144 International Relations Theory of War
The arrival of U.S. forces in central Asia was the result of a significant
change in American thinking concerning the region and its importance to U.S.
national security,^212 following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, on
U.S. soil. The scale of the change in U.S. policy could be compared to a certain
extent to the influence of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941, which led the United States to join the Second World War, as both
of them were catalysts for significant changes in U.S. foreign policy.^213
The terrorist events significantly affected U.S. foreign policy. It became
assertive and aggressive, militaristic and unilateral, and had idealist rheto-
ric. It also asked to disseminate American values and used moral crusade
parlance and freedom and human rights rhetoric. The U.S. foreign policy
started to support preemptive strikes and actions too.^214
Globally speaking, the fact that the United States was a sole hyper-
power in a unipolar system spared it from the systemic constraints that
were applied on the polar powers in the previous four polar powers
wars against Afghanistan, which effectively led to their withdrawal from
Afghanistan. The United States had very close ties with Great Britain,
despite the significant ideological differences between the regimes of U.S.
President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. How-
ever, one cannot ignore the fact that the relations between Europe and
the United States greatly weakened.^215 The UN’s position regarding the
United States weakened greatly following the collapse of the Soviet Union
in the early 1990s. Afterward, the United States was influenced less by the
largest and most significant international organization in the global scene.
The United States’ significant military superiority over all other countries
was clear and absolute at that time. That fact prevented the other pow-
ers operating in the system from applying military constraints against the
United States by threatening to use military force, which occurred in some
of the previous cases.
Thus, it is shown that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and retention of
its forces in that country, unlike the previous four cases in which the polar
powers that invaded Afghanistan had to withdraw from it, stems from the
uniqueness of the current case. This is the only case out of the five wars
of the polar powers against Afghanistan in which the polar power, the
United States, as a sole hyperpower in the unipolar system, enjoyed full
freedom of action. In addition, the United States did not face any extrinsic
systemic dictate that held it back in that country or elsewhere. This led it to
take, in effect, an independent foreign policy that did not depend on any
extrinsic pressures.
The Consequences of the U.S.-Afghan WarThe outcomes of the U.S.-Afghan War can be summarized in quanti-
ties terms: the killing of 3,000–4,000 Taliban combatants.^216 Conspicuously,