Afghanistan’s Fall: The Wider Danger

More than just Afghanistan has been endangered by Biden’s feckless retreat.

While America was planning to withdraw soon from Afghanistan, it could have been done, as the Trump Administration had proposed, in an orderly manner, leaving behind sufficient strength, particularly air power and special forces, that would have prevented a Taliban takeover.

But the Biden Administration chose a different path. First they announced a specific departure deadline, September 11 of this year, which was then shortened to August 31. Then it chose to not leave in place sufficient force to deter the Taliban, specifically, Bagram air base. These strategic mistakes enabled the Taliban to convince the population’s key local leaders that their victory was imminent and inevitable. It demoralized the Kabul government and its army. All of this led to, according to General David Petraeus, the retired U.S. Commanding General in Afghanistan and former CIA chief, a “psychological collapse” that would result when the Afghanistan military would be “unable to uphold the level of support they are accustomed to’ when fighting the Taliban.”

Writing for The Hill, Laura Kelly quotes retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, another former U.S. commander in Afghanistan and now a visiting professor of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies: “I think this U.S. withdrawal, and the abrupt way in which it is being executed in the face of rapid Taliban gains, will have an even deeper impact than the U.S. departure from Vietnam in 1975, and far greater than the (temporary) 2011 withdrawal from Iraq,”

Far more than just the war-torn nation of Afghanistan has been lost. The precipitous, incompetent and somewhat treacherous manner in which this was done has frightened our allies into worrying about whether the United States will live up to its obligations elsewhere. It cannot help but embolden China and Russia in their goals of invading Taiwan and Ukraine. Putin and Xi Jing Ping will legitimately wonder whether a nation that turns tail and runs from a conflict commenced to protect itself from another major terrorist attack will actually move to defend allied nations across the globe.

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It gets even more worrisome. Just across the border is Pakistan, a nation that has a considerable array of nuclear weapons. The Taliban already has a considerable presence there. Freed from concerns about American forces back in Afghanistan, there is little to prevent it from moving swiftly to steal that atomic arsenal. If that happens, expect an attack on American soil that would make the September 11, 2001 assault, as utterly horrible as it was, look like a mere flash in the pan.

Biden’s weakness in Afghanistan does not exist in a vacuum. He utterly surrendered to Russia in the Nord Stream Pipeline dispute. He has proposed a Pentagon budget that is an actual reduction of the military’s spending power after accounting for inflation. He has refused to defend America’s southern border. His appointees at the Department of Defense and the leadership of the individual armed services declare that addressing transgender and racial issues are their main focus. All this is being done at a time when China engages in an unprecedented buildup of its nuclear and conventional forces. It now has a larger navy than the United States. Russia’s Putin continues to occupy Crimea, undermines Eastern European nations, and threatens further assaults on Ukraine. Moscow has developed and deployed massive new strategic and battlefield nuclear weapons of unmatched strength.

Just 90 miles from America’s shore, an oppressive Cuban regime, which once sought to instigate a nuclear war, is faced with a freedom movement, which Biden has refused to support.

Weakness invites war. Unless the Biden Administration rapidly changes course, the collapse of Afghanistan will only be the beginning of dramatic events to come.

Photo: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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