Will Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan become his first big foreign policy mistake?
It’s likely the Taliban will again take over that country. We know what an Afghanistan run by the Taliban will be like, because they did once before. It will be a place where women can’t learn to read and write or leave their homes unless accompanied by an adult male relative, there is no due process and executions are commonplace, and the government is an Islamic dictatorship. There’s also the fear it could again become a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and terrorism that will be exported to other countries, including our own.
That was why we went there in the first place. That mission was accomplished. But does giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban put us back to square one in the global war against terrorism?
You can ask whether it’s America’s responsibility to lead that country in another direction, and worth the cost in dollars and American lives. Deciding it’s not is a reasonable decision for a U.S. president to make. It could have terrible consequences for the Afghan people, but shouldn’t Biden’s first responsibility and loyalty be to the American people, not the Afghan people?
You also can ask whether we should even be trying to reshape a society on the other side of the world. There’s also the question of whether it is, in any event, a fruitless enterprise. Nation-building didn’t succeed in Vietnam or Iraq, nor in Afghanistan when the Russians attempted it there. (It did, however, succeed spectacularly in postwar Japan and Europe, so you can’t say it’s always doomed to failure.)
But Afghanistan is an especially tough nut to crack. It’s a place, not a country. A patch of mountainous, arid, mostly treeless land sandwiched between Pakistan to the east and Iran to the west bordering the “Islamic Crescent” countries to the north, inhabited by roughly 28 disparate tribal groupings, of which the Pashtuns are the largest (about 40% of the population; this group also spills over into the “frontier” areas of western Pakistan. (The Taliban come from this group, and are based in the lawless and ungovernable “frontier” region.)
Afghanistan’s tribes do have some things in common. Most speak either Dari and Pashto; many speak both. Afghanistan is 99% Islamic. Social organization is clan-based, and outside the handful of major cities, government is village-based; in recent history, the Afghan president has often been jokingly referred to as “the mayor of Kabul,” so slight is his influence outside the capital city.
It remains to be seen whether the Taliban can subdue this unruly collection of tribes in a hardscrabble land where everyone is poor, illiterate, and war and fighting have been going on steadily for over 40 years. They will try, and brutality will be their principal strategy for imposing their rule.
It’s possible a miracle might happen and the current Kabul government may survive without U.S. military support. That seems unlikely. By walking away from Afghanistan, Biden is consigning the Afghan people to an unpleasant fate. It’s a decision he has the power and prerogative to make in the interests of the American people, but it’s also the kind of decision that history judges unkindly.
Ultimately, though, a far bigger problem may develop if Biden trusts Russia’s and China’s peaceful intentions — and turns out to be wrong. Both countries are becoming more aggressive, and some Russia and China watchers argue the leaders of both countries are planning to wage war against the U.S. and think they can win (read the latest here). If that’s true, failure to recognize that risk and prepare for it would be the biggest mistake a president could make.
Related story: Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal speech is panned as “the worst speech of his presidency.” See op-ed here.