The risk society’s stabilisation failure? An analysis of NATO and the international security assistance force in Afghanistan

This dissertation examines the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) stabilisation failure in Afghanistan. Stabilising Afghanistan was a focal point in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) when NATO hosted substantial civilian and military power to support reconstruction in fragile states and prevent global risks. In post-Cold War unipolarity, Western grand strategy aiming to intervene and stabilise was largely uncontested. Despite material and structural advantages, many NATO aims in Afghanistan were eventually unmet. This inspires a research puzzle focused on the explanatory potential of the risk society concept in security studies. Risk theorists claim that later modernity has significantly altered the strategic outlooks of Western states and organisations, creating intrigue to question whether the principal reasons for NATO’s stabilisation failure in Afghanistan were caused by faults linked to risk society’s main conceptual characteristics? This dissertation reengages with these characteristics before examining if these underpinned flawed stabilisation policies. Five defining characteristics are identified: The risk society puts ‘safety first’; it prioritises utilitarian outcomes; it emphasises risks ‘aggravated by globalisation’; it is future-focused on prevention; and it seeks to continually manage risks. With a focus on the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) between 2002 and 2014, the dissertation argues that the risk society’s characteristics closely influenced many stabilisation failures in Afghanistan. NATO’s failures lived up to the risk theory contradiction where security is prioritised, but with less strategic ambition. The risk society’s acutely anxious ‘safety first’ outlook conditioned many under-committed civilian and military policies. However, NATO’s experience in Afghanistan also illustrated some important deviations from risk theory. Risk theory downplays ideological policy influences, but liberal-ideological fragments still influenced some stabilisation policy flaws.