An evaluation of the U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan in the context of Sun Tzu’s Art of War

The 9/11 attacks have created a share for the United States of America (U.S.) involving in the Wars of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2013. President George W. Bush launched military operation pre-emptively by adopting the “hard power” approach which deployed advanced-technology ammunitions, whereas President Barrack Obama opted for the “smart power” approach which combines rewards and punishments to its alliances and enemies. However, “total victory” achieved in the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan is somehow still illusive in comparison to Sun Tzu’s Art of War due to high degree of resistance. By using Sun Tzu’s maxims as a framework, the study examines the current U.S. military policies in Afghanistan Wars and hence evaluates U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan. Finally, the contingency of the U.S. and coalitions in resolving the Afghanistan crisis is summarized. The study adopts a secondary research method based on Sun Tzu’s Art of War as the main source of reference, whilst other information is collected from newspapers, academic journals and news magazines from libraries, online data base as well as the Internet. The findings and results were generated accordingly. After a comprehensive study, comparison made to the principle of Sun Tzu revealed that U.S. is fighting a losing battle in the military engagement in Afghan soil because of increasing weaknesses which have emerged than strengths. These weaknesses including U.S. ignorance of human and financial factors from both Afghanistan and America, geo-political elements, underestimate of enemy, heavy reliance on coalition forces with Pakistan, conflict of interests and insufficient of U.S. human intelligence. In short, Sun Tzu emphasized the vital importance of war to the state, the life and death for the army because the results of a war might determine the destiny of state. Therefore, the issue of war deserves thorough and comprehensive study.