Afghanistan: The Obvious American Defeat

On June 14, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the permanent withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of painful war. This conflict ends on an American defeat, after the U.S. failed to import democracy, according to essayist Hadrien Desuin.

Ever since Joe Biden confirmed to his NATO allies, on June 14, the permanent and complete withdrawal of his troops from Afghanistan, Kabul has been in turmoil. While the French army took its leave back in late 2012, it is now every man for himself in the ranks of the Atlantic alliance. Of course, the Afghan government and its army may be able to hold on for a few more months and maintain the fictional narrative of a sovereign state, but we already know the outcome: Kabul will fall and the Taliban are back.

How can we not, after the last few days, think of the dreadful pictures of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975, with that helicopter hovering over the last survivors of the Vietnam War? Already, new caravans of migrants are heading, ever more numerous, toward Iran and Turkey before reaching our doors. The last remaining apostles of armed democratization have no other choice but to accept the obvious and not avert their eyes. The war in Afghanistan ends in a bitter defeat.

To avenge the affront of 9/11, the U.S. Army tried it all. It started out very simply by bombing al-Qaida’s camps—which should have been enough. Then came the occupation, the reconstruction, the forced democratization of an Islamist and archaic society and, in the end, the counterinsurrection and its grand illusions. After 20 years and over a trillion dollars scattered like dust over the Pashto mountains, it was time to face the truth: The majority of Afghans do not want an imported democracy, drip-fed by the Pentagon. The toll is heavy— as many Western soldiers were killed or injured in this 20-year war as there were victims of the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban come out victorious; bin Laden and his successors have unfortunately attained their macabre goal. By challenging the U.S. on its own soil, they have managed to drag it into a domestic war to better hit it and humiliate it several thousand miles away from home.

Some 40 years after Moscow’s intervention, Washington fell into the Afghan trap it had set for its Soviet rival. It should be noted, however, that the Red Army only remained for eight years, half as long as the U.S. Army did. It is tempting to draw hasty conclusions. Yesterday, the fall of the Soviet empire; today, the end of American hegemony? Let us not get everything mixed up.

Biden and Antony Blinken took this painful decision before their supporters. Can we blame them for keeping this pledge? Certainly not. In their time, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had made the choice, more arduous by far, to withdraw from Vietnam and assume their predecessors’ defeat. In hindsight, the end of the Vietnam War allowed the U.S. to focus on what was really at stake during the Cold War and to consolidate its model.

Indeed, why persist in building an Afghan democracy in a vacuum and keep U.S. troops there, while China continues its undeterred rise in power? By extricating itself painfully from the Afghanistan quagmire, America gains back some leeway. The pictures are cruel, the decision is humiliating for those Afghans who believed in the American mission. But admitting defeat in Afghanistan is the best favor Biden could have done his country.

Alas, the Afghan chaos is far from over—and Europe will bear the most violent brunt of the migratory and Islamist explosion. For the error of having followed, and at times encouraged, our American partners in the illusion of a crusade in the name of democracy, our continent is now at risk of having to settle the accounts for the strategic withdrawal of the United States.

Hadrien Desuin is an essayist and an international relations and defense specialist. He is the author of “Atlanticist France, or the Drowning of Diplomacy” (éd. du Cerf, 2017).