US took 19 days to successfully start a war in #Afghanistan & next 20 years to unsuccessfully forge peace.
Why is making war so easy while achieving peace so hard? Here are some thoughts covering both the theoretical & functional reasons [Thread]
1.Theoretical: Nations are still governed by classical Pol Sci/IR theories that are not just Eurocentric but also War Centric. Such theories continue to place "war" & "balance of power" instead of "peace" & "prosperity" as key features of nation-states making peace impossible
2. Functional: Since war features prominently in the conceptualisation of nation-states & its discourse, it has been institutionalised into the governance structures. Peace, however, has never been institutionalised & is viewed only as an abstract end product of war & violence.
Result:
- Nations are well trained in mechanised warfare than delivering systematic peace in the case of the US.
- It's easier to spend 2 trillion dollars on waging war than to spend a $100m sorting peace.
- Short-term battle victories > long term benefits of peace.
What we need is:
1. To reconceputalise PolSci/IR to pivot it around peacemaking instead of war.
2. De-institutionalise war from the governance structures because for as long as their is war machine, there will be wars.
3. Get over the primitive Hobbesian worldview
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Past one month I’ve come across mostly fiction & propaganda writing on #Afghanistan.
Here is my response to another such fiction writing published by Bloomberg with totally tone deaf & historical inaccuracies. [Thread] bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
1. Imagine invading a foreign country with no war plan & then occupying it for 20 years wasting 2 trillion dollars sponsoring corruption & warlords.
Then having the audacity to blame a neighbor for all your failures that advised to the contrary.
2. How many times does it take to repeat a lie for it become an established truth? This $33b dollar US aid only funded the US contractors & consultants at the expense of $150b Pakistan suffered.
Since US likes honesty, the USG owes Pakistan a good $120b if we go by the numbers.
1. Pakistan didn't have to play a duplicitous role, the US was lying itself to the teeth on gains in #Afghanistan for 20 years. The question is why the American people were lied to about Afg?
2. Backing warlords & crook regimes of Karzai & Ghani wasn't Pakistan's doing, it was all the US plan.
3. Since Oct/Nov 2001 Pakistan kept advising to the US that there was "no military solution", yet you all thought it was a winnable war. Duplicitous much?
1. Nobody in Pakistan cheered Taliban's takeover. People were only relieved to see the downfall of a crook regime that sponsored terrorism in Pakistan for over a decade.
Trying to articulate my commemoration for #September11 but at loss of words after 20 years of what followed 9/11 & especially all what happened in last 1 month.
But here are a few thoughts from a Pakistani that takes D.C. as a 2nd home & can empathise with Americans [Thread]
1. 9/11 was a great tragedy to hit the US. But what followed was an even greater tragedy that the US inflicted upon itself along with the rest of the world - the price so many had to pay without even knowing why.
The US had the options, it chose the most catastrophic one.
2. The US had all the right intentions & reasons to wage war but the way it pursued the war which along the way got hijacked by competing interests & lobbies was a turning point for the US fate in #Afghanistan.
Pakistan saw it, warned about it & was instead shunned for it.