—unlike many of the European empires who dominated the early twentieth-century globe. Despite the Western sphere’s condescending perceptions of their Eastern counterparts in the prewar decades of the twentieth century, the Japanese empire colluded with the U.S.: the United States had acknowledged the Japanese annexation of Korea in exchange for Japanese recognition of American claim over the Philippines in 1905.9 Estranged by Western powers, the call for national liberation was not a prevalent one among Koreans during the early stages of colonial rule; rather, the nation itself was largely divided on the question of whether Japanese rule would be in the interest of the Korean people, with many Korean elites arguing on the pro-Japanese side of the debate.10

However, the systematic economic inequalities and the growing brutality of the Japanese authorities led to growing unrest on the continent. Following the end of the First World War, such discontent and the formation of an oppressed national identity culminated in Korea’s 1919 March First Uprising, a nonviolent nation-wide protest for Korean national liberation.11 Thousands of Korean civilians were killed, arrested, and tortured during this movement.

The Third Communist International, more commonly known as the Comintern was a Soviet organization with the interest of establishing a global order through the Marxist principles of proletarian revolutions. It looked to the wave of anticolonial movements surging in Asia as a critical factor in combating the capitalist world order that they sought to overthrow.12 The Korean workers’ anti-Japanese struggle was no

8 Morris, “Remembering Asian Anticolonialism,” p.348.

9 Ussama Makdisi, “The Great Illusion: The Wilsonian Moment in World History,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 1 (2008): 136.

10 Sergey O. Kurbanov, “Russian Perception of Koreans and the Japanese Colonial Regime in Korea during the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century,” in International Impact of Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-1945, ed. Ha Yong Chool , (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), 220.

11

12

Guchkov, “The Third International.” 511.

exception; as attempts at American diplomacy failed the nationalist Korean elites and barred Korean demands from being entertained at the postwar peace conference table,13 the primary actors of the anticolonial movement shifted to the working class and peasants of Korean nationality, which the Soviets observed with great interest.14 At this time, thousands of Koreans fled to the eastern parts of the Soviet Union to escape colonial rule, creating a development of “diasporic nationhood” and a sense of transnational resistance movements unconfined to geopolitical borders in their struggle for liberation.15 Though Russian territory was by no means free from Japanese surveillance, the diasporic nature of national identity and the search for liberation solidified the understanding that these ideologies were not subject to total eradication by means of brute force or cultural assimilation, both of which were continuously attempted by the Japanese colonial rulers. Similarly, the establishment of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai broadened the scope of action to continental Asia and the possibilities for the exchange of ideas amongst Chinese intellectuals – also participants in the struggle to thwart colonial powers in their quest for sovereignty.

The Vietnamese resistance against French colonial rule took the explicit form of a Communist Party, founded in 1930 by the Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary Nguyen Ai Quoc, better known by the name of Ho Chi Minh.16 Ho Chi Minh’s political experience in France, the Soviet Union, and China not only diversifies the international nature of colonial resistance in his nation, but inarguably played a crucial role in constructing history in Vietnam’s path to liberation.17 The methodology of his revolutionary scheme was a fruit of Ho Chi Minh’s labours in direct communist involvement in the French metropole and communist-ruled states of Asia: the free flow of intellectual ideologies prompting a world order against the former rulers of the colonial world was undoubtedly a critical factor in the making of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement. As an accomplished agent of the Comintern, Ho Chi Minh embodied not only the spirit of Vietnamese independence itself, but also the potency for the powerful international network of anticolonial intellect to resist colonial oppression.

However, it is necessary to mention the flaws of designating Ho Chi Minh and the initial

13 Makdisi, “The Great Illusion,” 135.

14 Kurmanov, “Russian Perception,” 234.

15 Jaeeun Kim, “The Colonial State, Migration, and Diasporic Nationhood in Korea,” Compara tive Studies in Society and History 56, no. 1 (2014).

16 Peter Neville, Ho Chi Minh (London: Routledge, 2018), 19.

17 Neville, Ho Chi Minh,.10.

aims of his Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) as entities with a wholly international ontology dedicated to the unified quest for self-determination. Though Ho Chi Minh’s quest for national independence cannot be separated from his profound communist convictions, dissent between the Comintern pressure for the “bolshevization” of revolutionary commitments and the necessity to gain non-communist support for the purpose of Vietnamese liberation led to the ICP’s minimization of the nationalist agenda,18 propelling the party away from the foremost aim to “overthrow French imperialism” declared with the formation of the Communist Party of Indochina in 1930”.19

In the post-WWI era, across the seas from Asia, Western responses to newly ascendant ideologies of self-determination, at least in part, held an element of openness and acceptance to the prospect of change by the dawn of the 1930s. One article published by Felix Valyi, titled “Asia’s New Voice,” embraces the idea that the only pathway to peace in the upcoming age is to accept the Asian peoples as equals to the Westerners, abandoning the tenets of racial and moral superiority observed by the previous centuries’ Western colonizers.20 Valyi provides the examples of revolutionary movements in India, Persia, China, and Turkey to argue that the Asian continent is following the trajectory of the American Revolution in 1776, and the pursuit for education and progress in the Asian states deserves autonomous governance despite the possibility of “mistakes” being made in the process.

