Has Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?

[Malthus]

I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".

If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.

The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends."   I don't agree.  I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.

There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government.  There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban.  At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.

That certainly would be childish and naive, if that was what was being claimed.

Seems a false dichotomy to me. Stating that an action was implemented badly is not the same thing as demanding perfection.

[The Larch]

I do find it curious with the evacuation that theres no talk of taking people out via over land routes with neighbouring countries. Surely this should be covered under the withdrawal and be mostly safe?

I remember reading reporters saying that the Taliban went after the land border passes very quickly, and thus they were open for a very brief and chaotic time (there were images of a bridge border with one of the northern stans that was collapsed with traffic of Afghans running away, including a fair amount of military units) until they were closed, so I don't think that route was really feasible.

This map is from the 22nd of July, and back then as you can see the Taliban already controlled most border crossings:

[Sheilbh]

And in fact there's images/video today from the Spin Boldak border crossing:
https://twitter.com/natiqmalikzada/status/1430575665925935107?s=20

Edit: And to be clear - those pictures aren't verified but that is exactly the problem. We know so little about what is going on outside of Kabul (airport).

[Tonitrus]

Where is the map that shows how much of Pakistan is controlled by the Taliban?

[grumbler]

I disagree with the last part: the article itself claims that the result of this alleged shambles will be that "... America's power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends has diminished. Its intelligence was flawed, its planning rigid, its leaders capricious and its concern for its allies minimal".

If true, these assertions ought to be of concern to Americans who care nothing for the Great Game or for the well being of Afghans. It ought to be of concern to Americans who care about American self interest.

The Economist leader is premised that there was some (unknown even to the author of the piece) method of implementation of the withdrawal that could handled in a manner to America's advantage and would enhance or maintain its "power to deter its enemies and to reassure its friends."   I don't agree.  I also think that the Economist's view of a world where normally intelligence is perfectly unflawed, planning is utterly non-rigid, leaders are never, ever capricious, and concern for allies is paramount is childish and naïve.

There was no good path for the US out of Afghanistan after its government decided to replace the Taliban with a fictional national government.  There certainly wasn't a way for Biden's administration to oversee an ANG victory over the Taliban.  At best, the US could have continued the slaughter indefinitely.

That certainly would be childish and naive, if that was what was being claimed.

Seems a false dichotomy to me. Stating that an action was implemented badly is not the same thing as demanding perfection.

But the argument isn't that the Biden administration was irresponsible in anything, just that "its intelligence was flawed" (like all intelligence), "its planning rigid" (like all planning), "its leaders capricious" (like all leaders) and "its concern for its allies minimal" (an emo argument that presumes the writer actually knows the real concerns of the Biden Administration leadership).  These are dumb arguments, in the absence of a proposed strategy that lacks some or all of those "flaws."

[Sheilbh]

Also they seem like criticisms of the last 20 years rather than the withdrawal alone.

[The Minsky Moment]

With perfect hindsight there is no question that Biden blundered.  Clearly the plan was not withdraw all troops and then reinsert 5000.

So then the question is how realistic was the contingency that the Afghan govt would collapse more quickly than expected and how much planning was done in the event of that contingency. As to the former, it is very hard to see ex ante how a quick collapse would not have been considered as a plausible outcome, even if not the probable one.  Thus, a failure to have a contingency plan for that event would be a serious mistake.  And I have seen no evidence of such contingency planning and much evidence that there wasn't - namely the confused improvised nature of the initial US response and comments from sources inside the administration expressing surprise and shock and playing the blame game.

As for the impact on allies, what matters is not what the Biden administration intended or perceived but the perception of  the affected allies.  And it is clear that key American allies are unhappy and believe that the US has treated them shabbily.  You can argue with that all you want but it doesn't change the reality of those beliefs or the consequences that may follow.

[Sheilbh]

Oh yeah - not informing other NATO allies (who are there because of article 5) of your timetable, not coordinating is really bad. And at least Italy and the UK feel they were misled by what they were told previously by the administration. It is very bad and unlike most Trump scandals with allies - this is actually material and affecting people.

