Afghanistan: The end of liberal-democratic overstretch

The botched Western withdrawal from Afghanistan and the heartbreaking developments there are producing pictures that may look like the end of an era, which was marked by the exuberance of liberal democracy.

After the fall of communism in the 1990s it combined in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks with an overconfident US administration that thought it could not only invade Afghanistan and Iraq, but also build stable democratic states in both countries.

The Iraq illusion wa...