The stark contrast to the dominating narrative of the West’s moral duty to “civilize” the “uncivilized” world portrays the postwar shift beginning to take place in the Western sphere, ostensibly as a result of the aforementioned movements of resistance in the East. Though the prejudicial language employed by the journalist in this specific source highlights the limitations of Western reception regarding the Asian continent during this era, these very limitations serve as valuable markers in the historiographical comprehension of the global progress towards postcolonial egalitarianism for contemporary historians. There exists an element of irony in this Western approach to Asian national liberation, however, considering the apparent abandonment of Eastern calls for self-determination by Wilson’s America. The Wilsonian ideology never envisioned, nor supported, its reception by non-European

18 Neville, Ho Chi Minh,.5.

19 Nguyen, Ai Quoc. “Ho Chi Minh: Program for Communist of Indochina, 1930.” Internet His tory Sourcebooks. Accessed December 9, 2020. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1930hochiminh. asp

20

Felix Valyi, “Asia’s New Voice,” Forum (1886-1930), LXXVII, no. 6 (June 1927): 835.

counterparts, leading to the estrangement and disappointment of anticolonial Asia - yet it was the very consolidated nature of the Asian resistance movements initially united by the liberal internationalist ideology that captured the attention of Western academics like Valyi.

Conclusion

The First World War is not remembered as a crucial event in world history simply due to its massive, unprecedented scale of mass destruction and human suffering; the prospect of the establishment of a new global order following the collapse of old regimes and more so the expectations of such an emergence of a novel order, is what truly marks the transformative nature of Great Wars.21 In the two examined colonial Asian states, the anticipation for a global system in which weaker states possessed national autonomy in the face of great powers was particularly strong in the Wilsonian moment. This anticipation fueled the likes of the anticolonial sentiments studied in this paper, creating an international movement of resistance and solidarity that would ultimately come to fruition in the contemporary postcolonial era, though not prior to another devastating World War. Though the scope of this research was confined to two specific states, Korea and Vietnam, the network of international anticolonialism in the twentieth century is not limited to these cases. The interconnectedness of the Asian nationalist anticolonial forces played a significant role in paving the path to the international, sovereign nation-state system of the twenty-first century.

The legacies of the colonial world in which two thirds of the globe was subject to “economic slavery” under imperial masters still remain deeply embedded in today’s world,22 visualized through political and socioeconomic disparities that plague citizens of former colonies and metropoles alike. Much research is still left to be conducted in the realm of postcolonial studies – through an understanding of anticolonial resistance, consisted of “organized political and military struggle against colonial rule and the structures of the colonial economy,”23 historians and policymakers are undoubtedly able to acquire a crucial apparatus to battle the remnants of colonial forces in the world.

21 Erez, The Wilsonian Moment, 21.

22 Valyi, “Asia’s New Voice”, 835.

23 Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance. 1.

Bibliography

Adas, Michael. “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology.” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (March 2004): 31–63.

Guchkov, Alexander. “The Third International and Colonial Propaganda.” Slavonic and East European Review 10, (1931): 509-525.

Jefferess, David. Postcolonial Resistance: Culture, Liberation, and Transformation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Kim, Jaeeun. “The Colonial State, Migration, and Diasporic Nationhood in Korea.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 1 (2014): 34–66.

Makdisi, Ussama. “The Great Illusion: The Wilsonian Moment in World History.” Diplomatic History 33, no. 1 (2009): 133-37.

Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford : Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2007.

Morris, Rosalind C. “Remembering Asian Anticolonialism, Again.” The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 2 (May 2010): 347–69.

Neville, Peter. Ho Chi Minh (London: Routledge, 2018).

Nguyen, Ai Quoc. “Ho Chi Minh: Program for Communist of Indochina, 1930.” Internet History Sourcebooks. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1930hochiminh.asp

Streets-Salter, Heather. World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Stobart, S.E.M. “Self-Determination: Three Episodes.” The Living Age (1897-1941) 4032 (October 16, 1921): 166.

