Chaos as the longest US war ends in crushing defeat

Joe Biden cannot avoid responsibility for the debacle in Afghanistan that has brought the US its greatest foreign policy setback in almost 50 years. Not since US helicopters lifted off from the US embassy in Saigon in 1975 with desperate South Vietnamese still clinging to their landing skids has there been a more disheartening demonstration of Washington’s strategic failure. Yet on Sunday, even as the ragtag Taliban fighters were at the gates of Kabul, Mr Biden was attempting to absolve himself of responsibility for the disaster, deflecting blame to Donald Trump who made the original determination to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan. Nothing better underlines what Robert Gates, the former CIA director who served as defence secretary in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote: that Mr Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”.

The calamitous outcome in Afghanistan with the murderous Taliban back in the same seat of ruthless sharia law power it occupied 20 years ago is not of course all down to Mr Biden. Successive presidents, beginning with Mr Bush in 2001 and continuing through Mr Obama and Mr Trump, all played their part. But, as The Wall Street Journal noted, Mr Biden’s statement on Sunday effectively washing his hands of responsibility for the debacle “deserves to go down as one of the most shameful in history by a commander-in-chief at such a moment of American retreat”. From the day he entered the White House in January, Mr Biden had the power to recalibrate, if not reverse, Mr Trump’s misguided, politically driven decision to withdraw all US forces. He has spent months boastfully overturning one Trump policy after another. Yet on Afghanistan he refused to budge. The pressure on him to do so was immense. At a top-level Washington meeting in March, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley warned of the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal and pleaded for a review. US intelligence agencies were united in warning of impending disaster. Their initial assessments of a Taliban takeover six to 12 months after the last US soldier left were gradually reduced. On Monday last week they predicted it would take 30 to 90 days.

Mr Biden extended Mr Trump’s deadline of May 1 to September 11, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, then back to August 31. But that turned out to be untenable as the Taliban hordes swept triumphantly across the country. On Sunday the government in Kabul led by President Ashraf Ghani, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a former employee of the World Bank in Washington, fled to neighbouring Uzbekistan. It would be hard to think of a more catastrophic outcome for US foreign policy or one that is likely to prove more damaging to Washington’s credibility as a reliable ally.

Mr Biden, deservedly, will have to live with the outcome for the remainder of his term. Mr Biden’s assertion that Mr Trump, in his negotiations with the Taliban, had locked the US into a deal from which he could not extricate the country is not borne out by reality. Mr Biden was provided with other options. He received plenty of advice about keeping a small number of troops – no more than 2500 – to hold the line. He could have retained his commitment to withdraw, but with the proviso that he would do so depending on conditions on the ground while better preparing the Afghans with a plan for transition and vital ongoing air support.

Mr Biden refused all such advice and rejected warnings of what was to come. As recently as July 8, he confidently declared: “The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not – they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of (an) embassy … from Afghanistan.” Precisely 38 days later giant US helicopters were doing just that, evacuating the US embassy, where for days staff had been shredding files and destroying computers ahead of the Taliban takeover. The blow to US prestige is devastating. European nations also have been outplayed by the Taliban, with British troops arriving to evacuate UK nationals. Amid the chaos, Australia’s priority is evacuating 100 to 200 of our citizens.

Trying to justify his decision, Mr Biden said on Sunday: “One more year, or five more years, of US military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country.” The Afghan National Army’s refusal to fight was pathetic. But that does not absolve the world’s superpower from its responsibility to prevent the Taliban again being in a position to allow al-Qa’ida to launch another 9/11. Thousands of terrorists already have been set free after the Taliban seized control of the former US base at Bagram and the prison known as Afghanistan’s Guantanamo Bay. It contained 5000 Taliban, al-Qa’ida and Islamic State fighters captured on the battlefield who the Taliban said were being transferred “to a safe place”.

The consequences of the allied setback will play out across many months and years. Having taken the measure of Mr Biden in his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, adversaries such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are likely to challenge him on other fronts and put the US’s credibility as an ally under even more pressure.