Reinforcing the sovereign state - A requisite for empire?: Interrogating the geopolitics of US/NATO intervention in Afghanistan.

摘要

Conventional discourse depicts the current US/NATO intervention project in Afghanistan as a necessary endeavor for the protection of international security, locating the polity as a facilitating space for attacks against the West that must be recuperated through the re-constitution of state institutions protective of its territorial sovereignty. This study examines the geopolitical reasoning and discursive rationalizations of intervening actors informing intervention policy and practical activity as well as the perspectives of Afghan nationals experiencing its consequences on the ground. Through analysis of US/NATO discourse and practices as well as structured interviews in Afghanistan, this study suggests that the alliance's representation of its engagement in Afghanistan as a protective state-stabilization and sovereignty restoration project advanced solely for the purposes of global and US national security is open to debate.