The grammar of security never changes? Historical memory and de-securitization during the Soviet and the US withdrawals from Afghanistan

In my paper, I examine the discursive construction of the aftermath of the military interventions in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 2010s and scrutinize the role of memory in de-securitizing the respective conflicts prior to Soviet and US troops withdrawal. Historical memory is recognized as an important factor in the process of transforming (geo)political issues into a matter of existential security requiring the use of extraordinary means (e.g. a military intervention). Yet, only a few studies scrutinize the use of memory as part of transitioning these issues back to the realm of “normal” politics and almost none of them discusses how the role of memory within the grammar of security changes through time. To address these gaps, I employ the conceptual framework of the Copenhagen school of securitisation and analyze speech acts produced by the Soviet and US actors in the years prior to the withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan. In the case of the Soviet intervention, I look at the speech acts produced by the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in particular Mikhail Gorbachev in the period of 1985-1989, whereas in the case of the US-led intervention, I examine speech acts produced by Obama and Trump administrations in the period from 2011 to 2020. The purpose of the analysis is two-fold: first, I expect to advance the understanding of the role of historical memory as part of the discursive (de)construction of security in the context of armed conflicts. Second, I strive to compare differences in the use of the grammar of security between actors belonging to different political systems, but also different generations, thus addressing the historical dimension of the memory usage in the domain of international relations