Given Washington’s vast expenditure during its 20 years of operations in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s ascent to power in August 2021, after defeating the Afghan National Security Forces, generated strong feelings of shame and anxiety for the USA. Coupled with a dissonance between the US withdrawal and its narrative on fighting terrorism, this eventually culminated in an ontological security crisis for the USA. This paper aims to provide an understanding on how the US elite tried to overcome this moment of crisis and re-establish the US ontological security. For this purpose, the paper elaborates on the existing literature on the link between securitization/desecuritization and ontological security. It argues that, in the aftermath of the withdrawal, the USA employed both securitization and desecuritization practices at the narrative level, accompanied concomitantly by actions at the relational level, to overcome the state’s ontological security crisis ensuing from the Taliban’s ascent to power. However, the results have been, at best, mixed. Through reviewing multiple sources, both internal and external to the USA, the article suggests that the US narrative has been partially challenged and hence failed to re-establish the US ontological security.

中文翻译：

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（去）证券化和本体安全：以美国从阿富汗撤军为例

考虑到华盛顿在阿富汗行动 20 年的巨额开支，塔利班在击败阿富汗国家安全部队后于 2021 年 8 月上台，给美国带来了强烈的耻辱感和焦虑感。再加上美国的撤军与其反恐叙事之间的不协调，最终导致了美国的本体安全危机。本文旨在了解美国精英如何试图克服这一危机时刻并重建美国本体安全。为此，本文详细阐述了关于证券化/去证券化与本体安全之间联系的现有文献。它认为，在退出之后，美国在叙事层面同时采用了证券化和去证券化的做法，伴随着关系层面的行动，以克服因塔利班上台而导致的国家本体安全危机。然而，结果充其量是喜忧参半。通过审查美国内部和外部的多个来源，文章表明美国的叙述受到了部分挑战，因此未能重建美国本体论安全。