The United States, still mired in a protracted war in Afghanistan that has exacted a staggering cost in blood and treasure, will formally open peace talks with the Taliban, its main battlefield opponent, in the coming days (despite last-minute opposition from Afghan President Hamid Karzai). With the United States determined to withdraw its forces after more than a decade of fighting, the talks in Doha, Qatar, are largely intended to allow it to do so "honorably."
How the end of U.S.-led combat operations shapes Afghanistan's future will affect the security of countries nearby and beyond. Here the most important question is whether the fate of Afghanistan, which was created as a buffer between czarist Russia and British India, will be — or should be — different from that of Iraq and Libya (two other imperial creations where the U.S. has intervened in recent years).
Foreign military intervention can effect regime change, but it evidently cannot re-establish order based on centralized government. Iraq has been partitioned in all but name into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions, while Libya seems headed toward a similar tripartite, tribal-based territorial arrangement. In Afghanistan, too, an Iraq-style "soft" partition may be the best possible outcome.