LONDON: The late Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was reportedly quoted as saying after he lost power that “whoever is covered by the Americans is naked,” in reference to how Washington abandoned him during the Egyptian uprising.
This might be the best way to describe the feelings of the former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani as he settles down in his new life in the UAE after fleeing Kabul, having watched his American allies give the Taliban almost a free hand to take Afghanistan back at lightning speed.
America’s allies and enemies are mulling over the consequences of the Afghanistan withdrawal — and the chaos that it has caused — for Washington’s international standing, its leadership and its global power.
A US Marine reaches for an infant over a fence of barbed wire during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 19, 2021. (Photo Courtesy of Omar Haidiri / AFP)
Some are comparing it to the humiliating withdrawal from Saigon. But many see this as a worse defeat than Vietnam and a “defining geopolitical moment” for the US. It is being described as the end of the “American era” on the global stage. If true, the “cemetery of empires” has added one more victim to its long list.
The Soviets drank the cup of Afghan defeat before the Americans did, but the government they set up in Kabul at least lasted a little longer, while the US-backed Ghani administration could not survive a week. The Afghan army melted like an iceberg in a hot sea.
Few disagree that the US should eventually have left Afghanistan, but the chaotic manner of its departure, and the mess that is unfolding now, has astonished many. This is raising questions about the credibility and the reliability of the US as an ally and as a superpower. It is also emboldening America’s enemies and weakening its friends.
We are not witnessing another Saigon but rather another Suez, this time for the US, say some experts. The 1956 Suez debacle was the closing chapter of the British empire and its outreach as a military power in the Middle East and beyond. Could this be a similar American moment? Could Afghanistan indeed be America’s Suez?
Looking at the reactions from around the world, this is exactly the lesson that many are drawing from Afghanistan. From Europe to Asia and Africa, and even on the home front, people are appalled at the incoherence of the Afghanistan withdrawal plan and its botched implementation.
America’s friends, from its major NATO allies to the small emerging democracies, are concerned about what this might mean to the free world and Washington’s leadership in it.
They are monitoring how the US deals with the current strategic challenges around the world — from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula, and in between.
A scene at Kabul’s airport as crowds sought to make their escape after the Taliban seized the city. (AFP)
The first shots were fired from the British parliament. In an emotional speech, Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign relations committee, slammed President Joe Biden without naming him. He criticized the West for not having patience: “Patience wins, the Cold War was won with patience.”
The British parliamentarian called on the UK to “set out a vision ... for reinvigorating our European NATO partners to make sure we’re not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader.”
Norbert Rottgenn, the chairman of the German parliaments’ foreign relations committee, saw in the withdrawal a “serious and far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration. This does fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of the West.”
In Asia, America’s allies are watching the rapidly changing Afghanistan situation with keen interest but also trepidation. The reassurances of Washington’s commitment to Asia offered by Vice President Kamala Harris — who is visiting the region this week — were in sharp contrast to the widespread perception that depending on the US is a risky insurance policy and that self-reliance is the best security strategy.
There is no doubt that the governments of Japan and South Korea have been closely following events in Afghanistan. If the US is weakened as a superpower, what does this mean to their security as they face a more aggressive and assertive China?
Taiwan is learning the Afghanistan lesson too and its officials are emphasizing the importance of self-reliance.
The US national flag, reflected on the windows of the US embassy building in Kabul in this photo taken on July 30, 2021, had been hastily taken down amid the Taliban onslaught. (AFP)
China is rubbing that in. The Chinese news agency wrote “the fall of Kabul marks the collapse of the international image and credibility of the US.” An editorial in the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times detected in the Afghanistan withdrawal an “omen of Taiwan’s future fate.”
It wrote that “once a cross-straits war breaks out while the mainland seizes the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam if it wants to intervene.”
Biden is putting the withdrawal in the context of America’s national security interests and taking the Afghanistan card from the hands of its rivals. “If you are sitting in Moscow or Beijing, are you happy we left?” he said. “They love nothing better for us than to continue to be bogged down there, totally occupied with what is going on there.”
This is not how America’s opponents saw it though. Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah saw a “humiliated, failed and defeated” America, while Hamas congratulated the Taliban on its victory and “the end of occupation.” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan praised the breaking of “the chains of slavery.” The wagons are being circled.
Russia is gloating at the fact that the US met the same defeat as it did a quarter of a century ago. It is happy that the US military will not be on its borders anymore.
Iran is elated that the US seems humiliated in Afghanistan and that American power will leave the region, but despite their constant contacts with the Taliban, they have to contend with a Sunni fundamentalist regime next to them, which might cut their laughter short. But they see what happened in Afghanistan as a reassurance that the US power in the region has been dealt a big blow.
The strategic map of the region will look different after the American withdrawal. China and Russia will have a stronger influence than the US on the future of Afghanistan.
At home, some experts believe that it was not Afghanistan that marked the end of the American era. Francis Fukuyama, author of “The End of History and The Last Man,” has argued in The Economist that the “end of the American era had come much earlier. The long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more domestic than international.”
Afghans fleeing the Taliban join a queue to board a US Air Force cargo plane at Kabul International Airport. (AFP)
He predicted that the US will remain a “great power for many years, but just how influential it will be depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than its foreign policy.”
He might have a point. Internal divisions inside the US are deeper now than any other time in its history; they can be the foremost threat to its international standing and power.
The lesson that America’s domestic extremists are drawing from the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is alarming. Someone who went to Washington, D.C. during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots told CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan: “It took 11 days for them (the Taliban) to take over Afghanistan ... How many days would it take the patriots to take over this country?”
This comment shows how much damage control the US needs to do to reassure allies and deter enemies, both foreign and domestic.
