Fully withdrawn from Afghanistan, America has formally concluded its longest ever war. President Joe Biden’s decision to end the costly, fruitless Afghanistan mission reflects pragmatism—and a degree of resolve that Presidents Obama and Trump were seemingly without.
Yet, Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal (and the corresponding, lightning-fast Taliban reclamation) has been politically corrosive, a point of bipartisan condemnation. Amongst a chorus of voices maligning the US withdrawal, many of the loudest ring from the periphery—thousands of miles from America, thousands of miles from Afghanistan—from Europe, where the craven and self-interested guard their US-enabled status quo.
Most notably, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a twenty seven hundred word article on his foundation’s website titled Why We Must Not Abandon the People of Afghanistan—For Their Sake and Ours. Blair’s take on Afghanistan is consistent with his background: an enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, who committed British troops to the initial invasion of Afghanistan; an Oxford graduate, who never served in the military, who managed to deploy British troops more times (five!) than any other PM in British history.
Blair’s platitudinal, vague article cites 9/11, “global leadership,” and “values” to assert a hallmark (boilerplate) argument—The Credibility Argument—which holds that withdrawing from Afghanistan has damaged American/Western credibility, hence emboldening adversaries (i.e., Russia and China).
Given Blair’s hawkish record, and his skin in the Afghanistan game, his appeals to stay longer are predictable, if nonsensical. But Blair is but one of many prominent Europeans advancing hyperbolic variants of The Credibility Argument.
Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the British House of Commons, has expressed his “anger, grief, and rage” over Biden’s withdrawal—”the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez.”
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, quoted in the New York Times: “It’s sad that the West has done what it’s done.” And Rory Stewart, a former British cabinet minister, quoted in the same article: Biden has “humiliated his Western allies by demonstrating their impotence.”
In POLITICO, a trove of criticism: “the early withdrawal was a serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration,” said Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the German parliament’s foreign relations committee. “This does fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West”; Behind closed doors, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told party officials “For those who believed in democracy and freedom, especially for women, these are bitter events”; Rudiger Lentz, former head of the Aspen Institute in Berlin harped that “naturally this has damaged American credibility, along with that of the intelligence services and of the military…one can only hope that the damage to America’s foreign policy leadership can be quickly contained.”
Curiously, neither Blair, Tugendhat, Merkel—nor seemingly anyone on the European continent—has suggested assigning European troops to pick up the slack in Afghanistan, to save Western credibility. Regardless, The Credibility Argument falls flat, especially when sung in the high-pitched, operatic tone of Blair and Co.
The War in Afghanistan, or rather: constructing a pro-Western democracy in Asian tribal territory via invasion and occupation, was never viable. The fallacy of the Afghanistan mission should have been apparent during Bush’s first term, yet America persisted, and persisted. And persisted. Withdrawing from Afghanistan was a strategic necessity that will do nothing to encourage hostile nations. Does anyone really believe that China or Russia is going to become more assertive because America withdrew from Afghanistan; that Taiwan, or the Baltics are more endangered now because China, or Russia suddenly doubts America’s resolve to defend an ally? The notion is absurd, incompatible with the precedent of American withdrawals from Lebanon, Somalia, or especially Vietnam—a direct win for Communist interests at the height of the Cold War, which did nothing to break US alliances (or prevent an eventual US Cold War victory).
And frankly, European countries should be questioning their reliance on the US for security. Not because the US abandoned Afghanistan—but because the primary provider of European security should be Europe. If the Afghanistan withdrawal causes Europe to finally share the burden of their own defense, then Biden has scored an unintended bonus victory.
The more intended victory, however, is the opportunity for America to focus on more vital foreign policy objectives. Containing China, for example. Nuclear nonproliferation, vaccine distribution—anything really—anything other than building roads and curbing sexism in Afghanistan. At minimum, there is now an opportunity to build roads and social services in America.
Yet, capitalizing on these post-Afghanistan opportunities will require relegating the interventionist voices, like Blair’s and Tugendhat’s, to the fringe where they belong, far from their current perch at the very top of Western democracy.
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