Destined to Fail

The book contributes to the critical debate of exogenous state- and democracy-building experiments pursued in the aftermath of Western-led intervention in war-torn societies. The mistakes committed by the principal intervener, the United States, at the zero hour of state-building in Afghanistan could not be rectified in the following years of intervention. The 'multilateral state and democracy building project' remained a 'unilateral decision-making project' in practice, making it less cost-effective. Furthermore, a systematic inquiry into the processes establishes the rationale that political change is not the guarantor of social change in conflict-ridden societies like Afghanistan. Failure of the Afghanistan state- and democracy-building experiment clearly shows that the US cannot fix the world according to its own ideas.