Fall of Afghanistan: Britain must learn to make itself independent from the US on foreign policy decisions
It will be a sight etched into the public imagination forever: a US Air Force transport aircraft taking off with scores of Afghans clinging to the wheels. Some reached a significant altitude before falling off, presumably to their deaths, as the aircraft soared into the air. So ended the Allied intervention in Afghanistan, with the Taliban back in charge, as it had been prior to the attempted liberation of the country by American and British forces, starting in October 2001.
It was always inevitable that the UK and US would leave Afghanistan, but it was never inevitable that the Americans would simply cut and run, handing victory to the Taliban on a plate. Although planned by Donald Trump last year, the ultimate decision was Joe Biden’s, taken with minimum coordination with leading allies – including the UK, one of the most important to the intervention in Afghanistan.
Over 400 British personnel have been killed fighting to erase jihadi terrorists from the country and to help rebuild a better Afghanistan in a conflict lasting almost 20 years, costing some £40 billion – almost a full year’s worth of British defence spending.
Tom Tugendhat, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, has described the withdrawal as the greatest foreign policy blunder since Suez. He is right. In the wake of Suez, Britain was forced to grapple with its position as a waning superpower. As Britain withdraws its final personnel from Afghanistan, will we learn the right lessons?
The path of least resistance for the UK would be to denounce the intervention as doomed from the start and lapse into a lazy “realist” isolationism. This would be a mistake and one which would delight the ruling kleptocracies in Russia and China who have watched the humiliating withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan.
If the lesson the UK learnt from the Suez crisis of 1956 was that it is impossible to act when the US is diametrically opposed, the lesson Britain should learn from Afghanistan today is that it needs the means to act when the US disengages or has other priorities.
Could the UK really have made a difference? It’s unlikely. Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, has correctly stated that it would be “arrogant” for Britain to imagine that it could unilaterally intervene in Afghanistan.
But there are many options short of unilateral military action. With a stronger and more dynamic military, the Government would have had more options, including inspiring a committed group of allies to take action without the US. In the case of Afghanistan, this hypothetical coalition could have chosen to withdraw more carefully and slowly once the US decided it was time to leave.
For Afghanistan, such action is too late. It is not too late to start planning for the “intensifying geopolitical competition” of tomorrow, as the Integrated Review puts it. As the US continues to evolve domestically and geostrategically, not least to compete with China, it may take additional decisions that run against British interests. Under those circumstances, the UK would be forced once again to accept US decisions for lack of any alternative.
Britain does not need to be a new America in order to lead alliances which can deter or take meaningful action. Other than the US, the UK is the only other democracy in the world with the strategic knowledge, military reach, and operational capacity to inspire, form and lead coalitions of free and open countries.
So, if the US decision to withdrawal from Afghanistan is a new Suez moment for the UK, ministers need to learn the right lessons from the debacle. In this more competitive era, “Global Britain” needs a stronger military and new allies. With the increases in defence spending announced last year, Boris Johnson has already taken the first step.