Afghanistan: "The obvious American defeat"

A specialist in international and defense issues, Hadrien Desuin is an essayist.

He has published

La France atlantiste ou le naufrage de la diplomatie

Since Joe Biden confirmed to his NATO allies on June 14 the final and complete withdrawal of his troops from Afghanistan, Kabul has been in turmoil. If the French army packed up at the end of 2012, it is now safe for the Atlantic alliance. Of course, the Afghan government and its army may be able to hold out for a few more months and maintain the fiction of a sovereign state, but the outcome is now known: Kabul will fall and the Taliban are back.

How, in recent days, can we not think of the terrible images of the American embassy in Saigon in 1975 with this helicopter circling over the last survivors of the Vietnam War?

Already new columns of migrants are heading, always more numerous, via Iran and towards Turkey, before arriving at our doors.

For the last apostles of democratization by arms, we must face the facts and not look away.

The war in Afghanistan ends in crushing defeat.

(...) the majority of Afghans do not want an imported democracy, on a Pentagon drip

Hadrien Desuin

In revenge for the affront of September 11, 2001, the US military tried everything. First of all, the simplest, the bombing of Al Qaeda camps (which would have been enough). And then it was the occupation, the reconstruction, the forced democratization of an Islamist and archaic society and finally the counterinsurgency and its great illusions. After twenty years and more than a trillion dollars dumped in dust in the Pashtun mountains, we have had to resolve to open our eyes: the majority of Afghans do not want an imported democracy, on the Pentagon's drip. The toll is very heavy: as many Western soldiers were killed or wounded in this 20-year-old war as there were victims during the September 11 attacks. And the Taliban triumph;Bin Laden and his successors have unfortunately succeeded in their disastrous bet. By provoking America on his soil, they managed to draw him into a war at home, the better to strike and humiliate him several thousand miles from his home.

Forty 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 stayed there eight years, half the time that the US Army.

It is tempting to draw quick conclusions.

Yesterday the fall of the Soviet empire, today the end of American hegemony?

Let's not mix everything up.

Why, indeed, persist in building an Afghan democracy in weightlessness and attach troops there while China quietly continues its rise in power?

Hadrien Desuin

Joseph Biden and Antony Blinken made this painful decision in front of their constituents. Can we blame them for keeping their commitment? Certainly not. Nixon and Kissinger had in their time made the far more painful choice to leave Vietnam and endorse the defeat of their predecessors. A posteriori, the end of the war in Vietnam allowed the United States to focus on the real issues of the Cold War and to consolidate their model.

Why, indeed, persist in building an Afghan democracy in weightlessness and attach troops there while China quietly continues its rise in power?

By painfully emerging from the Afghan quagmire, America is giving itself some leeway.

The images are cruel, the decision is humiliating for the Afghans who believed in the American mission.

But acknowledging defeat in Afghanistan is the best service Joe Biden could render to his homeland.

Sadly, the Afghan chaos is far from over.

And it is in Europe that the migratory and Islamo-terrorist explosion will be the most violent.

For want of having followed and sometimes encouraged our American partners in the illusion of a crusade for democracy, our continent is now exposed to ending the strategic withdrawal of the United States.