United States–Afghanistan relations

United States–Afghanistan relations are depicted as a consequential reversal: during the 1980s, American intelligence joined Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, and others in recruiting, training, and arming hard-line Islamist fighters against Soviet forces; after the September 11 attacks, the United States bombed Afghanistan and established major military bases in Central Asia. The book presents the new campaign not only as a response to terrorism but also as a means of expanding American military reach, with consequences for aid delivery, regional politics, and the balance of power around the world’s major energy reserves.

From Cold War intervention to a new war

In the 1980s, the United States’ role in Afghanistan was indirect but substantial. Its intelligence services worked with Pakistani, Saudi, and British services to recruit, train, and arm the most extreme Islamist forces they could find for a “holy war” against the Soviet invaders. The account thus places the later conflict within a history in which external powers helped build and equip militant networks, even as the identities and alignments of the actors changed.

After the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration framed the ensuing military campaign as a new phase of the war on terrorism. Chomsky compares it with the Reagan administration’s earlier war on terrorism, arguing that the new phase extended existing policy tendencies rather than marking a clean break. He also notes that governments elsewhere used the attacks to intensify repressive policies, presenting the campaign as an international political opening as well as a military response.

The regional strategic setting

Chomsky situates Afghanistan within a wider contest over strategic geography and energy. The world’s principal reserves, he argues, lie chiefly in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, with significant resources also in Central Asia. Afghanistan itself is a comparatively minor piece of this map, but proposed pipelines across it had long featured in American efforts to gain leverage over Central Asian resources.

The countries surrounding Afghanistan made the military campaign especially consequential. Uzbekistan faced an Islamist rebellion and had been condemned by Human Rights Watch for serious abuses. Tajikistan was also unstable and was described as a major drug-transit route into Europe; the Northern Alliance, which controlled nearly all of Afghanistan’s border with Tajikistan, was implicated in that trade. Chomsky further warns that Afghan flight northward could bring internal problems to neighboring states.

Pakistan presented a different set of risks. It had been the Taliban’s leading supporter, contained a powerful Islamist movement, and possessed nuclear weapons. Its military was interested in promised American assistance but wary because relations with the United States had been turbulent. Pakistani leaders were also concerned about a potentially hostile Afghanistan aligning with India. The Northern Alliance’s leadership by Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other Afghan minorities hostile to Pakistan—and its support from India, Iran, Russia, and now the United States—added to those anxieties.

Military power and political purpose

The book treats the establishment of major American bases in Central Asia as a lasting consequence of the war. Before the campaign, the United States’ most secure base for operations directed toward the Persian Gulf was Diego Garcia; the new regional foothold, Chomsky argues, improved the capacity to intervene decisively. He connects the bases both to a contemporary “Great Game” over Central Asian resources and to a broader network encircling the Gulf’s energy reserves, extending from the Pacific to the Azores.

Chomsky interprets the campaign as an opportunity for the Bush administration to consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and advance global dominance. He cites a reported exchange during a visit by Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: Abdullah urged Washington to consider Arab reactions to its strong support for Israeli repression, while American officials reportedly dismissed those concerns. A senior official characterized the force used in Afghanistan as far greater than that deployed during the Gulf War, and a former military official suggested that firmness would earn respect and end opposition. In Chomsky’s account, this language makes the demonstration of American capacity part of the campaign’s political meaning.

He also links the Afghanistan campaign to the NATO bombing of Serbia. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained that the bombing was intended to ensure NATO’s credibility; Chomsky argues that this formulation principally concerned the credibility of the United States and its major arms client. He presents the two campaigns as examples of a recurring diplomatic logic in which military action demonstrates what a powerful state or alliance can do, rather than merely accomplishing its stated immediate objective.

Humanitarian effects and competing rationales

The book’s account of the post-September 11 response emphasizes the danger that a massive assault on Muslim populations would fulfill the wishes of Osama bin Laden and his associates by drawing the United States and its allies into a destructive trap. Chomsky says that European leaders had publicly expressed this concern and argues that an overwhelming military response risked feeding a cycle of violence. The prospect of retaliation therefore appears not as a separate issue from relations with Afghanistan but as one of the foreseeable consequences of the campaign’s scale and framing.

Chomsky also describes acute humanitarian pressures before and during the bombing. Refugees faced blocked borders, harsh conditions, and the approaching winter; those who reached camps across the border were among the few who had escaped. In early October, the World Food Programme had sent hundreds of tonnes of food toward Afghanistan but estimated that this would meet no more than 15 percent of the country’s needs. The September 11 attacks had already contributed to the withdrawal of international teams and a three-week interruption in deliveries; after airstrikes began on October 7, the programme suspended its convoys and local food distributions. The United Nations refugee agency reported that 7.5 million Afghans were short of food and at risk of famine, while aid officials warned that 1.5 million refugees might flee the country.

Relief organizations criticized food drops conducted alongside bombing, arguing that they could not replace truck deliveries and that airstrikes had interrupted the main means of moving large quantities of food into the country. They objected to the publicity surrounding the drops and called for advance warning, daylight delivery, and volunteers on the ground to collect and distribute supplies. The contrast between visible food parcels and disrupted aid routes sharpens the book’s distinction between humanitarian presentation and practical consequences.

A wider policy shift

For Chomsky, the Afghan campaign also marked a broader change in American military reach: for the first time, the United States established large-scale bases in Central Asia. He connects this development to control of regional resources and to the improved capacity for intervention, while acknowledging that the strategic interpretation is an inference rather than a claim based on confidential documents. The relationship is therefore presented both through concrete changes in deployment and through an argument about what those changes made possible.

The book places that expansion alongside a continuing preference for unilateral freedom of action. It recalls that the Clinton administration had described its approach as acting multilaterally when possible and unilaterally when necessary, and that later officials defended unilateral military force to protect vital interests, including access to markets, energy, and strategic resources. Chomsky argues that the need for a coalition after September 11 might soften the rhetoric without changing the underlying policy: coalition members, in his account, were expected to support Washington rather than share in decision-making, while the United States reserved the right to act as it chose.

The relationship’s significance consequently extends beyond the immediate war. Afghanistan became a site where an older history of external involvement, a new counterterrorism campaign, humanitarian emergency, regional rivalries, and a widened American base network converged. Chomsky’s closing assessment is that the underlying international problems largely remained, but September 11 introduced changes likely to have serious and unwelcome consequences.