Afghanistan, the hinge of the 21st century
I was planning to write about other things, but the tides of history wait for no man’s indulgently lazy writing schedule. We have all witnessed what will be seen, in retrospect, as a turning point in the 21st century. In fact, I think the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan will be seen by historians as the point at which American dominance irrecoverably fell, ushering in whatever comes next. This is the event around which other events in this century will in retrospect revolve, and we will be seeing the knock-on consequences for a decade or more.
Unmasked incompetence
The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was a demonstration before the entire world of the incompetence of both the US military and its civilian leadership. Until August 15, 2021, the US military appeared to be the most powerful on the planet. While it had problems and was unable to accomplish its stated goals1 in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appeared to be unquestionably the case that the US military was as competent and well-functioning as a modern military could be, and any war against the US would see the other side bloodied and the worse off for it.
No more.
America’s retreat from Afghanistan showed that, whatever its putative advantages in equipment and technology, the people running the show are so foolish that no amount of material advantage (itself already diminishing) can do them any good. Bagram Airfield, the largest US base in Afghanistan and home to two runways (and 100 parking spots for jets, space that can be used for large craft carrying people), was abandoned in July in the middle of the night, well before the US had withdrawn all its soldiers and citizens. The new Afghan commander of the airforce was not even informed that the Americans had left and discovered this two hours later. It is worth stressing that Biden claimed that full withdrawal would occur on September 11, 2021, so the primary base of American military operations was abandoned more than two months before the withdrawal date, with an advancing Taliban taking cities across the country. The very basics of withdrawal from a theater of war are that you get the civilians out first before the soldiers, and you abandon your strategic positions last.
Bagram is a bit over an hour’s drive from Kabul and in an easily-defensible location. It has far more capacity for planes than Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. But because Bagram was abandoned, the US is currently trying to evacuate 10,000-15,000 citizens from the single runway in Kabul International Airport, in the center of a capital which is controlled by hostile Taliban forces. If America had made Bagram the last thing it closed before leaving, knowing that the Taliban was likely to retake the country, the current chaos would be much more manageable. It is unlikely that the Taliban could have simply taken Bagram, but it could have served as the point of departure for American and Coalition forces.
Not only does the US face the logistical nightmare of evacuating up to 15,000 of its own citizens from an enemy-controlled city, but it also has legal obligations to perhaps 50,000 Afghanis who hold US visas. It is safe to say that with a single runway in enemy-held territory that is currently moving less than 1,000 people a day, not all of these people are getting out. The US is now reduced to asking the Taliban to, pretty please, allow its citizens and visa-holders to leave. These are the reasons behind the horrific photos the world has been treated to, with desperate people chasing planes and clinging to the fuselage, falling off as the plane takes flight.
It is inexcusable that the US was caught this unaware of the Taliban’s rapid advance. Despite President Biden saying a month ago that the withdrawal from Afghanistan would be nothing like Vietnam, some intelligence services knew of this possibility, and the result is in fact far worse than Vietnam. Saigon did not fall until two years after the suspension of US combat activities. Kabul fell even before Biden’s targeted September 11 full withdrawal date. After a series of bad blunders, none of which outdoes the abandonment of Bagram Airfield, US forces were overwhelmed. Planes, tanks, and sophisticated American military equipment fell into the hands of the Taliban, a government which has publicly stated its intent to cooperate with the US’s major geopolitical rival, China. Another point of basic military competence: Do not give your largest competitor unfettered access to your newest equipment.
Just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and what’s worse is these are almost all self-inflicted wounds. The US could have withdrawn without making this much a mess for itself. American leadership is just so incompetent that the basics of military actions have become impossible. The signs of this incompetence have been around for a while — from practical issues like naval arsonists setting fire to battleships in dock to logistical issues like a dependence on Chinese imports to build military equipment and strategic issues like the two decade mission creep in Afghanistan (to say nothing of the Iraq invasion). But this is such a high-profile cock-up that the entire world can’t help but take note.
America alone
The reporting has focused on America’s woes in its Afghanistan withdrawal, but this neglects the other members of the occupying coalition in Afghanistan. A frankly enormous number of nations committed military resources to the Afghanistan occupation over the years. At the time of America’s withdrawal, Germany and the UK were the major partners in the nation. To say that Biden has burned both these US allies and NATO members is a gross understatement.
