Follow us on social

Marine_corps_ends_mission_in_afghanistan-scaled

The Taliban agreement isn’t ideal, but the U.S. military has to get out of Afghanistan

Many have compared the U.S.-Taliban agreement to Vietnam but Afghanistan doesn't fit neatly into a North-South divide.

Analysis | Global Crises

In a deal with the Taliban, the Trump administration has laid out the conditions for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Opponents have criticized the arrangement as the terms for American “surrender,” with some predicting an intensified outbreak of violence in the name of securing full Taliban control. After 18 years of fighting, The Bulwark’s Shay Khatiri laments Trump’s willingness “to simply throw in the towel unconditionally and walk away, as Nixon did in Vietnam.”

In some important respects, the recent U.S. agreement with the Taliban does resemble the January 1973 agreement the Nixon administration signed with the communists in Vietnam. But that may not be all bad news.

As in Vietnam, the deal sets up a ceasefire in place and a withdrawal of U.S. troops and is essentially a face-saving agreement for the United States to get out. And as in Vietnam, the United States has largely excluded locals allied with Washington from the negotiations. The Vietnam analogy also suggests that as U.S. troops are withdrawn, there will be a much reduced interest in the area among policymakers and the public and gradual cutbacks in financial support for the local regime.

In this agreement, the Taliban pledged not to allow Afghanistan to become a base for international terrorists. But this concession was probably pretty painless for them: though factions of the Taliban still maintain relations with al-Qaeda, the two groups never got along very well. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11, and they correctly blame al-Qaida for the American attack that destroyed the regime in 2001.

What will happen next?

The Vietnam analogy suggests that after a decent interval, the Taliban will attack the Kabul regime and take over the country. If that happens, the Vietnam experience suggests that American decision-makers and the public will greet the debacle with a shrug and that, after an even longer interval, the US and the new regime will patch up their differences and become buddies.

However, there are some important differences between the two situations.

For one thing, it is not at all clear that the Taliban has the military capacity to really take over the whole country — although it is at least possible to imagine a facilitating condition in which the local, U.S.-trained forces simply disintegrate as they did in Vietnam in 1975.

Perhaps more importantly, in this conflict there are not simply two sides as there were in Vietnam. In Afghanistan there are multiple forces under warlord and other local groups, an elaborate criminalized drug business, and various insurgent groups including a small, and much-despised, ISIS affiliate.

Any regime in Kabul, then, would more likely to preside over a decentralized, or partitioned, confederacy than to establish a unified entity. In fact, this is how Afghanistan has traditionally been organized.

Because of this, there may be some hope, however unlikely, that Kabul and the Taliban will actually be able to work out a decentralized power-sharing accommodation. Indeed, under that condition, the United States has found it appropriate to actually aid the Taliban in the battle it has waged against ISIS since 2015.

There are also two other considerations suggesting that a degree of peace and stability might eventually evolve in Afghanistan.

One involves the bone-deep exhaustion of the Afghan people with the endless war in which they have been the chief victim and which has contributed to a very substantial refugee flow. A brief ceasefire in 2018 received an ecstatic welcome, and Afghans throughout the country took the opportunity to urge both sides to stop the violence.

The other involves the desire of neighboring countries to see the destabilizing Afghan conflict ended. These include Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and (more complicatedly) India. Most of them would also be quite happy if a final settlement included the removal of American troops from the area and the dismantling of U.S. military bases, which they often see as threatening. Although these states often have conflicting regional interests and priorities, they all desire a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. Presumably they can’t do any worse than the United States has managed.

No arrangement to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan will be perfect. Afghanistan’s problems can’t be solved through U.S. military occupation; nor will they be solved by a full U.S. withdrawal. In Vietnam, Americans eventually accepted the futility of the mission. While Washington should take reasonable steps to ensure peace as it withdraws from Afghanistan, there’s no use denying that the appropriate measure here, as it was then, is to leave.


Marines and sailors with Marine Expeditionary Brigade – Afghanistan load onto a KC-130 aircraft on the Camp Bastion flightline, Oct. 27, 2014. (Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps)
Analysis | Global Crises
Diplomacy Watch Donald Trump Putin Zelensky
Top Photo Credit: Diplomacy Watch (Khody Akhavi)

Macron fails to get Europe to send troops to Ukraine

QiOSK

European leaders met this week at the behest of French President Emmanuel Macron, who wants to solidify a plan to send troops to Ukraine as a security package. However, the meetings emerged, according to the Wall Street Journal, “without a public commitment from other European countries to send troops.”

France and the United Kingdom have been pushing for troops on the ground in Ukraine, and other countries, like Sweden, Denmark, and Australia, have indicated a willingness to do so as well. The main hurdle appears to be that most are apparently unwilling to send their armed forces to Ukraine without the protection of the United States.

keep readingShow less
Donald Trump
Top image credit: Andrew Harnik / Shutterstock.com

The war over war with Iran has just begun

Middle East

The war drums are getting louder in Washington.

In recent weeks, many of the same neoconservative voices who pushed the U.S. into Iraq are calling for strikes on Iran. Groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy are once again promoting confrontation, claiming there may never be a better time to act. But this is a dangerous illusion that risks derailing what Donald Trump himself says he wants: a deal, not another disastrous war in the Middle East.

keep readingShow less
Golden Dome Iron Dome
Top Image Credit: Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets after Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, October 1, 2024 REUTERS/Amir Cohen TPX

Saying the quiet part out loud: All that glitters is not 'Golden Dome'

Military Industrial Complex

As the Trump administration proceeds full speed ahead on its Golden Dome missile defense project, U.S. officials and engineering experts alike suggest it's a next to impossible undertaking.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, Space Force vice chief, likened Golden Dome to the WWII-era Manhattan project, which created the atom bomb. Acting DoD official Steven J. Morani called it a “monster systems engineering problem.” Trump himself compared it to President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars,” a space-based defense system that never made it past the drawing board.

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.