Valyi, Felix. “Asia’s New Voice.” Forum (1886-1930 LXXVII no. 6 (June 1927), 835.

PERSPECTIVES

The Human Factor in Strategic Surprise

The Fall of Afghanistan

Sean Thorne

Introduction

The fall of the Afghan regime in August of 2021 came as a shock to the world. Though the United States had planned on withdrawing military forces from the country since February 2020,1 few expected the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover or the tumultuous final evacuation of American troops. The expeditious collapse of the nation in which the United States spent 20 years fighting, at a cost of $2 trillion with over 7,000 soldiers killed in action,2 3 is undoubtedly the largest failure of American intelligence since the

1 “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Which Is Not Recognized by the United States as a State and Is Known as the Taliban and the United States of America,” US State Department, February 29, 2020. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bring ing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf.

2 “U.S. & Allied Killed,” The Costs of War. Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs, July 2021. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military/ killed.

3 Nan Tian, “20 Years of US Military Aid to Afghanistan,” Stockholm Interna tional Peace Research Institute, September 22, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/commen

September 2001 attacks. The aim of this paper is to understand the human factor of the strategic surprise that was the Fall of Afghanistan. Using scholarly and government sources available at this time, I will illustrate that the failure of the United States to anticipate the outcome of their withdrawal was significantly influenced by human factors, specifically the political context between the Trump and Biden presidential administrations, and policymaker misperception limiting the effective consumption of relevant intelligence. This analysis, by extension, will assert that the fall of Afghanistan was not solely the result of lacking or erroneous intelligence estimates. To accomplish this goal, I will illustrate what is currently known of the relevant estimates provided by the U.S. Intelligence Community and other relevant stakeholders. I will then juxtapose this with the policy ambitions of the Trump and Biden administrations, who respectively drafted and implemented the agreement to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Using this as evidence that adequate intelligence did in fact exist prior to the withdrawal and complemented by the support of relevant literature, I will demonstrate that the rapid collapse of Afghanistan is not merely the result of defective information processing or warning failure, but is distinctly the outcome of policymaker decision-making. The events of August 2021 have far resounding implications for U.S. foreign policy and warrant thorough analysis; investigations such as this are imperative to fully understanding the origin of such a monumental intelligence failure.

Background Context

The process of withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan was initiated by former President Donald Trump. His administration signed a peace agreement signed in February 2020 necessitating the full withdrawal of the U.S. military by May of the following year.4 This policy objective was reaffirmed by the Biden administration, except for an extension of the U.S. presence until August 2021.5 As the events that unfolded at the time are still of recent importance to the academic community, I must first acknowledge that many specific intelligence documents still remain largely inaccessible due to classification and secrecy. As such, the scholarly sources used in this paper will be supplemented by openly-available U.S. government publications, tary/topical-backgrounder/2021/20-years-us-military-aid-afghanistan.

4 Yoram Schweitzer and Oded Eran, “The US Withdrawal from Afghanistan Portends a Vacuum and Uncertain Future,” The Institute for National Security Stud ies, July 2021, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep33820.

5 Schweitzer and Eran, “The US Withdrawal.”

academic research, and journalistic pieces. Similar to what happened in the two decades post-9/11, new information regarding the content of individual intelligence estimates or what information U.S. officials had about Afghanistan’s ability to resist a Taliban takeover will continue to emerge in subsequent years. Further research will therefore continue to be necessary to update the relevant literature as it becomes feasible to do so.

Intelligence Prior to the Withdrawal

This section will first analyze the substance and timeliness of information known to the U.S. government as well as academia prior to the August 2020 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including unclassified military, government publications, and journalistic research.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Warnings of Afghanistan’s Collapse

Though specific estimates from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are not yet widely available, there are multiple examples of credible assertions that the agency had provided U.S. officials with a possible worst-case scenario in Afghanistan. Well before the country’s fall to the Taliban, the agency had provided the U.S. government with a forecast that the Afghan government may collapse ‘within days’ of the military withdrawal.6 7

While not the same as a CIA estimate, it is likely that similar intelligence estimates were present in military circles as well. This is indicated by reporting that military officials sought to begin evacuations as early as May 2021, but were not permitted to do so by the White House.8 The disconnect between what was forecasted and what decisions

6 Douglas London, “CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief for the Re gion: Afghanistan, Not an Intelligence Failure - Something Much Worse,” Just Security, August 23, 2021, https://www.justsecurity.org/77801/cias-former-coun terterrorism-chief-for-the-region-afghanistan-not-an-intelligence-failure-some thing-much-worse/?fbclid=IwAR3fHapaarN9NE9CpguzbGz12b_.