It now appears as though the UK was not sufficiently informed of America’s plans and was dependent on the Americans’ faulty (and probably deliberately cooked) intelligence saying the Taliban were months away from full victory. The parliament has held Biden in contempt, a situation which may be unique in modern history: A junior partner in a long-standing alliance officially holding its fellow, indeed the alleged superpower, in contempt. Biden also ignored the urgent phone calls of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who attempted to get in contact with the White House on Monday morning. Johnson was finally called back on Tuesday at 10pm. This is another novelty: A major military power ignores its closest ally for 36 hours while chaos is unfolding at the conclusion of their joint military occupation. As the icing on the cake, it is being reported that an American general has requested the British to stop being so competent at evacuating people because it is making the US look bad.
It’s not only the UK. Germany has been equally burned. The chairman of Germany’s foreign relations committee, Norbert Röttgen, called Biden’s withdrawal a severe miscalculation which has fundamentally damaged the West. While being a little more politic, Angela Merkel simply announced that Germany needs to evacuate up to 10,000 people from Afghanistan, something that will keep the country “busy for a very long time.” The incoming replacement for Merkel (and without any doubt the next Chancellor), Armin Laschet, has also directly criticized Joe Biden. These political announcements and actions speak for themselves: Germany, like the UK, was not ready for such a withdrawal, and in relying upon its senior partner, the US, was expecting a slower draw-down of their people in Afghanistan. And for Germany, this was the country’s first major deployment of troops since World War II. The US did not effectively communicate with either country, neither about American military plans nor the predictable rapidity with which the country would fall into Taliban hands.
The US has thus effectively burned two of its most important European allies and NATO member states. Neither the UK nor Germany will be quick to trust in American military or administrative competence again. This goes beyond getting involved in another war with the United States. These nations are unlikely to take seriously claims from the Americans about other geopolitical matters (such as economic strategy) and they are unlikely to trust American intelligence. And with good reason: Look at how they handled the retreat from Afghanistan. This should have been a win for everybody (nobody wanted to remain in that country forever), but the rank incompetence of the Americans harmed and burdened its NATO allies.
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has been frittering away goodwill with other nations. The country has for a long time harassed and interfered with its Latin American neighbors, countries which today are (understandably and rightly) suspicious of their powerful northern neighbor. In its response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. Bush linked this with aggressive rhetoric against Iran (a country which borders both Afghanistan and Iraq), and thus began a two decades long series of provocations against that country, presumably in retaliation for the revolution in the 70s against Our Man In Iran, the Shah. This rivalry reached a brief detente with the nuclear deal under Obama, but then Trump withdrew. This schizophrenic behavior has taught Iran (rightly) not to trust the US even when they sign a treaty, and has made American allies (also rightly) wonder if they can trust America’s international actions to last more than four years. Iran has subsequently placed itself in the Chinese sphere of influence as a result, along with many Gulf countries. With the US now sending signals to its Western allies that it is not only untrustworthy but incompetent, who will remain as friends of the US in the world? Perhaps only Saudi Arabia (the US’s “friend” who bankrolled the 9/11 attacks and extreme Wahhabist movements around the world) and Israel, a bizarre little love triangle. The United States continues to isolate itself from the rest of the world, not intentionally or strategically, but through gross ineptitude.
Empowering China
The result of the Afghanistan withdrawal is going to be an expansion of Chinese influence into the country. Well before their reconquest of the country, Taliban leaders were meeting with PRC officials (going as far back as 2019). By July of this year, the Taliban agreed to not aid or abet Uyghur separatist movements in Afghanistan, a major security concern for China as the country is aggressively pursuing a reconfiguration of the ethnic composition in Xinjiang. Also in July of this year, Taliban spokesmen said that they welcomed China, a “friendly country,” one with whom “they have good relations.”
China is not going to get bogged down in an interminable war trying to unite an ungovernable mountainous and tribal country. What the PRC will do is prop up its strategic allies the Taliban (with development funding and the sale of goods and perhaps even arms) in exchange for assurances that the country will not interfere with the ongoing ethnic campaigns in Xinjiang and will provide access to Afghanistan’s extremely large reserves of Rare Earth Elements (possibly worth up to $3 trillion). The REE access will happen in the form of agreements to become part of the Belt and Rode Initiative and the construction of Chinese-owned and operated mines.
Rare earth elements are critical in the production of a large number of technological products, from hard drives and microphones to wind turbines and aircraft engines. China currently produces more than 50% of and supplies more than 85% of the world’s REEs, and over half of this supply is sourced from Myanmar (in whose coup China has likely played a role2). If China already produces and supplies most of the world’s REEs, why would it be important to gain more? Well, the only thing better than a near monopoly is something even closer to a true monopoly. And this is effectively a monopoly over the raw materials for electronics production, which indirectly creates a dependence between foreign nations’ military and critical infrastructure development and China. While other sources of rare earths exist, until now most of the world has been content to simply buy from the big guy on the block. The PRC’s focus on monopolizing the extraction and trade networks for this critical resource is yet another example of the nation’s strategic (and capitalistic!) thinking running circles around its Western rivals. The opening of REE mines in Afghanistan would further entrench and solidify China’s market position.
