Smith, Laurence C., Book, 2011.

 

It is easier to know what cannot be than to foretell what will be. There was never any possibility that Iraq would become a secular democracy: toppling Saddam Hussein meant destroying a secular regime, however despotic, while post-invasion politics was bound to reflect sectarian divisions. Similarly, there was never the remot­est prospect of post-communist Russia becoming a western-style economy; 70 years of Soviet rule had produced a military-industrial rustbelt, lacking the most rudimentary preconditions of a viable market system.

 

More recently, Afghanistan was never going to turn into anything resembling a liberal democracy. Unlike Saddam's Iraq, a modern tyranny, Afghanistan has never been a modern state. Even Soviet forces, far more ruthless than the western allies are today, could not create such a state where none had existed. As soon as the allies went beyond their initial objective of disabling terrorist bases, it was clear that they, too, would be defeated.