[Allies may understand the desire to give up on a failed project, but the retreat heightens the sense that America’s backing is no longer unbounded.]
The Taliban’s
lightning advance comes at a moment when many in Europe and Asia had hoped that
President Biden would reestablish America’s firm presence in international
affairs, especially as China and Russia angle to extend their influence. Now,
America’s retreat is bound to sow doubts.
“When Biden says ‘America is back,’
many people will say, ‘Yes, America is back home,’” said François Heisbourg, a
French defense analyst.
“Few will gang up on the U.S. for
finally stopping a failed enterprise,” he said. “Most people would say it
should have happened a long time ago.’’ But in the longer term, he added, “the
notion that you cannot count on the Americans will strike deeper roots because
of Afghanistan.’’
The United States has been pulling
back from military engagements abroad since President Obama, he noted, and
under President Trump, “we had to prepare for a U.S. no longer willing to
assume the burden of unlimited liability alliances.”
That hesitation will now be felt
all the more strongly among countries in play in the world, like Taiwan,
Ukraine, the Philippines and Indonesia, which can only please China and Russia,
analysts suggest.
“What made the U.S. strong,
powerful and rich was that from 1918 through 1991 and beyond, everybody knew we
could depend on the U.S. to defend and stand up for the free world,” said Tom
Tugendhat, chairman of the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
“The sudden withdrawal from
Afghanistan after 20 years and so much investment in lives and effort will see
allies and potential allies around the world wondering whether they have to
decide between democracies and autocracies, and realize some democracies don’t
have staying power anymore,” he added.
In Asia, the American
withdrawal and looming collapse of the Afghan government have been
viewed with a mixture of resignation and trepidation.
“Most Asians have already factored
it in because it’s been a protracted process, not a shock,” said Susan L.
Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Center at the University of
California, San Diego.
The country expressing the most
concern has been China, which shares a short, remote border with Afghanistan,
which under the Taliban served as a haven for Uyghur extremists from Xinjiang,
the far western Chinese province.
China, which routinely criticizes
the United States for acting as a global belligerent, has
warned that a hasty American withdrawal could create instability
across the region.
At the same time, China’s Foreign
Ministry offered a public show of support to the Taliban, holding two days of
talks late last month with a delegation that included one of the movement’s
founders, Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The issue for America’s allies and
others, though, is less “credibility,” a much misused term, than ability to see
commitments through to the end. And the world can seem a more anarchic, less
comprehensible place, said Jean-Marie
Guéhenno, former French and United Nations diplomat now at Columbia
University.
“The military debacle of
Afghanistan, coming after the diplomatic debacle of Syria, will make Western
nations more inward-looking, cynical and nationalist,” he said, “as they feel
surrounded by a world that they don’t control, but keeps intruding.’’
Still, Mr. Guéhenno said,
Western democracies “must not adopt a doctrine of indifference to the plight of
other people.’’
Afghanistan was never a
particularly vital interest for Europe to begin with. NATO went to war there 20
years ago only to show solidarity with the United States after 9/11.
But the suddenness of Afghanistan’s
collapse is another reminder of what can happen when Europe outsources
decisions to Washington.
NATO countries let the Americans
call the shots in Afghanistan, even if they complained about a lack of
consultation. For NATO, the mantra was always “in together, out together.” Once
President Biden decided to pull the plug, NATO troops also began leaving at
speed; there is little appetite for returning.
Europe’s main worries now are a new
flow of Afghan migrants and a new safe haven for terrorism. But for a long time
now, European terrorism has had its roots closer to home, in North Africa and
the Middle East and in domestic disaffection.
The Biden administration has other
problems, and Europeans want support from Washington on more important issues,
like climate change, Russia and China, said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham
House, the London research institution.
“Biden will take some hit for lack
of consultation with allies and piggybacking on a flawed Trump strategy,” Mr.
Niblett said. “But there is a lot more to be gained for American soft power by
getting through the corona crisis and focusing on vaccines for the world, than
on putting more effort into whether the Afghan government survives.”
Allies, especially Britain and
Germany, were angry at the way the pullout was announced and saw it as a fait
accompli, so there will be some residual damage, Mr. Niblett said.
“But Europe won’t give up on a
Biden who believes in allies on the big issues that matter,” he said, adding:
“On these Biden is leading in the right direction.’’
Europeans have failed to identify
their own interests in Afghanistan, which center on regional stability, energy
supplies and migration, said Ulrich Speck, a senior fellow at the German
Marshall Fund in Berlin. “Europeans ignore geopolitics at their own peril,’’ he
said.
For instance, a new wave of
migration could destabilize Turkey, which is already hosting nearly 4 million
Syrian refugees, Mr. Speck said. That, in turn, he added, could bring new
tensions with Greece and the rest of the European Union.
“The Europeans should not play the
American role, but at least have consulted with one another about what we could
do, even to help Kabul,’’ he said.
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish
prime minister, went further, urging the U.S. and Europe to reconsider the
wholesale withdrawal.
“I believe the U.S., E.U. and
allies should commit to keeping a security force in Kabul until the Taliban
agrees to a cease-fire and a political solution,” he
said in a Twitter post. “To just cut and run is to endorse a military
solution dictated by the Taliban.”
But there appear to be few
volunteers at this stage.
The European Union’s foreign policy
chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, issued a statement Thursday night calling on the Taliban to
immediately resume talks with the Afghan government in Qatar and to respect
human rights. Echoing State Department warnings, he said that “if power is
taken by force and an Islamic Emirate re-established, the Taliban would face
nonrecognition, isolation, lack of international support.”
But Europe has little leverage.
There are obvious worries about how long the Afghan government will last, what
will happen to women, girls, judges and the media under a renewed Taliban rule,
and about a new wave of Afghan refugees.
Earlier this week, ministers from
six countries — Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Denmark
— called for continuing deportations of Afghans whose asylum claims have been
rejected.
But given the speed of the
collapse, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France have, for now, at least,
stopped sending Afghans who do not qualify as refugees back to Afghanistan.
Few expect a repeat of the 2015
migration crisis, when more than a million people sought asylum and the
resulting chaos boosted far-right and populist politics. But a large new flow
from Afghanistan is likely to feed domestic anxieties, especially in Germany,
which has elections next month.
Though the numbers are down, in
2020 Afghans were the second-largest country of origin for asylum seekers
arriving in the bloc, with some 50,000 applying, the European Asylum Support Office says. Fully 59
percent of applications from Afghans were accepted.
Some 1,200 Afghans have been
returned so far this year, and only 200 of them did not return voluntarily,
European officials told reporters on Tuesday. But they said that in the last
few months, at least 400,000 Afghans have become internally displaced, a number
likely to rise considerably.
In Britain, which has a long
history with Afghanistan and has had the second largest number of casualties
after the United States, there is more chagrin and even anger.
Lord David Richards, chief of defense
from 2010 to 2013, criticized his government for moving so quickly to evacuate
Britons. He told BBC Newsnight that the evacuation “is a tacit, explicit
really, admission of a dismal failure of geostrategy and of statecraft.”
He said he had hoped to hear “an
explanation for why we’re in this position, and then, an explanation on how
they are going to avert this disaster.” Instead, he said, there was just “an
admission of failure and a desire to pull people out.”
He added: “I’m almost ashamed that
we’re in this position.”
Steven Lee Myers and Monika
Pronczuk contributed reporting.