There is also the strategic positioning of Afghanistan. China’s BRI is already working well without Afghanistan (a pipeline from Iran to Pakistan to China has long been planned), and the CPEC infrastructure projects (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) are building out roadways, rail, and energy infrastructure linking the two countries. With Iran, this now provides a trade corridor from China through to the Middle East and, very nearly, the Mediterranean (pending Turkish cooperation), and thence to Europe. Regardless of the state of an actual pipeline, this forms a trade network which moves raw materials and money across Eurasia and to the PRC. Even better, along with China’s allies in Southeast Asia, this patchwork of Asian allies effectively closes India off from friendly overland Asian trade routes. So if this is going so well already, why would an alliance with Afghanistan be important to China’s strategic plans in Eurasia? For one, it removes a potentially destabilizing factor. Spillover from infighting in Afghanistan could threaten Pakistan (long a concern of the US), while a compliant Afghani government would bolster rather than weaken this trade corridor. But the value of redundancy also shouldn’t be underestimated. If China has a network of neighboring countries in its sphere of influence, this is better than having the minimum necessary. It both stabilizes the BRI trade routes and offers contingency plans. All of that said, the mineral wealth of Afghanistan is probably the bigger prize.
It was likely that Afghanistan would fall into China’s orbit regardless of how competently the withdrawal was handled. However, there appear to have been no Western contingency plans in place for this, as can be seen by the endless (and needless) antagonizing of Iran. As a result, the West has created a ready set of allies for its major rival, extending right into the heart of the Middle East.
The PRC also wasted no time extrapolating from Afghanistan to Taiwan. A day after the fall of Kabul, the Global Times, an extension of the People’s Daily and run directly by the Chinese Communist Party, released an op-ed telling Taiwan that once a war breaks out and the CCP seizes the island by force (not if, but when), America will not be willing or able to come to Taiwan’s aid. Taiwan should watch out and preemptively surrender. It’s hard to see where they are wrong in their assessment of the US. It is likely that the withdrawal catastrophe has emboldened and advanced China’s plans to retake Taiwan.
But this empowerment of China should not be seen as some radically new thing that happened just now. It is instead the result of a long series of strategically foolish decisions by the United States, arguably extending back to Nixon. However, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China is probably the real tipping point. H.R. 4444, or the China Trade bill, was signed into law in 2000, passing a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. The US had already been extending free trade privileges to China (beginning in the 80s), but until then this relationship had to be renewed annually. This made this trade relationship legally established so it could no longer be easily revoked. The US spent decades effectively outsourcing its powerful manufacturing sector to a rival ideological and geopolitical power, on the hope that it would liberalize that rival power and enrich the US.
It did enrich the US, at least for a little while, and to a much greater extent enriched the US’s oligarchs. Cheap labor is great for capital, after all. However, the promised liberalization of China never took place. The PRC did not collapse like the Soviet Union, but instead increased its manufacturing capacity largely with the money of American consumers, while American manufacturing simultaneously declined. America sold off its economic power in exchange for trinkets and the creation of a few billionaires. Afghanistan, and all its mineral wealth, falling into the orbit of China at a time when it is expanding its sphere of influence westward is just another example of the United States empowering its major geopolitical rival with a series of self-inflected wounds. The seeds of this were sewn by the mission creep of the war expanding into something unattainable—from rooting out al Qaeda to stably putting the country together to making it into a liberal democracy—but even further back with the US gradually selling off its economic strengths to China. The Dengist reforms remade China, but not without US leadership willingly and continuously empowering the nation at its own expense. This is just the latest in a long series of mistakes.
Redeployment at home
It is sometimes said that “What empires do abroad they bring home.” This may be a catchy phrase but it is a simplification. Israel has not brought its arms sales home to use on Palestine, but rather its actions against the Palestinian territories have expanded into a lucrative industry selling weapons to the rest of the world. Similarly, China has not developed domestic surveillance technology because it has sold it abroad, but rather it has exported this technology because it developed it at home. It is more accurate to say that whatever tools a nation develops will be used somewhere, regardless of its original intent. Once a tool is present, uses will be found for it, often in new and surprising ways.
