Après Louis, Hamid

Comment

From the Sun King to Karzai

Sheri Berman

The United States hopes to create a strong central government in Afghanistan -- but is such state building possible? Yes, and policymakers should look to Louis XIV and the development of France's ancien régime for guidance.

THE AFGHAN CHALLENGE IS FAR TOUGHER

Arjun Chowdhury and Ronald R. Krebs

Sheri Berman identifies important parallels between the circumstances confronting state builders in Afghanistan today and those their counterparts faced in seventeenth-century France ("From the Sun King to Karzai," March/April 2010). But the differences between the two cases are as instructive as the similarities -- and point to rather different conclusions.

Berman's argument is plausible at first blush: just as French kings employed a combination of
coercion and inducements to subdue and disarm the nobles while enmeshing them in court pomp and intrigue, Afghan state builders can (with assistance from the United States and its partners) use force, aid, and patronage to bring warlords to heel while giving them a stake in the new order.

But Berman is wrong that "state building . . . can be accomplished almost anywhere" as long as the state builders are sufficiently patient and committed. Why? Because structure -- international and domestic -- matters, and the roots of France's seventeenth-century state-building success lie in three structural factors that distinguish the case from that of contemporary Afghanistan...