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 The Vietnam analogy also suggests that as U.S. troops are withdrawn, there will be a much reduced interest in the area among policymakers and the public and gradual cutbacks in financial support for the local regime.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
Trump and Keith Kellogg
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump and Keith Kellogg (now Trump's Ukraine envoy) in 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Trump's silence on loss of Ukraine lithium territory speaks volumes

Europe

Last week, Russian military forces seized a valuable lithium field in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the latest success of Moscow’s grinding summer offensive.

The lithium deposit in question is considered rather small by industry analysts, but is said to be a desirable prize nonetheless due to the concentration and high-quality of its ore. In other words, it is just the kind of asset that the Trump administration seemed eager to exploit when it signed its much heralded minerals agreement with Ukraine earlier this year.

keep readingShow less
Is the US now funding the bloodbath at Gaza aid centers?
Top photo credit: Palestinians walk to collect aid supplies from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/File Photo

Is the US now funding the bloodbath at Gaza aid centers?

Middle East

Many human rights organizations say it should shut down. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed hundreds of Palestinians at or around its aid centers. And yet, the U.S. has committed no less than $30 million toward the controversial, Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

As famine-like conditions grip Gaza, the GHF says it has given over 50 million meals to Palestinians at its four aid centers in central and southern Gaza Strip since late May. These centers are operated by armed U.S. private contractors, and secured by IDF forces present at or near them.

keep readingShow less
mali
Heads of state of Mali, Assimi Goita, Niger, General Abdourahamane Tiani and Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pose for photographs during the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024. REUTERS/Mahamadou Hamidou//File Photo

Post-coup juntas across the Sahel face serious crises

Africa

In Mali, General Assimi Goïta, who took power in a 2020 coup, now plans to remain in power through at least the end of this decade, as do his counterparts in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. As long-ruling juntas consolidate power in national capitals, much of the Sahelian terrain remains out of government control.

Recent attacks on government security forces in Djibo (Burkina Faso), Timbuktu (Mali), and Eknewane (Niger) have all underscored the depth of the insecurity. The Sahelian governments face a powerful threat from jihadist forces in two organizations, Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimin (the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims, JNIM, which is part of al-Qaida) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP). The Sahelian governments also face conventional rebel challengers and interact, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in tension, with various vigilantes and community-based armed groups.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

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.