US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Washington’s effort to turn Afghanistan into a democracy was doomed from the start.
Speaking to CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Hegseth said US policy showed a form of arrogance that assumed Afghanistan could be transformed into a Western-style democracy.
He said the idea was that the US could build military forces and institutions based on Western models and turn Afghanistan into what he described as a “Jeffersonian democracy.”
The remarks come after the United States ended its two-decade military presence in Afghanistan in 2021, when US troops withdrew and the Taliban returned to power.