‘The real problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they will turn around and stab themselves in the back.’ – anonymous Turkish general (attrib.)
The Americans and their annoyed, neglected NATO allies appear to have created with the Kabul airport an enclave, a mini-West Berlin, in the middle of Central Asia.
They are engaged in a large airlift there. Not to reinforce the enclave but instead to make it safe to abandon.
There are two principles, more than a century old in the American imperial experience, at war with each other and with reality on the ground: 1) we won’t come back till it’s over, over there; and 2) we’re running this place only so that it can run itself.
To wit:
» In early September 2001, Condoleezza Rice had on her desk a report asserting that the Taliban were on the verge of losing power in Kabul. She toyed with the idea of giving the Northern Alliance overt US assistance to finish the job.
Then al Qaeda struck. It killed the main leader of the Northern Alliance and gave the Americans a perfect reason to intervene. It would have been political suicide for George W Bush to resist the opportunity.
There was a practical alternative: do nothing, let the Taliban fall in Kabul, and then strike a deal with their successors to shut down al Qaeda. But that flew in the face of the principle of an eye for an eye.
» In late 2001 and into 2002, the principle changed to something later bizarrely called ‘the pottery barn rule’. Colin Powell, still desperate to be multiple cabinet secretaries at once, persuaded Bush that a nation-building mission was in order. Congress, in legislation passionately co-sponsored by Joe Biden, put up the money for it.
There was a practical alternative: declare victory and come home. But that violated the principle of the ‘global war on terror’, described by the faithful Dr Rice as requiring a ‘flypaper strategy’ of hitting them over there so they won’t hit us over here.
» In 2009 Barack Obama, having run for president declaring Afghanistan the good war, conducted a very long seminar, where many principles were discussed. He concluded that Afghanistan also needed a ‘surge’.
There was a practical alternative, ironically offered by Joe Biden: trim your sails and limit liability from now on, sticking to what he called a ‘counter-terror’ mission. But that flew in the face of the principle of the good war, which had to be won as Americans like to win, fustest with the mostest.
» In 2020 Donald Trump, who has different ideas about winning, struck a deal with the Taliban on the principle of America First, which meant more or less ending the American adventure in Afghanistan unconditionally.
The problem was that nobody, evidently, made any real practical plans to do so.
» In 2021 Joe Biden, having run for president promising that he would end America’s endless wars, announced that he would put an end to the Afghanistan mission once and for all. And he would do so on principle, no matter what the conditions were over there, though he assured the American people that the Afghan army and government were strong and viable.
A few days later the Afghan army and government collapsed. Biden now says that his decision was based less on principle than on a practical necessity: if he hadn’t withdrawn the troops when he did, many more would have been needed later.
Neither he nor anyone else making that speculative claim has ever provided compelling evidence for it, of course, just as nobody making the opposite claim – that a ‘status quo’ could continue indefinitely into the future – has done. Each side’s crystal ball reflects established party lines, as the balls of armchair experts usually do.
So, bereft of principle and practical sense, Biden did the only thing left to do: he blamed the Afghans, lied about ever supporting a mission of nation-building, and tried hard to change the subject.
There’s just one problem: all those people trying to get to the Kabul airport. Most of the additional troops Biden said would be needed later are now making their way to Afghanistan in order to enlarge and defend this enclave.
And now, once again, there is a principle at stake: we take care of our own. But, in practice, who is ‘our own’? And what if there’s no practical way to take care of them short of making the Kabul airport a permanent NATO enclave, defensible, as West Berlin was, only by the threat of massive retaliation?
Somebody better be busy fashioning a workable principle of Goldilocks’s porridge for this horned dilemma; for when another person decides to run for president on the promise to shut the Guantanamo prison & Kabul airport; or for when it appears once again that the Taliban can’t govern this country or get on with its neighbours, and that somebody, somewhere must do something.