to fathom the disorder of the new world

The year 2021 is likely to go down in history as one of the most important years in the post-Cold War period. It is too early to say how the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will shape regional geopolitics in Asia and the great power competition between the United States and its competitors. But it is certainly one of those events that will have far-reaching effects on global politics. There are two major narratives about the American withdrawal. One is that the US left the country voluntarily because it is undertaking a major restructuring of its foreign policy. This argument defies any comparison between the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 and the withdrawal from Afghanistan this year. The second is that the US failed to win the war in Afghanistan and, as in the case of Vietnam, was forced to withdraw from the country. This author, who wrote in these pages in February 2019 that “the US has lost the Afghan war”, shares another view. The reorientation that is going on in US foreign policy focused on China certainly played a part in the Afghan withdrawal. But that doesn’t obscure the fact that the world’s most powerful military and economic power failed to win the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, even after fighting the Taliban for 20 years.

examples from history

Great powers experiencing military failures at the hands of weaker forces will create a perception of weakness if not great power fatigue, which will prompt both their allies and rivals to rethink their strategic assessments. There are enough examples of this in history. Take the post-war world. Britain, whose royal glory ended with World War II, took time to come to terms with that reality. Joined by France, it supported Israel’s misadventure in Suez in 1956, which was rejected only by the US and the Soviet Union. Despite making military advances, Anglo-French-Israeli troops had to retreat from Suez and Sinai in Egypt – a development that many historians believe marked the end of British influence in the region. Britain never got West Asia back.

In the 1970s, America’s withdrawal from Vietnam was read in Moscow as a vulnerable moment for the Western Bloc in the Cold War. This prompted the Soviet Union to act more aggressively. In 1978, Communists backed by the Soviet Union seized power in Kabul, and a year later, Moscow sent troops to Afghanistan, carried out a coup, and installed an ally in Kabul’s presidential palace. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, after failing to defeat the Mujahideen and Islamist guerrillas, backed by the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, dealt a fatal blow to Soviet power. Within months, communist rule in Eastern Europe began to crumble, eventually leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

This does not mean that the US faces an immediate threat to its superpower status. With unhindered access to the world’s two vast oceans and fixed borders and one continent under its command, the US is far more powerful and agile than the UK of 1956 and the Soviet Union of 1989. But the gradual erosion of America’s ability to shape geopolitics has consequences in far-flung areas that have already shaken the framework of American unipolarity. The Afghan withdrawal was not an isolated incident. In Iraq and Libya, it failed to establish political stability and order after the invasions. This did not stop Russia from taking Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In Syria, it was defeated by Vladimir Putin. In the end, the manner in which US troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power reinforced this notion of great power exhaustion and led US rivals to openly challenge the US-centric “rules-based order”. encouraged to give.

three challengers

Nearly four months after its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US already faces intense geopolitical competition from three of its rivals. Russia has amassed about 175,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Western intelligence agencies claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered an invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin sees, as Carnegie scholars observed, “as a Western aircraft carrier that was parked in southern Russia”. . Mr Putin has also backed Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on the refugee crisis at the EU’s Polish border. From the migrant crisis in Belarus to the mobilization of troops in Ukraine, Mr. Putin is certainly sending a message to the West that the region stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the eastern side of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a Russian one. Influence.

cut in West Asia. Iran, which has stepped up its nuclear program after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal, has refused to hold direct talks with the US Biden administration has promised to lift nuclear sanctions on Iran. The deal is done if the Islamic Republic returns. But Iran insists the US must first lift sanctions and assure that a future president will not violate the terms of the deal. As both sides hold on to their positions, efforts to revive the agreement through talks in Vienna have hit a stone wall, which risks collapse.

Enter the South China Sea. China is sending dozens of fighter jets into the so-called Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone on an almost weekly basis, prompting speculation whether Beijing is considering taking the self-ruled island by force. As the US tries to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific to deal with the rise of China (Mr Biden within two weeks of the US Afghan pull-out AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US – Tripartite Security Agreement Announced) China is becoming more and more vocal in its quest for strategic depth.

hard choice

America is faced with tough choices. The axis of Asia has limited America’s options elsewhere. Take, for example, what the US can do to prevent Mr. Putin from taking the next military step in Europe. Mr Biden has ruled out a military confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. The US and its European allies can impose tough sanctions on Russia. But sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 did little to stop Mr. Putin from taking further military action. The economic sanctions would also further push Russia into the Chinese embrace, bolstering the Eurasian partnership, which the US saw as a significant challenge to American interests during the Cold War. As far as Iran is concerned, if the US blinks first and lifts sanctions, it could be read as another sign of weakness. If this does not happen and if the Vienna negotiations fail, Iran could continue to enrich uranium to high purity, achieving the status of a de facto nuclear power without a bomb (like Japan), which is the key to West Asia. against the stated goals of the US.

The withdrawal of Afghanistan and the decline in West Asia are a sign that America’s strategic focus has shifted to China. Ideally, the US would prefer not to engage in another conflict as new Cold War frameworks are taking shape – this explains its reluctance to use harsh power. But the inconclusive wars America has fought in recent years and the associated great power fatigue have opened up space for its regional rivals, who are trying to maximize their influence, triggering even more conflicts. even at the risk of. This transition from US unipolarity to something unknown has put the US in a strategic dilemma: whether it should focus on China, preparing itself for the next bipolar competition; Or continue to act as the global policeman of the liberal order that is under attack from multiple fronts?

stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in