After the chaos in Kabul, is the American century over?
A few months ago there were US bases all over Afghanistan where you could immerse yourself in Americana, buy Coke and Snickers bars from vending machines and watch live sport on TV.
Last week the outpost had shrunk to one side of Kabul airport, a chaotic remnant of a 20-year stay where rear-guard troops were trying to salvage the last scraps of dignity and honour, seemingly tossed aside by the political leadership in Washington, by trying to extract American stragglers and Afghan allies. Those allies, once inspired by talk of democracy, women’s rights and the free press, have been faced with the awful life-and-death dilemmas of preserving evidence of their work for or with the US-led coalition, in the hope of lastminute salvation, or destroying it, in a bid to escape execution.
The speed and totality of the defeat at the end of the longest war in US history inevitably raises questions about its place in the broader sweep of modern history, and the biggest question perhaps is whether these scenes mark the last throes of the “American century”.
It has been an era in which the
