The abrupt disappearance of a familiar world leaves a sense of unreality in those who witness it. When an unhinged rabble stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC in January, it was hard to believe the scenes broadcast across the world were happening. A similar sense of disbelief is produced by images of American and allied forces struggling to extract their citizens and partners from the grip of a triumphant Taliban in Afghanistan. The two events are part of the same process of disintegration. The disorder that has been loosed on the world reflects the disorder that reigns in the United States itself.
There are many who think Joe Biden’s decision to accept the Afghanistan withdrawal plan negotiated by Donald Trump in Doha in February 2020 was simply a default in leadership. Biden should have disowned Trump’s deal, or delayed its implementation until conditions looked more propitious. The US’s retreat was needless, and the decline of American power can be reversed by an act of will. It is not only a shrunken army of neoconservatives, seething in their Washington bunkers, who think this way. So does Tony Blair when he fulminates against Biden’s “imbecilic” decision.
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