Exploring Great Powers' Political Agendas With Regard To Conflict Resolution: The Case Of Afghanistan

This work is a comparative analysis of great powers’, namely the United States and Russia, diverging approaches to the Afghan conflict resolution. Particularly interesting how these states’ positions on the world arena influenced their actions and whether this conflict can be considered a modern “Great Game”. The purpose of the study is to identify and compare external and internal factors that influenced the US and Russian political agendas in Afghanistan. The theoretical basis is the concept of neoclassical realism, which considers the behavior of states as a set of external and internal conditions. For the US and Russia comparative analysis, the process tracing method will be used, which would test hypotheses and identify the relationship between the alleged factors and their political agendas. In conclusion, it is revealed that the United States, determined by its internal political culture, follows a more offensive strategy, since it sees itself as a hegemon in the “war on terror”. Russia, in turn, is pursuing a diplomatic route, gradually increasing its influence in Central Asia, and is limited by the historical failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the presence of other powers and threats of instability in the region.