What are the tools that America has developed in Afghanistan? Earlier on in the war, unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, better known as drones, were raised to a new level of sophistication, and have since been used by many US cities and also by the FBI. But as pointed out in an extensive meditation on the topic by Malcom “Tinkzorg” Kyeyune, Afghanistan became a playground for NGOs where money was no limit. The military briefly funded a “Human Terrain System,” where anthropologists and sociologists were sent into (mostly) Afghanistan to do field work determining what different people in occupied territories were like and what they wanted. They funded schools, complete with a gender studies program at Kabul University and spent $110 million on the American University of Afghanistan. The US has built up vast institutional knowledge about fighting for hearts and minds with the tools of academia and education, as well as targeted surveillance. That none of this worked in Afghanistan doesn’t matter: This institutional knowledge is now present. How will it be put to use?
The answer is very clear, and American officials have been signaling how this machine will be used for a while. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two months ago told Congress that he wants “to understand white rage.” This is of course in response to the sequel in the liberal mind to 9/11, 1/6, and the novel anthropological academic tool, Critical Race Theory. General Milley should perhaps have focused more on his job of protecting US soldiers and civilians abroad in the country’s ongoing occupation and planned withdrawal, but his pivot to CRT and domestic terrorists (those who question CRT, transgender ideology, or the government’s COVID measures) is just him getting in front of the new deployment of all these resources that he has been put in charge of. The term “American Taliban” is already being used for Trump voters (nearly half of the country), the vaccine-skeptical, and of course the disorganized mob that entered the Capital on January 6, 2021. The bureaucratic machinery which failed to achieve its goal in Afghanistan no longer has anything to direct its resources at. Luckily then, a new threat is rising which will need armies of sociologists, spies, teachers, digital analysts, and managerial specialists to confront. Perhaps, the people at the head of this machine think, that endless money and expertise directed toward surveillance, targeted raids, and winning hearts and minds in girl’s schools in Afghanistan will not go to waste when deployed against America’s internal deplorables.
The new geopolitical world
This moment in Afghanistan is the hinge around which the 21st century will turn. This has created two worlds, the world before the American withdrawal and the world after. America has been unmasked, dramatically and before rivals and allies alike, as a declining power that lacks the proficiency to even utilize its remaining strengths on the world stage. The world in its aftermath will become increasingly multipolar, with powers struggling to create spheres of influence in a power vacuum left behind by America.
Pax Americana is over. However violent many of America’s actions were in the 20th century—and the crimes perpetrated by America against nations like Chile, Cambodia, Indonesia, and many others should not be overlooked—the dominance of the US (even with the competition of the Cold War) basically ensured that no major powers directly went to war with each other. Since the close of World War II, most military conflicts have been either proxy wars or a more powerful nation fighting a less powerful one (the US against Iraq, Russia against Georgia, and so on). As a result the world has been in one of its most peaceful historical eras. Major world powers have not gone to war with each other for two main reasons: the first is American military dominance, and the second is the fear of a nuclear exchange. The former has been dealt a serious and probably lethal blow, and with respect to the latter nations are slowly becoming aware that nuclear weapons are basically unusable. Two countries with nuclear weapons can go to war against each other using conventional means because they know neither side can dare to risk a nuclear launch. Once one nation does launch the nukes, it’s over for both, so self-preservation means that unless it is an existential threat to the homeland, neither side will actually use nukes. This of course has its limits in wars against people who might be suicidal or incompetent enough to launch one (this perception has worked well for Pakistan and North Korea), but for the remaining powers, nuclear weapons are looking more and more useless.
This event will also trigger severe domestic unrest within the US, especially as the tools developed in Afghanistan are deployed internally and half of the American populace turns on the other half. America looks more and more as though it is entering a pre-revolutionary period, and the end result of that process will determine what role America will get to play in this new era. But there are a few ideological traps I want to briefly speak against.
Beware “Realpolitik” and “No more hypocrisy”
There has already been a bit of celebration in certain circles at America’s incompetent withdrawal. The weakening of the superpower may give other smaller countries some breathing room, after all. We can return to realpolitik, with nations looking out for themselves first and not beholden to some strange ideology that requires them to replicate their own values abroad.
Beware of any such celebration. Realpolitik was behind many decisions of midcentury America, above all those of Henry Kissinger. The competition with the Soviet Union was not just about spreading US or Soviet values. Each power was a destabilizing threat to the other’s interests. The US supported Suharto throughout his genocide because he was Our Guy—the US had a strategic need for alliance with Indonesia, and wanted to prevent Soviet influence. A million people died terribly, but a narrow focus on US interests concluded (at least for some in power) that support for Suharto was the right move. You can repeat this with US support and backing for Pinochet’s coup in Chile, and many others. The British destruction of the Indian textile industries, in order to create a larger export market for British products in its largest colony, was also realpolitik. An empire acting only in its own best interests is not necessarily better for the rest of the world than an empire acting to spread its ideology. Any delusion that a return to realpolitik presages better relations with regional powers comes only from people having lived so long in the shadow of American ideological imperialism that they have forgotten that the alternative wasn’t so good either.
