Liberal Interventions in Post-9/11 Afghanistan

This chapter analyzes liberal interventionism in post-9/11 Afghanistan using hierarchical intervention theory. It highlight the vital role of intervention frames in coordinating “team performance” in multilateral interventions. great power intervention choices. After 9/11, the US and the UK jointly framed the Taliban as a rogue regime, leading to a multilateral intervention for regime change and nation-building. Through qualitative frame analysis of over 160 Security Council debates, the chapter shows how these interventions evolved as conflict events "broke the primary intervention frame," new strategies. As initial intervention frames lost their resonance with domestic audiences after frame-breaking events, we show that these events created critical junctures, leading great power leaders to initiate frame shifts yielding new action scripts. Competing explanations – ideological ties, humanitarian concerns, resource competition, great power rivalry, and leadership traits – account for early intervention choices, but fail to explain later shifts. Hierarchical intervention theory offers the fullest explanation of liberal interventionism in Afghanistan by showing how evolving frames guided strategic and tactical adjustments mobilizing domestic and international support for these choices.