After 20 years, Biden finally got the US military out of Afghanistan. Even though it can seem to signal the end of an era for US interventionism, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Leaving Afghanistan is simply a necessary step in America’s new chapter of interventionism in China’s neighbourhood, argues Hew Strachan.
What was shocking about President Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan was not the decision itself, but that it took all his partners unawares. Within the United States, neither the State nor the Defense Department expected it, and nor did the US’s NATO allies or – most importantly - the Afghan government. For all of them, wishful thinking had replaced objective considerations. They suppressed from their collective memories what Vice-President Biden had said in 2009. He saw the war in Afghanistan not as a counter-insurgency campaign to build a better state but as a counter-terrorism mission to break the link between al Qaeda and the Taliban. He opposed the ‘surge’ even on the terms set by Obama in 2009, a push more limited in duration and in troop numbers than the generals wanted. Over a decade later, on 14 April 2021, after he had become president himself, Biden declared that the counter-terrorism mission had been accomplished.
Join the conversation