Is this the end of western interventionism?

Sean O’Grady explains the erosion of interventionism and globalisation, and how even the looming catastrophic humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan hasn’t been enough to revive the ideas of Blair and Bush

Farzia, 28, who lost her husband in Baghlan one week ago, at a makeshift IDP camp in Kabul (Getty)

Among the many more pressing and distressing consequences of the west’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is the rather chaotic end to the various doctrines of international humanitarian intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states. No longer will a superpower – the United States, the Nato alliance or the United Nations (UN) – step in to save lives, protect human rights and suppress terror cells in the way that was attempted for two decades in Afghanistan – and, arguably, in Iraq and elsewhere.

It is something of a turning point, and one that suggests any such future armed incursions to rescue peoples from civil wars, genocide and persecution by their own governments will become more difficult, if not impossible. The present situation in Afghanistan, along with those in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Myanmar (let alone the likes of China, North Korea, Russia/Ukraine and Belarus) and various failed states in Africa, suggests that the west, and principally America, no longer has the will to make such a difference to the welfare of the world.

From the perspective of today, it would seem that the impulse to rescue oppressed peoples reached its zenith around 15 to 20 years ago. It was the product of a series of failed western policies in the early 1990s towards the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia especially) and Rwanda – the failure to prevent genocides being openly pursued by state authorities.