John Hannah is a Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy

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John Hannah is a Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy

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Originally published in The Hill

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Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Donahue is the final American service member to depart Afghanistan; his departure closes the U.S. mission to evacuate American citizens, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and vulnerable Afghans. (U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Alex Burnett)

Each time the world’s most powerful country admits some degree of failure, it is inevitable that such a decision will have sweeping — and lasting — consequences. The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending a two-decades-long presence, will be no exception. The decision undoubtedly sets a dangerous precedent for the future.

The Afghanistan withdrawal — and abandonment of the Afghanistan government and civilians to the Taliban’s onslaught — has been publicly justified as a means for the United States to focus on other arenas of concern, namely great power competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region. While China might indeed be the graver threat, it is myopic to believe that the United States’ ability to address that challenge will be unaffected by its disastrous exit from Afghanistan.

The most immediate and devastating consequence of the United States’ exit is the fall of Kabul and the takeover of the country by the Taliban, as Afghan government troops fled the Taliban’s arrival or surrendered. In their sweep through the country, the Taliban have carried out organized executions, closed schools, and forced unmarried girls and women to be paired off with Taliban fighters.

Though this might seem like a tragic plight for Afghans, but one far away from American shores, the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan will have both direct and indirect consequences for U.S. national security.

The result of the Taliban instituting an Islamic emirate in the totality of Afghanistan will be a murderous regime that may well end up being an epicenter of terrorism in the region. Twenty years ago, the Taliban allowed Afghanistan to serve as the planning and training hub for global terror attacks. With their return, another wave of terror, and maybe another significant attack on America, once again becomes possible. As the U.S. Treasury Department wrote earlier this year: “Al-Qaeda is gaining strength in Afghanistan while continuing to operate … under the Taliban’s protection.”

Through diplomatic channels, the United States must emphasize that we will not tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists to exist anywhere in the world, including in the Taliban’s nascent regime in Afghanistan.

But the long-term geopolitical consequences of U.S. withdrawal vis-à-vis China are becoming increasingly apparent, as well. If the objective is to refocus U.S. resources on besting China, our withdrawal does the precise opposite by providing fertile ground for China’s expansionist ambitions. The U.S. departure from Afghanistan creates a large opening for Beijing to execute on its geostrategic aims, which range from capitalizing on Afghanistan’s supply of rare earth metals, estimated to be worth $1-3 trillion, to undermining perceptions of a U.S.-led world order.

It is no surprise that China has been busy constructing thoroughfares between China and Afghanistan in order to absorb Afghanistan into Beijing’s larger Belt and Road Initiative.

Though China remains wary of Taliban control, the lukewarm relationship between the Taliban and Beijing signals China’s initial efforts to bring Afghanistan into its orbit — and to use the growing chaos and violence (which our withdrawal quickened) as a justification for doing so. To counter these efforts, the United States should be conducting a strong messaging campaign against China, communicating to the Muslim world that China’s treatment of the Uyghurs shows most emphatically that Beijing is not a friend to those of the Islamic faith, as most of the ethnic group identifies as Muslim.

Finally, the U.S. withdrawal sends a sobering message to allies and partners of the United States in Central Asia and the Middle East: America has become increasingly unreliable. Countries that count on the United States as part of their larger national security strategy, which often includes the deterrence umbrella of the United States, may infer from America’s Afghanistan “bugout” that the United States doesn’t have the stamina to fulfill its long-term security commitments.

It makes little sense to perturb lasting allies at a time when U.S. strategy demands the maintenance (and development of) alliances to contain China, especially in the instance of Taiwan and Israel (U.S. partners that routinely face different forms of political and economic pressure from China). Furthermore, others may think twice before adopting and assisting us in our geostrategic objectives. In the worst-case scenario, our unreliability may send countries straight into the orbit of China.

We must reassure our allies, especially those in NATO, that they will continue to have our support and that their security remains a top priority, and we must reenforce such statements by maintaining our forward-deployed presence globally.

The immediate consequences of instability and violence, combined with the long-term consequence of casting doubt on America’s credibility, suggest the U.S. withdrawal will serve only to thwart its goal of checking Chinese expansionism by quickening Afghanistan’s descent into chaos and alienating historically committed U.S. partners and allies.

