Exploring the Impact of Embedded Feminism on U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Afghanistan in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries

Abstract

In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan to depose its Taliban regime, leading to a protracted military conflict that ultimately resulted in a Taliban victory in 2021. While the invasion was officially in response to the September 11 attacks, this paper seeks to explore whether the theory of embedded feminism may also have played a role in motivating the U.S. to attack the Taliban regime of Afghanistan and to attempt state building in the country. By investigating whether feminist beliefs in the need to save Afghan women from Taliban mistreatment might have led to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, a better understanding of decision-making process in U.S. foreign policy, especially when the important questions of war or peace are concerned, could be obtained. To determine the main arguments used by the U.S. leadership to justify war against the Taliban regime, remarks by influential U.S. politicians and feminist groups as well as resolutions passed by the U.S. Congress and the UN Security Council are analyzed. The conclusion is that the invasion was officially a measure to exercise the right to self-defense after the September 11 attacks, but the embedded feminist principle of using military interventions to uphold the rights of women in other countries, including Afghanistan, in conjunction with accounts of harsh Taliban treatment towards women, were also used to justify and legitimize war at least from the perspective of the Bush administration, with all the implications and reactions from more traditionally pacifist feminist groups that come with such a use of embedded feminist theory in the conduct of foreign policy.