Biden's retreat: world without a world policeman

It has long been clear that the adage that the Taliban in Afghanistan have quoted over and over again in recent years would come true.

“You have the clocks.

We have the time. ”The United States and the West failed at the Hindu Kush - because of strategic mistakes, because of a lack of consistency, but also because of their own claims.

Not only in the past few months it was only a matter of retreating while protecting your face as possible.

American President Joe Biden has even given up on this minimal target. The way in which he brings his soldiers home brings back gloomy memories: In a night-and-fog operation, the central air force base in Bagram is abandoned. The Americans responded to the advance of the Taliban and the conquest of several provincial capitals with more symbolic bombings from the air. The Commander-in-Chief does not allow himself to be deterred. Instead of rethinking the withdrawal plan because the Afghan armed forces obviously have nothing to oppose the Taliban, the commander in chief replied: No, over twenty years they have invested a trillion dollars in the country, equipping and training 300,000 Afghan security forces and paying a heavy toll. Now the Afghans have to defend themselves.You can't say it more honestly.

Biden did not want to accept comparisons with Vietnam. After all, Al-Qaeda had been defeated and Afghanistan was no longer the basis for international terrorism. But Washington lost this war too on two fronts: in the asymmetrical battles with the Islamists and on the home front. America has long been tired of war. The last three presidents were also elected for their promise to end the endless wars.

The political crisis in the United States, which is not over even after the change in power in the White House, certainly has many causes. But one can be found in what the political scientist Richard Haass called “overreach”. America overran itself after September 11, 2001: because it ideally inflated the legitimate defense of its national interests in Afghanistan and because it believed it could use the opportunity to help regulate the Middle East crisis arc through Iraq.

The Republicans' foreign policy hawks were able to keep their President Donald Trump from turning their backs entirely on Afghanistan.

In the Pentagon, too, they were on the brakes and slowed down the withdrawal of the troops.

Biden is not tamed by anyone.

His priority is to heal America.

That is understandable.

But his policy has a price.

He is not responsible for the defeat in Afghanistan.

But his presidency will remain associated with the humiliating images of the withdrawal.

After the "overreach" now the "underreach"

It is not without irony that the internationalist Biden is now following the “overreach” with an “underreach”.

The end of the war in the Hindu Kush is not only a turning point for Afghanistan and America, including those nations that, like the Germans, had soldiers stationed in the country to the end.

It is a turning point for international politics as a whole.

America is unlikely to be ready for military intervention for decades.

There will certainly still be selective operations to defend immediate national interests - Biden has already ordered them.

But long-term stabilization missions?

Or even humanitarian interventions?

America is no longer willing to pay the price that is being asked of a superpower.

Europe as its own center of power?

That will please all those in the West who have always considered America's claim, as the prevailing superpower of the Cold War, to maintain the world order militarily if necessary, for the cover-up of crude politics of interests and have demonized the world police accordingly. Some will now even see the time for a “multipolar world” in which Europe will finally appear as its own center of power. If only it were one.

There is more to it.

Because others are happy too.

Moscow and Beijing have observed closely how Washington found it increasingly difficult to legitimize its international claim nationally.

Ever since Barack Obama's hesitation to intervene in Syria after the Assad regime had used chemical weapons, it should be clear to everyone that non-decisions are also decisions: Russian influence in Syria has grown since then.

In Taiwan, for example, the Taliban's advance is likely to be worried.

For China, the centuries in which the West rather than the Middle Kingdom dominated the world are a short span of time.

In a slightly modified version of the proverb, one could say in Beijing: We have the time.

And we have 5G technology.