“America is back” has frequently been touted when emphasizing that potentially fractured relationships with U.S. partners will be restored. But the overwhelming message of our Afghanistan withdrawal likely will be that America does not have its partners’ backs.

Retired U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Richard P. Mills served as commander of NATO’s Regional Command Southwest in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. He participated in the 2019 Generals and Admirals Program with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, where Erielle Davidson is a senior policy analyst.

Originally published in Defense News

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U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Leaving Afghanistan is just one element of President Joe Biden’s larger plan to extricate America from Middle East conflicts. But the hell-or-high-water withdrawal threatens to undermine the administration’s other regional goals by giving Iran and its new hardline president a bright green light to escalate tensions on the ground and in the nuclear arena.

The United States now stands at a crossroads. It can continue seeking the seemingly easy way out, further reducing its regional commitments and jumping back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal, at the much larger costs of damaging remaining U.S. credibility and, ironically, raising the risks of major conflict. Or it can work with regional allies to strengthen deterrence and viable alternatives to the nuclear deal, beginning with Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett’s visit, which was delayed following an attack on U.S. troops at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Like his two predecessors, Biden telegraphed his intention to wash America’s hands of Middle Eastern quagmires. As a candidate, he pledged to depart Afghanistan and Iraq while resuming nuclear diplomacy with Tehran. Reentering the JCPOA and putting Iran’s nuclear program “in a box,” as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in January, would complement drawdowns by making it possible to “manage the Iranian challenge with fewer forces in the region.”

The other side gets a vote, however. Even before the Afghanistan denouement, Tehran evinced little interest in meeting Biden remotely halfway. It replied to unilateral White House confidence-building measures—for instance, removing terrorism designations on Iran’s Houthi proxy in Yemen and rescinding Trump-era UN “snapback” sanctions—by increasing attacks on U.S. and allied forces, accelerating enrichment activities, and hewing to maximalist demands at negotiations in Vienna. In June, Iranian officials betrayed a growing sense of impunity by provocatively suggesting they were approaching the threshold of nuclear capability.

Now the human, strategic and reputational costs of the Afghanistan pullout reinforce Tehran’s impression that the United States wants out of the Middle East in the worst way, and that therefore it is willing to get out in the worst way.

Iran prefers to push on open doors, and with U.S. policy apparently coming completely unhinged and caught off-guard by the Taliban’s rapid gains, Tehran will dial up pressure on Washington to concede the broader region and the nuclear issue as quickly and recklessly as it departed Afghanistan. After seeing America abandon its Afghan partners, Iran also feels emboldened to go after U.S. partners more aggressively. This will come naturally to the new Raisi administration, whose appointment of hardliners to the JCPOA file and close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps imply an even more forceful and uncompromising approach than its predecessor.

Especially after the chaos of exiting Afghanistan, the deceptive appeal of trying to box up these other Middle East headaches may grow, even as doing so becomes more counterproductive.

At this point, any nuclear deal would trade limited rollback of Iran’s enrichment advances for extensive sanctions relief which, as in 2015, Tehran would plow into regional interventions and arms buildups. Such lopsided diplomacy also would underscore that pressure works against the United States and that Washington will override its allies’ abiding security concerns. Further attempts at conciliating Tehran by reducing U.S. commitments to regional stability only would reinforce this message, as would continuing to fail to address Iran’s coercive rocket and drone campaign against the United States and other targets.

None of these outcomes will moderate Tehran’s destabilizing ambitions or the ensuing risks of regional conflict, which likely would draw U.S. forces back in under far less favorable circumstances. Fortunately, the Biden administration can preempt and counterbalance key consequences of the Afghanistan debacle by doubling down on another core element of its Middle East policy.

The meeting with Bennett, which was pushed back to Friday, was a timely opportunity to amplify the president’s well-established robust support for Israel’s self-defense, especially in the context of their summit discussing JCPOA alternatives. Ensuring Israel has adequate precision-guided munitions, aerial refueling tankers and other critical capabilities is equally important.

Indeed, Israel’s freedom of action already has done the most to put Iran in a box, whether by setting back its nuclear clock or its military entrenchment in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and beyond. Israel will not be the only U.S. regional partner now bearing greater burdens for upholding stability, so the White House also should prioritize expanding the historic Abraham Accords and help forge deeper defense cooperation among its members. Such support also can reassure shaken allies more generally of the value of American guarantees.