Another argument in favor of nations and empires acting in their own naked self-interest is that at least there is no hypocrisy, and national goals are clear. This at least allows smaller nations to know what the score is and act accordingly. However, a lack of political hypocrisy is not necessarily good. Hypocrisy is the gap between one’s values and actions, and there are two ways to avoid it: The first is to close the gap by adjusting one’s actions to bring them in accord with one’s values; the second is to adjust one’s values so that they agree with one’s actions. The national agenda that lacks hypocrisy is one in which there is no value-action gap. This could be because both are perfectly ethical and something close to governmental utopia has been reached (something I consider unlikely), or it can be that the government has abandoned any transcendental values at all, or has bad values, or only acts in its own immediate material interests.3
The hypocritical gap between values and actions, especially if the values are in any way morally good, is very useful in promoting imperial change. Martin Luther King Jr’s demands upon the US government during the (African-American) Civil Rights Movement was directed precisely at this gap. You claim that all men are created equal, you celebrate liberal individualism and equality, but your actions do not measure up. In his own words:
When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
Do not be confused by my argument. Political hypocrisy is in no sense good. It is bad. However, unless you are willing to believe that political utopia has been achieved, it is useful. It is a lever against which demands for political change can push. That change may still not be easily accomplished, but by demonstrating a gap between stated values and political actions there is a greater chance for change. This is an opening used not only domestically, but also by foreign nations within the sphere of influence of the empire. With naked self-interest, there is no such gap, and petitions against power for policy change are much harder to accomplish.
Beware “Returning”
If some will celebrate the use of realpolitik and self-interest at the expense of hypocrisy, others will want to return things to the way they were at the height of Pax Americana. But this is impossible, and it will be dangerous to try.
The empowerment of China is a decades-long process brought about above all by US actions. Those actions cannot be undone and the clock of time cannot be rewound. But American dominance was also built in significant part upon the destruction of previous world powers in the aftermath of World War II. Separated by two oceans, American infrastructure was less damaged by that war than the European powers or Japan (and China meanwhile was going through a destructive civil war, one which concluded with a government that did perhaps even worse damage with the Great Leap Forward). This unprecedented material advantage has eroded slowly over the last century, as it must have done, unless the rest of the world was to remain impoverished forever in the aftermath of WWII. Even without America’s astonishing series of errors, the state of affairs in the second half of the 20th century was by its nature transient. It cannot be reconstituted.
But nostalgia is one hell of a drug. Doubtless, figures will arise seeking to reclaim a position of absolute American supremacy. Any attempt to do so without facing the changed facts of power in the 21st century will do more damage to the country, possibly leading it into a major conflict which it cannot possibly win, wasting still further resources. This is not a claim that America must lay down in front of every rising local hegemon, but that it must not still imagine itself the pre-eminent and unchallengeable power of the world. There are some struggles it can engage in, and others it would be wise to avoid. And there will no longer be a future where America decides the direction of the entire globe. The sooner the country can come to grips with this and reconfigure its political program in order to create its own sphere of influence and a set of attractive policies to ensure the continued development of itself and its allies and neighbors, the better. A relative retreat does not have to mean crashing decline and fall, but with intelligence and planning it can mean securing a region of relative stability and prosperity. If I were an emperor, I would first look to my Latin American neighbors and make every effort to repair those relationships, damaged over so many decades of US destruction in that part of the world, and pair that with a relentless focus on rebuilding domestic manufacturing and industrial power.
But the clock is ticking for a political reorientation focused on an American sphere rather than an American globe, and any attempts to regain past glories will only delay and damage the possibility of creating such a sphere of influence to ensure domestic stability and the development of reliable and stable allies. The hour is late and the nation has been busy burning international bridges it should’ve been maintaining, and the country is poised on the brink of serious domestic unrest. Whatever comes next, the botched departure from Afghanistan is the event which will signal coming changes in the 21st century.
And endless mission creep
This is not to say that other countries, like Israel, haven’t gotten involved in the lucrative business of war in Myanmar.
The proper Marxist will say that countries (always with some modifier like “bourgeois” or “capitalist”) always act in their own material interests, but this is historically untrue. The US, for instance, did not extract Rare Earth Elements from Afghanistan: It was not part of the ideological reasoning that sustained the occupation.