[Admiral Yi]

Oh yeah - not informing other NATO allies (who are there because of article 5) of your timetable, not coordinating is really bad. And at least Italy and the UK feel they were misled by what they were told previously by the administration. It is very bad and unlike most Trump scandals with allies - this is actually material and affecting people.

Where is the evidence NATO alllies were uninformed of the withdrawal timetable?

[Sheilbh]

Can't find the article but it was reported here from MoD and military sources that they had no advance knowledge of the timetable (though were aware of the general withdrawal). And in part that's probably because it was in response to a crisis - according to the NYT it's only in mid-August that the US intelligence agencies warned they couldn't provide advance warning if Kabul was about to be attacked. My understanding is that's when Biden decided to pull out immediately ASAP.

[Valmy]

Biden announced the August 31st deadline publicly months ago. Even if he was incompetent or thoughtless enough to not discuss this with NATO before making this announcement, surely him announcing it publicly should have provoked some kind of reaction from NATO? Like maybe they should have asked the US for more information. Granted I have learned to never assume wisdom or competence from my government but it seems unlikely this policy was not at least mentioned to NATO before Joe Biden announced the date to the media.

[Sheilbh]

Biden announced the August 31st deadline publicly months ago. Even if he was incompetent or thoughtless enough to not discuss this with NATO before making this announcement, surely him announcing it publicly should have provoked some kind of reaction from NATO? Like maybe they should have asked the US for more information. Granted I have learned to never assume wisdom or competence from my government but it seems unlikely this policy was not at least mentioned to NATO before Joe Biden announced the date to the media.

For the military - not for embassies, all nationals plus the Afghans who've worked with us. The current issue is not the withdrawal of troops but the need to immediately and absolute evactuate everyone.

[Valmy]

Can't find the article but it was reported here from MoD and military sources that they had no advance knowledge of the timetable (though were aware of the general withdrawal). And in part that's probably because it was in response to a crisis - according to the NYT it's only in mid-August that the US intelligence agencies warned they couldn't provide advance warning if Kabul was about to be attacked. My understanding is that's when Biden decided to pull out immediately ASAP.

That doesn't make any sense.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right, Biden had been publicly mentioning the anniversary of September 11th as his red line date to have every soldier out of country for quite some time. I'm not saying Biden didn't maybe fail to make some "formal notification" but when it's in the Washington Post I think it's safe to say it wasn't exactly a secret date.

I'm frankly not sure how different a "contingency planned" withdrawal would look from what has actually happened. The whole issue is the core plan was to withdraw troops but leave thousands of civilian employees. I don't know of a situation where you suddenly end up with like 15 days to get everyone out, where it's not going to be chaotic and hectic to get it done, regardless of a contingency plan or not. I also am not really sure we have evidence there was "no contingency" plan, the existence of chaos and disorder isn't proof that a plan was not drawn up, just proof that such a plan did not work well. But there is really no mechanism to do an evacuation of this size with very few troops on the ground, in basically 15 days, that won't be chaotic.

Imagine if the Afghan national government had held out for another year, and then very suddenly in a month's time span all of this happened. We'd be in the exact same situation then, except with 0 troops in country. What would the "contingency" plan look like? I assume it'd look a hell of a lot like what we're seeing right now, 5000+ U.S. troops rapidly deployed to take control of the Kabul airport and rapidly getting people out of the country.

The only way you avoid the chaos is to change the day number from 15 to some number much greater than 15. The French actually started processing all of their Afghan employee visas many months ago, and letting all of those people leave. That's fine, but the French employees is a pretty small number. The 45-50,000 Afghans we were issuing visa to make up a large part of some of the more important parts of the governmental bureaucracy. We certainly could have started getting all over those people out back in March, but then I think we'd be dealing with fallout from "Biden's decision to destroy the Afghan government by gutting it of many of its experts and professionals", and since they'd be leaving before the collapse, it'd be painted as the reason for the collapse, or at least blamed on accelerating it.

There is not some magic wand situation that would've made this clean, at all.

[The Brain]

Since the war was lost a long time ago and everyone knew it was, it seems unlikely to me that details regarding the withdrawal itself will have a long-term political impact. Except in the UK, depending on how many animals get brought out.