7 Ken Dilanian, Mike Memoli, Courtney Kube, and Josh Lederman, “CIA Warned of Rapid Afghanistan Collapse. So Why Did U.S. Get It so Wrong?,” NBC News, August 17, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/cia-warned-rapid-afghanistancollapse-so-why-did-u-s-n1277026.

8 Dilanian, Memoli, Kube, and Lederman, “CIA Warned.”

were made is even more apparent. By August 7, just eight days before the Fall of Kabul, less than one percent of the 80,000 Afghans who had applied for ex-interpreter visas had been evacuated to the United States.9

Office of the Director of National Intelligence Annual Threat Assessment 2021

In the publicly-available Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community, published in April by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, bleak assessments about the prospects of Afghanistan’s future were made clear. The Taliban was likely to make large gains in the country, and the Afghan military was incapable of stifling the group’s ambitions.10 Though no specific timelines were included in this unclassified document, the conclusion had already been directly presented by the U.S. Intelligence Community just four months before the withdrawal, and was readily-accessible to U.S. policymakers in the leadup to the military’s departure from the country.

January 2021 Assessment of Relative Afghan and Taliban Military Capacities

As early as January of 2021, research produced by Jonathan Schroden offered meaningful insight into the relative capacities of both the Afghan military and the Taliban. Critically assessing advantages in Size, Material Resources, External Support, Force Employment, and Cohesion, Schroden concludes that the Taliban at the time possessed an advantage in military capacities over Afghan forces. He further asserts that this advantage would compound over time after the U.S. withdrawal,11 which to date has proven accurate.

vThough this is not an intelligence estimate per se, it is indicative of the types of estimates that were produced in an academic context. Therefore it can be used to make reasonable inferences about the character of the actual estimates produced by the Intelligence Community itself. This confidence is reaffirmed with the proximal

9 Dilanian, Memoli, Kube, and Lederman, “CIA Warned.”

10

“Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 9, 2021, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2021-Unclassified-Re port. pdf.

11 Jonathan Schroden,, “Afghanistan’s Security Forces Versus the Taliban: A Net Assessment,” CTC Sentinel 14, no. 1 (January 2021): 20–30, https://ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CTC-SENTINEL-012021.pdf.

timeline between the production of the research and its actual exemplification on the ground in Afghanistan.

These three examples offer three conclusions: intelligence assessments existed and originated directly from the CIA,12 Intelligence Community documents forecasted a rapid deterioration in Afghanistan post-withdrawal,13 and academic research suggested the Afghan military was unsustainably outmatched by the Taliban.14 Understanding the existence of these materials before the withdrawal, it is reasonable to assume that at least some members of the United States government were aware of intelligence suggesting that Afghanistan may collapse rapidly after the withdrawal of coalition military forces.

The Decision to Leave Afghanistan

Regardless of the intelligence that was available, the decision to leave Afghanistan was made by Donald Trump, and carried out by Joe Biden. This section will analyze one of the human factors influencing U.S. decision making, focusing on the political context created by Donald Trump and subsequently passed on to Joe Biden.

The agreement outlining the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was the culmination of negotiations spearheaded by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The drafted agreement was received with skepticism by the U.S. Intelligence Community, who cautioned that its two principal objectives, a Taliban commitment to break links with al-Qaeda and a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan, were improbable.15 Despite these warnings, the stakes at home were likely perceived to be much greater than those in Afghanistan; 2020 was an election year and the blanket decision to leave Afghanistan resonated with Americans after 20 years of conflict. With a bid for reelection looming in November of that year, and understanding the patterns of conduct seen throughout the Trump presidency, the claim to having signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban was valuable to the then-president. Just one month prior to the November 2020 Presidential Election, calls for rapid troop withdrawals

12 London, “CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief.”

13 Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment.”

14 Schroden, “Afghanistan’s Security Forces.”

15 London, “CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief.”

featured prominently on his now-defunct Twitter account.16 Moreover, the deal signed with the Taliban was heralded as a major accomplishment on a since-deleted Republican National Committee webpage.17

The Biden administration had little room to maneuver from the position they inherited from the Trump presidency; reversing the decision to withdraw would have likely been largely unpopular, and extending the length of time soldiers remained in the country for too long may have disrupted the terms negotiated by the Taliban and ignited further conflict. The political stakes created a situation in which leaving immediately was impractical, but taking too long increased the risk of a Taliban surprise. To Joe Biden, leaving at some point was the only option, it was just a matter of when the Taliban would take over. These political and practical dilemmas pre-contextualized the human factors that led to the strategic surprise of Afghanistan’s fall.

