Amid widespread criticism at home and even from allies across the world in face of unprecedented scenes of tragedy, devastation and utter desperation from Afghanistan, Joe Biden emerged briefly from Camp David on Monday where he had been vacationing to shield himself from media attention over the weekend, delivered an 18-minute speech marked by defiance and justification, refused to take questions and promptly retreated to Maryland.
It was obvious that the US President was forced out of his cocoon to tackle ballooning criticism of the catastrophic developments in Afghanistan, a tragedy that Biden has now taken total ownership of. Donald Trump may have initiated the pullout, but he isn’t the president anymore. The tragic denouement in Kabul is on Biden.
It is difficult to control the narrative in the age of social media, as it is, and Biden’s advisers were evidently panicking at a perceived political blowback arising out of the calamity. It may not be coincidental that an opinion poll recorded the first signs of a dip in the American public’s faith in Biden’s leadership and a bump in his disapproval ratings.
This, then, forms the backdrop of Biden’s speech on Monday. It wasn’t delivered by the ‘leader of the free world’ speaking as the president of the most powerful nation on earth who sets the rules and other follow, but a man struggling to reorient US politics from the highs of unipolar strategic exceptionalism to the depths of cold reality at a moment of great crisis that has exposed American vulnerability.
As the reigning global hegemon comes to terms with a perceivable decline in its power and pelf, it has fallen upon Biden to manage domestic and global expectations and adjust the world to America’s new reality. As a president trying to navigate criticisms and disillusionment triggered by such a crucial reorientation, Biden did an admirable job in his address.
Before we delve into his address, it is useful to remember that much of the criticism — a veritable tsunami — coming Biden’s way is less due to his decision to pull out troops from Afghanistan but more because of the way he is perceived to have lost control of the situation. There has been no visible attempt at diplomatic engagement with the Taliban once it became clear that the fall of Kabul is imminent, no attempt at creating even a working military transition, no coordination with regional powers to deal with the emergent crisis and no recognition of the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis at hand, much less preparation for it.
Ever since announcing the deadline to withdraw, Biden has been busy attempting moral justification of his decision instead of working towards making it as painless as possible. This delusion proved costly at the end.
As the nightmare unfolded before the eyes of a disbelieving globe, Biden went incommunicado, and the entire US administrative machinery and its military might suffered a collective paralysis. Scenes of Saigon in 1975 were repeated as American diplomats were evacuated off the rooftop from the embassy.
Biden was forced to reverse his decision and send more troops to rescue thousands of US citizens and even more Afghan nationals still trapped in Afghanistan, and in between his administration has swayed between pleading with the Taliban and warning them not to interfere with the evacuation process.
As Josh Rogin writes in Washington Post, “As the U.S. military struggles to even secure the airport grounds, thousands of U.S. citizens who didn’t make it there yet are hiding and hoping someone saves them before roaming Taliban gangs find them. In Washington, several congressional offices are scrambling to help, but complaining that the Biden administration is dropping the ball.”
Not just the chaos and dysfunction, the way Biden has been proved completely wrong in a matter of just four weeks raises questions of the quality of the briefing that he had received.
It was almost as if Washington was caught unaware, and Biden admitted as much during his address. This has been the most difficult part to explain. Despite staying invested in Afghanistan for two decades, spending trillions, and with all the resources at its command, the US resembled a deer before the headlights as the Afghanistan government collapsed and the Taliban walked in. The intelligence and policy failure that has led to this debacle formed the core part of the criticism.
Biden knew that this intelligence and policy failure — that led to the chaos and dysfunction unfolding before our eyes — is indefensible, and he cleverly sidestepped the criticism and framed the crisis in terms of whether or not he was right in withdrawing the troops and mounted a spirited defence of his decision. This was a clever bit of deception.
Though the US president painted his choice as a binary between “either to follow through on that (Trump’s) agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season”, he glossed over the position that has worked so far with a limited number of US troops propping up the Afghan security forces who would be at the frontline, keeping the Taliban at bay.
It was interesting to see Biden lay the debacle squarely at the door of the deposed civilian leadership and the Afghan security forces. He said, ”Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” and added, “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
Biden’s argument, aimed at politically justifying his decision to withdraw, isn’t just unkind but also factually wrong. As Max Boot writes in CFR, “it’s important to remember that more than 60,000 Afghan security-force members were killed in the past 20 years—that’s 27 times more than US fatalities in the war. While some three thousand US advisors remained in the country, the Afghan military still controlled every city. It was the US pullout that brutally exposed the shortcomings of the Afghan forces and precipitated the military’s collapse.”
In effect, Afghan security forces surrendered without fighting precisely because successive US presidents struck a deal with the Taliban behind the back of Afghan civilian leadership and chose to unilaterally cut off the military support. As the US air support suddenly ended and even the contractors who were responsible for keeping the Afghan fighter jets airworthy went home in a hurry, the morale of Afghan security forces accustomed to working alongside the US and reliant heavily on US support and technology was totally eroded.
Despite all the finger pointing and deflecting the blame for the debacle on to others, Biden still managed to sound unrepentant and morally superior, even claiming martyrdom at the end. “I am President of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.” It was interesting to note how Biden hunched towards the camera, squinted his eyes and dramatically changed his tone to deliver the punchline. It was a bravura, if unconvincing, performance.
For all his deception and cynicism, however, Biden deserves credit for injecting a much-needed dose of realism to move American foreign policy away from costly foreign expeditionary counterinsurgency projects or ‘regime-change’ operations. Biden’s speech was unapologetic, he refused to acknowledge the sacrifice of the Afghans, and simply washed his hands off the unfolding humanitarian disaster — inviting criticism of being cold and heartless — but it was about time an American leader matches expectations with reality.
Biden took the only position that he could have taken. His was a realist speech, cold and clear, and may also be interpreted as inhumane, given the circumstances. But Biden might also be heralding in an era of realism in US foreign policy. There could be valid criticisms of the right, royal mess he has managed to create but by leaving Afghanistan and doubling down on a painful decision, Biden has started the process of reevaluating America’s role in a new world.
The problem is that here, too, Biden was hedging, talking nonsense about “human rights” being the “center of our foreign policy, not the periphery”. Remains to be seen if Biden’s realist turn was borne out of political expediency or a matter of conviction.
Via Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/2Nairz4
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