Leaving Afghanistan
President Biden recently announced his intention to end the war in Afghanistan and withdraw troops this year, by Sept. 11, 2021. While this decision has attracted some criticism, I believe it is the right one considering the course of the war over the past twenty years as well as the general state of threats and priorities globally for the US.
Any evaluation of the war in Afghanistan must begin with its incredibly long duration. For twenty years and with a dramatic variation in troop levels (from well over 100,000 at its peak to the current force of about 2500), the US has failed to “win” the war. I say win loosely because there has never been a consistent or coherent goal to establish what “winning” would look like, nor has there been a realistic strategy to achieve this nebulous idea of success. If the goal were to simply remove the Taliban from power, that objective was accomplished within months. If the goal were rather to prevent the possibility of an attack from the country, or to stabilize it with a democratic government, the US has never allocated the resources or effort to accomplish those goals, if they are even possible at all. The military simply does not have the nation-building capacity for that.
The war has long been constrained by inconvenient facts that have put a “win” out of reach for four successive administrations: the corruption of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government, the porous border with Pakistan, Pakistan’s own tacit support for the militants, Afghanistan’s dependence on poppy cultivation, etc. The result is that the Taliban currently control roughly one third of the country’s territory and are generally seen as in a stronger position than at any time since 2001. While this state of affairs has been evident for some time, the US military and government at large have been able to save face by maintaining a stalemate of sorts.
Bob Woodward in his book, Obama’s Wars, shows how President Obama was convinced to dramatically surge troop levels in the country by his advisers and military generals. Obama believed that by withdrawing from the then-concurrent Iraq War, he could concentrate resources in Afghanistan and meaningfully change the status quo. When this effort failed, largely due to the factors already mentioned, it was clear that the war’s days were numbered and in fact Obama announced an end to “major combat operations.” Likewise, President Trump wanted to end the war but was also convinced to increase troop levels. However, his administration did eventually negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban to end direct fighting with US forces in exchange for withdrawal by May 2021.
Although Biden is missing that deadline, he faced the unenviable position of combat resuming if he ignored the peace deal entirely. Some foreign policy experts and analysts have criticized the withdrawal, claiming that the Taliban will take over the country relatively quickly and drawing comparisons to the fate of South Vietnam in 1975. However, any proposed alternative of remaining is not a true alternative at all without a practical strategy with an achievable goal. The US cannot defeat the Taliban or stabilize the country with its current force, and it is nonsensical to continue to pursue the same goose chase that has eluded us for two full decades.
It is certainly possible that a terrorist attack could originate from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. However, an attack could also come from literally anywhere else in the world: al-Qaeda and ISIS are clustered, multinational groups that do not need significant amounts of territory to pose a threat. This is to say nothing of the increasingly worrying domestic terrorism problem in the US from lone gunmen motivated by racial or religious hatred, or the ability and further potential for right-wing militia groups to cause violence.
Continuing the war effort makes even less sense when considering the global context. The US faces far bigger problems and threats then the possibility of terrorism coming from Afghanistan. Biden must come up with policies to engage North Korea, rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, resolve the migration crisis, alleviate climate change and the pandemic, and reassure allies such as Ukraine and Taiwan. Most importantly, Biden must develop a coherent stance towards China to address security concerns and resolve trade disputes while not shifting into a wholly adversarial approach. Considering the scale and difficulty of all of these issues, withdrawing from a war that we have been losing is not only logical, but shows good leadership and prioritization.
