The rate of the Taliban’s advance this month stunned everyone. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled, and the country was entirely in the Taliban’s hands even before the U.S. troop drawdown was complete. In the face of mounting criticism, President Joe Biden resolutely defended the withdrawal. This posturing cannot be explained without taking into account the liberal ideas that dominate the White House’s decision-making.
The Biden administration advances its domestic liberal values buttressed by a foreign policy complement. As with its conviction that systemic racism pervades American society and domestic politics, the administration’s foreign policy toward certain hostile countries is based on the idea that U.S. behavior has been interventionist, has been immoral, and has caused more problems than it solves. To right this wrong, the Biden administration believes that it must extricate itself from conflicts and undo decades of policy regardless of how perverse the consequences are to U.S. interests and allies.
In the latest example of this idea, Biden’s self-imposed commitment to a hasty drawdown of troops in Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 ignored the facts in favor of ideological dogma. The result was the complete abandonment of America’s Afghan partners at the peak of Taliban’s fighting season. Such a choice only diminished confidence that there would be any continued U.S. support after the withdrawal and devastated the morale of those Afghans who still endeavored to resist the Taliban.
The rapid and total collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government was not a necessary outcome, even if the U.S. military drawdown was unavoidable. Characterized by a conservative Islamic religiosity, Afghanistan is more akin to a tribal confederation than a nation-state. Afghanistan’s local complexities have existed and evolved for centuries. It would have been surprising if the U.S. had transformed Afghanistan into a modern democracy within just 20 years. Yet, the Biden administration blames the Afghan government for its inability to adapt. The United States has asked the Afghans to deal with the consequences of an abrupt departure as if handing down a punishment to a failed pupil.
In defending his decision to withdraw rapidly, Biden argues that Osama bin Laden has been killed, the challenge of global terrorism has evolved, and the U.S. cannot make a difference in Afghanistan. What the Taliban’s stunning success demonstrates, however, is that the social and political conditions that made Afghanistan a sanctuary for militant Islamism remain unchanged. A U.S. military presence is indispensable for the stability of the country. The low figures of U.S. fatalities and significantly reduced military expenses in the last five years suggest security in Afghanistan can be maintained at a reasonable cost.
No matter how the Biden administration justifies it, the Taliban and other Islamist groups around the world will regard the U.S. withdrawal and spectacular collapse of the Afghan government as a triumph for their versions of fundamentalist Islam. It will further be used by these groups as an example of the failure of secular politics in a Muslim land.
In reality, violent Islamism is at war with the U.S. and the West because the Western notions of liberty and diversity are at odds with the Islamist subjugation and uniformity. The threat violent Islamist movements pose to the U.S. and the West, be it the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or the ongoing Islamic Revolution exported from Iran, will not recede because of a U.S. withdrawal in the regions from which they emanate. Instead, the U.S. retreat will embolden violent Islamist groups, such as the Taliban, to act more aggressively against the U.S. and its allies.
Underneath Biden’s withdrawal also lies an apathy toward the Afghans. The administration factored the probable collapse of the Afghan government into the decision to withdraw. It anticipated that a Taliban victory would bring ruthless Islamist rule and decided that the well-being of millions of Afghans had suddenly become expendable. For Biden, it appears to be an acceptable cost to pay for ending “America’s endless war” through a liberal foreign policy that affirms the administration’s moral rectitude to appeal to a constituency at home.
Biden’s poorly envisioned and executed withdrawal from Afghanistan has been motivated by a strange amalgam of liberal guilt and hubris. The implicit message from the administration is a belief that only the U.S. matters and others are subordinate.
The Biden administration professes to combat racism and social injustice in America. In foreign policy, the administration’s overemphasis on U.S. culpability in chaos abroad ignores other countries’ agency. At the same time, a liberal conceit leads to the administration’s patronizing international behavior and an apathy for the human consequences of U.S. actions. The administration is going beyond condescension and embracing the same bigotry, from which racism and social injustice also arise, that it prides itself on fighting at home.
Wang Xiyue is a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at American Enterprise Institute and a Ph.D. candidate in history at Princeton University. He served as a Pashto interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from 2010-2011.