Uncertainty and Time: When Would the Taliban Arrive?

As indicated by the timeline of actions taken by the Biden administration, it is evident that U.S. officials did not expect the pace at which the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Despite the initial warnings noted above, logistical, diplomatic, and humanitarian processes were not in place by the time the Taliban was proximal to Kabul. This was despite the fact that, as asserted above, at the very least some attack warning existed suggesting the haste at which the Taliban may be able to retake Afghanistan. Within strategic surprise, the reaction to initial attack warning is positively correlated with the certainty of an adversary’s intended action.18 This relationship is affected either by the consumption of higher-quality intelligence or unconcealable enemy movements

16 Kathy Gannon, “Taliban Cheer Trump Tweet Promising Early Troop With drawal,” ABC News, October 8, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ taliban-trump-tweet-promising-early-troop-withdrawal-73497959.

17 Tom Porter, “The RNC Deleted a Webpage Hailing Trump’s Taliban Deal as Fighters Swept Afghanistan, but Says It Was Part of Routine Web Maintenance,” Business Insider, August 16, 2021, https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-removes-pagehailing-trump-taliban-deal-2021-8.

18 Michael I. Handel, “Intelligence and the Problem of Strategic Surprise,” in Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence, ed. by Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken (London: Routledge, 2003), 1.

indicative of an impending attack. In the case of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is a substantial gap (or absense, it could also be argued) between the initial warning of Taliban intentions and subsequent preparations for evacuation. The presence of this readiness gap is indicative of a second human factor studied by Richard Betts, a paradox of perception,19 when the preconceived notions of a policymaker impede an adequate response to an intelligence problem. The reaction (or lack thereof) to the threat that the Taliban may overwhelm Afghan capabilities mere days after the U.S. withdrawal is indicative of how intelligence was perceived by U.S. policymakers. Either the shortest estimated timeline of the Taliban advance was seen as nonsensical (and that a more drawn-out advance was, therefore, much more likely), or this context was not assumed to impact the feasibility of achieving the intended policy objectives (getting American troops out of the country at that time regardless of the consequences). The situation on the ground unfolded in a very distinct way that illustrated the degree to which perceptions of outcomes varied between U.S. intelligence officers and policymakers. While it is impossible to identify the exact origin or character of this misperception given the material available at this time, understanding from the sections above that some amount of relevant intelligence is likely to have existed. We can nonetheless conclude that the human consumption of said intelligence was not par with the most severe of its asserted possible consequences.

Conclusion

This paper sought to assert that the strategic surprise of the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan was in part influenced by political circumstance and intelligence misperception. It first provided evidence that some credible intelligence of a rapid Taliban takeover is likely to have circulated through the upper levels of the U.S. government. This conclusion was specifically derived from statements made by CIA officials, reports from the Director of National Intelligence, and research from the academic community. It subsequently asserted that human factors likely impacted the fullest reception of key pieces of intelligence. The first is that political stakes are likely to have contributed to the very envisioning of the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, and the

19 Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Fail ures Are Inevitable,” World Politics 31, no. 1 (October 1978): 61–89, https://doi. org/10.2307/2009967.

second were the paradoxes of perception20 likely to have widened the readiness gap21 between U.S. military forces and the Taliban at the time of the latter’s arrival outside of Kabul. This research has achieved its objective insofar as illustrating the impact of political opportunism and cognitive influences on the most effective utilization of intelligence, culminating in the disastrous events of August 2021.

Though these insights are useful, I am in no way stating that the intelligence provided was without flaws; this is in no way a vehement statement that the situation in Afghanistan was purely a human failure. I acknowledge that my research is limited due to the constraints previously noted. The evidence does suggest that relevant estimates did exist, their quality, specificity, and the effectiveness of their dissemination is not something that I can evaluate with any authenticity or credibility. I am unable to trace the exact movement of information through intelligence or military chains of command, nor can I offer insight into the variance of conclusions offered by the U.S. Intelligence Community (especially regarding the pace of Afghanistan’s collapse). I fully expect that, as new information emerges, so too will evidence of problems within the collection, analysis, and dissemination of the intelligence itself. This is both expected and encouraged; the near-instant capitulation of Afghan forces following the U.S. withdrawal is the culmination of a costly and deadly war that was ultimately lost. Further thorough study of the events leading up to and during the withdrawal from Afghanistan is necessary so as to not repeat the same disastrous mistakes.

20 Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision.”

21 Handel, “Intelligence and the Problem.”

Bibliography

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