Additionally, the administration must get serious about establishing its own deterrence against Iran. This means, at the least, more forceful retaliation against proxy attacks on Americans in Iraq, and contingency plans, exercises and deployments for neutralizing Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In these ways, the Biden administration has a closing window to limit fallout from its Afghanistan retreat and promote its strategic objective of Middle East stability.

Jonathan Ruhe is director of foreign policy at The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

Originally published in The National Interest

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Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Can President Joe Biden’s global standing recover from his spectacular debacle in Afghanistan? This will be one of the most pressing questions ahead even if the United States manages to successfully evacuate its citizens and Afghan partners. To salvage some of his and America’s international position, Biden needs to initiate dramatic changes in both staff and policy.

Biden’s Afghan fiasco goes beyond failed policy and execution. Instead, it raises fundamental questions about the president’s leadership, judgment, command of the facts, competence, veracity, reliability as an ally and strength of will.

The situation recalls Winston Churchill’s critique of British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin’s failed anti-Israel policy that severely undermined Britain’s global position: He was “wrong, wrong in his facts, wrong in his mood, wrong in the method and wrong in the result. . . . No one has been proved by events to be more consistently wrong on every turning-point and at every moment than he.” He pursued a “policy of folly, fatuity and futility the like of which it is not easy to find in modern experience.”

Biden’s failures are arguably greater. He acquiesced to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and follows their dictates while energizing Islamic terrorist groups endangering our very homeland; risked destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan; emboldened adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran; and alienated and undermined our allies from London to Tokyo.

Indeed, Biden’s failure has been so widely condemned or mocked and his credibility — the currency of international relations — so thoroughly damaged that even if he succeeds in evacuating stranded Americans and Afghan partners from Afghanistan (big if), it’s likely he’ll become a hobbled, damaged figure on the world stage, incapable of leading on any issue of consequence, for the remaining three-plus years of his presidency. That would be dreadful for US national security.

Democratic Party leaders should intervene to salvage some modicum of the president’s and America’s international position. They need to convince Biden, who remains in defiant denial, of the dire position he has put his presidency and the United States in and the urgent need to correct it.

First, Biden should shore up his national-security team, bringing in senior officials who instill confidence among our allies and fear among our foes. None who would echo Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s assertion that the United States lacks the “capability” to collect American citizens outside Kabul airport.

Second, Biden must pursue new assertive policies beyond Afghanistan that demonstrate resolve. He could follow then-President Donald Trump’s example of surprisingly assassinating Iranian leader Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani after months of inaction against escalating Iranian aggression, which restored some sense of deterrence. Except Biden’s Afghan fiasco requires greater dramatic steps.

Biden could seek to make a new mark in a pressing foreign-policy issue. With China describing America as “weak and unreliable” and suggesting Taiwan could meet Afghanistan’s fate, he could end historic strategic ambiguity and (as leading Asia expert Ken Weinstein has argued for) declare publicly and unequivocally that the United States will defend Taiwan from a Chinese attempt at reunification and sell Taipei next-generation defense equipment it needs for its national security.

Third, the president should reverse his disastrous failing policy of seeking to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, cite Iran’s nuclear escalation to justify enforcing existing sanctions and pursue snapback sanctions at the United Nations. He should also warn Tehran, as his predecessors had, that he’ll prevent it from becoming nuclear-capable by all means necessary.

Further, Biden should bolster Israel’s ability to prepare for a major war with Iran, which his policies accommodative to Tehran make more likely. In his meeting this week with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the president should offer an immediate offensive and defensive package to improve Israel’s readiness and to accelerate an Israeli attack capacity (should it be needed) on Iran, with all its consequences.

This should involve expediting delivery of weapons already promised to Israel, such as F-35 aircraft, KC-46 aerial refueling tankers and multilayer missile-defense capabilities, as well as a commitment to position in Israel for mutual use tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles.

Biden can’t eliminate all the awful consequences of the Afghan debacle, but by taking these actions he can deliver a strong message that he has learned some lessons and that America is coming back.

Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official, is president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and author of “Churchill’s Promised Land.”

Originally published in New York Post

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John Hannah is a Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy

The post FOX Business interview with JINSA Senior Fellow John Hannah on Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan appeared first on JINSA.