A Strong Army or a Strong Nation?

 A Strong Army or a Strong Nation?

Why Afghanistan’s Future Depends on People, Not Parades
By Wahab Raofi

A familiar argument insists that “a country with a strong army is a country that respects itself.” For Afghanistan—a land scarred by invasions and proxy wars—this idea carries deep emotional weight. The image of a unified, professional military promises sovereignty, order, and an escape from decades of instability. Yet Afghanistan’s modern history suggests that this pursuit has repeatedly confused the symbol of strength with its substance, often at the nation’s ultimate expense.

Historically, Afghanistan’s military has played a decisive—and often destructive—political role. The relatively stable rule of King Zahir Shah and later President Sardar Daoud in the 1970s did not collapse because of foreign invasion or popular uprising, but because tanks rolled out of the barracks. These coups violated a foundational principle of any functioning state: that the military must remain firmly subordinate to civilian authority. The problem was not merely the existence of an army, but the absence of strong civilian institutions capable of restraining a politicized one.

This structural weakness reappeared decades later. Despite vast international investment that produced a force of more than 300,000 soldiers, Afghanistan’s army collapsed with startling speed in 2021. That failure revealed a hollowness no amount of equipment or training could conceal—a disconnect between the uniform and the state it was meant to defend. When a government fails to provide dignity, services, or legitimacy to its citizens, even the most heavily armed soldier finds little worth dying for. Military strength without political legitimacy proved illusory.

Beyond internal fragility, the aspiration to rebuild a massive standing army carries geopolitical costs. In a volatile region, such forces can alarm neighbors, deepen mistrust, and fuel regional security dilemmas. Afghanistan’s strategic priority should not be to project military power, but to cultivate economic relevance and regional integration. In the 21st century, sovereignty is increasingly measured not by the size of an army, but by a state’s indispensability to trade, transit, and cooperation.

Afghanistan’s own history offers a sobering lesson about the true source of its resilience. When the British Empire invaded in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th, it was not a centralized, professional army that ultimately forced their withdrawal. It was the population itself—farmers, villagers, and tribesmen—using local knowledge, social networks, and sheer endurance. This resistance was costly and often devastating for civilians, and it did not produce a stable state. Yet it demonstrated a crucial reality: Afghanistan’s durability has always rested more on social cohesion and popular will than on centralized military power.

Critics will rightly argue that no state can abandon its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The goal, however, is not to create a security vacuum, but to redefine what legitimate force looks like in Afghanistan’s context. The country’s gravest threats are internal—fragmentation, terrorism, criminal networks, and governance failure. A large, politically ambitious army designed for conventional warfare is poorly suited to these challenges. Instead, Afghanistan would benefit from a capable, professional, and strictly apolitical constabulary force focused on internal security, public safety, border policing, and disaster response—operating under clear civilian oversight and the rule of law.

The most pragmatic path forward, then, is to abandon an unaffordable and historically destabilizing model. Afghanistan does not need generals accumulating stars on their shoulders while teachers, doctors, and civil servants go unpaid. Resources consumed by maintaining an oversized army would be better invested in rebuilding the foundations of state legitimacy: education, healthcare, infrastructure, and agriculture. These are not peripheral concerns; they are the very mechanisms through which loyalty to the state becomes organic rather than coerced.

This civilian-first approach is not a utopian fantasy, but a tested strategy. Costa Rica abolished its military in 1949 and redirected those funds into education and public health, becoming one of Latin America’s most stable societies. Iceland, despite being a founding NATO member, thrives without a standing army, relying instead on a specialized coast guard and international partnerships. Panama, after decades of military interference in politics, constitutionally prohibited a standing army in 1994. Afghanistan’s security environment is undeniably more complex than these cases, but the underlying principle remains transferable: sovereignty is sustained by legitimacy, not pageantry.

Afghanistan has already tested the belief that a strong army automatically produces a strong nation. The results are written in coups, dependency, and collapse. Respect is not earned by maintaining a force a country cannot afford or control, but by building a social contract its citizens are willing to defend. History shows that Afghanistan has endured not through centralized military might, but through social resilience and collective will. Its future will not be secured in barracks, but in classrooms, clinics, and farms—where loyalty is cultivated, not commanded. Choosing people over military illusion is not weakness; it is the most durable form of strength Afghanistan has ever known.