My Take | Much-vaunted US credibility lost in ‘graveyard of empires’
- After Afghanistan, allies will doubt US ability and commitment to protect them as they are pressured to join Washington’s anti-China crusade while Beijing has learned again the military option is more problem than solution, specifically for a superpower
If that happens, it will look like America’s longest war costing so much bloodshed, mostly Afghan blood, will have come full circle. But in terms of its global status and prestige, the United States is much worse off today than when it went in two decades ago to exact revenge.
A monumental foreign policy mistake it certainly is, though US apologists are trying desperately to look for a silver lining. What they will find hard to explain away is that the Afghan debacle has undermined America’s much-vaunted credibility at a time when it is sweet-talking and arm-twisting allies to join its anti-China crusade. It reinforces again America’s well-deserved reputation for serial foreign policy misadventures.
Last week, though, The New York Times reported that American negotiators had asked their Taliban counterparts to spare the US embassy in the coming battle for Kabul. They did so by dangling the possibility of future aid, even to a Taliban-dominated government. In another report, US officials were said to be “imploring” Afghans to fight, a sure sign that Washington had “no intention of rescuing government forces”.