Biden’s excruciating foreign policy learning curve

After nearly half a century in powerful jobs and the practice of international diplomacy, President Joe Biden is relearning the core principle that foreign policy is a quicksand that sucks in successive American governments and never lets them get out again.

His desperate struggle to exit Afghanistan under the full unblinking glare of global television, social media, film and print is the latest illustration of that baleful principle.

He thought he could switch off 20 years of US intervention in that alien culture by ordering withdrawal with little regard to what happens next. But the quicksand’s slime refuses to slide off and will continue to weigh down on him and his successors.

The fiasco in leaving Kabul and Afghanistan should drive home the realization that foreign policy success is never possible without continuous response to the ground realities of the country towards which it is directed.

The main reason for foreign policy decisions can never be expediency of politics within the US. Despite the stout denials of Biden’s team, the impression gaining currency in Central and South Asia is that he was ruled not by Afghan realities but eagerness to win votes for Democrats in the 2022 Congressional elections.

This is easy to believe because America’s militarist foreign policy has long embodied the shifting imperatives of domestic politics. In the current state of near civil war among America’s political factions, Biden appears to have struck his own foot by setting an emotionally symbolic deadline of 9/11 for the exit.

He probably wanted to proudly declare an end to the longest US war and follow it swiftly with a very substantial withdrawal from the other long war in Iraq.

He should not be faulted for wanting out quickly because his most urgent need is to repair deepening tribal fissures within America and plugging fingers in the dykes of battered US democracy. The “forever wars” he inherited are no longer sustainable.

The continuing astonishment in Washington about swift Taliban victory should cause concern among Americans and their foreign friends. It is extraordinary naivete to think that spending billions of dollars on foreign military interventions motivates local people to befriend Washington.

The shockingly quick refusal of US-supported Afghan soldiers to fight Taliban militias should convince Washington that loyalty from foreign soldiers has to be earned even if the national government is a satellite.

The US spent upwards of $1 trillion and sacrificed its young in Afghanistan. But almost all went to finance its own methods of war. It trained Afghans to fight in the American way.

By the time Biden dismantled the complex US military machine, its Afghan acolytes had atrophied their ancestral skills of nimbly fighting tribal wars and warlords. Training in American methods of negotiating peace in lofty conferences also atrophied traditional wheeling dealing skills for tribal peace pacts.

So the soldiers chose to lay down arms instead of dying for chimera. After waiting 20 years for stability on American terms, Afghans had lost trust in American ways.

More so, because ordinary people saw hardly any new American-built infrastructure in their neighborhoods to make their lives more prosperous. They knew only collateral damage and disrespect for their local culture, which dates from before Alexander the Great.

It is easy to forget that US intervention in Afghanistan began in 1979 when the CIA’s special forces started destabilizing the Soviet-backed communist government in Kabul. Afghan tribals, toting homemade World War 1 rifles, suddenly became part of Washington’s existential Cold War.

That led to the Soviet invasion to protect its communist protégés, which led to US recruitment of Pakistan to arm Sunni zealots to throw out “godless” invaders. Those seminary students, trained as fanatics by Saudi Arabian preachers in Pakistan, morphed into the Taliban after the Soviet exit.

The student warriors were armed, fed and clothed by US experts through the proxy of Pakistan’s spy service. Osama bin Laden was a respected Saudi and CIA-backed religious warrior against the Soviets. So, the Pakistanis sheltered him till death.

Now look where the Taliban are!

Foreign militaries have blended misery into ordinary Afghan lives for nearly 42 years. No wonder, all that Afghans want now is stability even if under the heel of Taliban enforcers.

Cruelty in the name of divine edicts has long plagued human despair in civilizations around the world. The exhausted Afghan people are willing to bear more of it now in exchange for political stability.