THE BIDEN DOCTRINE
It is now midnight, August 31, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The deadline for a mismanaged American withdrawal, arbitrarily set by President Joseph Biden and enforced by the terrorist Taliban, has arrived and the last American soldiers have departed. The Biden Doctrine collapsed on August 26, 2021, when suicide bombers penetrated or were allowed though the Taliban security cordon. Identified as Isis-K, who are radicalized Taliban, they detonated a bomb at the Abbey Gate of the Karzai Airport, murdering 13 Americans and hundreds of Afghans. President Biden emphasized his grief. But he affirmed his decision to abandon the strategic and secure Bagram Airbase. Furthermore, a fundamental axiom of military strategy is to take and hold the high ground, even in retreat. Moreover, the president held to his deadline and the vulnerable Karzai Airport as a single point of failure. This is a dangerous and defining moment for America.
NEW DARK AGE
For twenty years, and by their sacrifice, the armed forces of the United States allowed a generation of Americans to grow up without experiencing a terror attack on American soil. Likewise our forces, NATO allies and Afghan soldiers allowed a generation of Afghan children, especially girls, to grow up with an opportunity to experience the modern and civilized world. Furthermore, many Americans and allied civilians worked diligently for social and economic progress in Afghanistan. May their efforts be not in vain, as Afghanistan now slides back into a new dark age of medieval cruelty. May the people of Afghanistan again become free to join the community of civilized nations.
UNSOUND EXIT STRATEGY
The Biden Doctrine is now manifest with the unfolding and tragic debacle in Afghanistan. President Joseph Biden has defiantly followed through on his own longstanding foreign policy instincts and the ill-advised Taliban negotiation initiative of his predecessor to precipitously exit. But inexplicably, Mr. Biden did so without a sound exit strategy or enforcement of the conditions that Mr. Trump imposed on the medieval Taliban. The president withdrew troops before evacuating Americans and allies, or removing or destroying military equipment. The mismanaged retreat has abandoned thousands of Americans and allies behind enemy lines. The enemy has captured a trove of sophisticated weapons. Surrendering responsibility, Mr. Biden blames his predecessor and Afghan allies. However, this is as if Prime Minister Winston Churchill blamed Neville Chamberlain and Britain’s allies for Dunkirk. Americans, allies and adversaries have reason to question Mr. Biden’s state of mind and judgement, as they await his next critical decisions.
BEAUROCRATIC FAILURE
Mr. Biden’s entire chain of command, led by national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin come across as dumbfounded, dishonest and callous. While a distracted Mr. Blinken was inviting the UN Human Rights Commission, including enemies Iran and Cuba, to investigate “systemic racism” in America, his State Department was engaged in negotiations with the Taliban. These talks included Khairullah Khairkhwa, a key commander captured and jailed at Guantanamo Bay, but released by the Obama Administration in 2014. The five-prisoner release was made in exchange for infamous deserter Bo Bergdahl. Khairkhwa was also present when the Taliban seized the presidential palace in Kabul. Meanwhile, as Team Biden abandoned the essential and defensible Bagram Airbase, Mr. Austin’s “woke” Defense Department and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, were busy forcing critical race theory upon America’s military services.
RISK-AVERSE CHAIN OF COMMAND
It is reported that the military and intelligence services urged Mr. Biden against his present course of action. If true, Mr. Austin and Gen. Milley should resign. Biden’s cadre of Rhodes Scholar White House advisors appear incompetent. Meanwhile, what has happened is also the result of twenty-five years of rot in our senior military and diplomatic ranks. The entire risk-averse chain of command in Washington is dreadful. However, the atrophy of our politicized chain of command started during the Clinton years, accelerated under President Obama and has achieved its inevitable outcome with Mr. Biden. Therefore, the result is a Biden Doctrine that emboldens adversaries and compromises alliances. In Parliament, Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee who served in the British forces in Afghanistan, denounced Mr. Biden’s Afghan blame-game as “shameful.”
ADVERSARIES EMBOLDENED
China could not be more pleased with America’s humiliation. Moreover, having taken measure of the Biden Doctrine, the People’s Liberation Army will certainly advance their inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Beijing has already eagerly embraced the problematic Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. We now know that the president asked Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for permission to transfer American military and intelligence operations to other central Asian nations, and Mr. Putin rebuffed him. Meanwhile, Russia has mounted a cyber-attack against the American State and Defense Departments. However, Mr. Biden gave Mr. Putin a gift by approving the Nord Stream pipelines to Europe, cementing energy dependence upon Russia. But Mr. Biden simultaneously and inexplicably canceled the strategic Canadian and American Keystone pipeline. Is Mr. Biden deliberately trying to undermine American interests? What will he do when China moves to replace the American dollar as the world reserve currency?
NATO COMPROMISED
Despite Mr. Biden’s denial, he has compromised America’s relationships with its allies. Afghanistan was an operation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This was a fulfillment of NATO’s obligations after the Sept. 11 terror attack led to the first invocation of the Article 5, the mutual self-defense clause in NATO’s founding treaty. NATO has had a stake in preventing Afghanistan from collapsing into a failed state. NATO never expected an open-ended American commitment to Afghanistan. But America’s allies were justified in expecting that Mr. Biden would consult them. Therefore, the Biden Doctrine demonstrates that Mr. Biden’s supposedly grown-up liberal internationalists are as much in global retreat as Mr. Trump’s America First isolationists. German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly believes Mr. Biden withdrew from Afghanistan “for domestic political reasons.” Likewise, her potential successor, Armin Laschet, called the Afghan withdrawal “the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding.”
REALITY CHECK
Contrast Mr. Biden with President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Firstly, following the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK went before the American people and the world to take full responsibility. Moreover, the president did not blame his predecessor or Cuban exile allies. To be sure, the energetic JFK inherited the plan, although he hesitated, withdrew air support and doomed the invasion. However, he bravely owned it and the American people appreciated his candor. Moreover, JFK learned from his error of judgment and purged “yes men” from his administration. Mr. Biden would be wise to emulate JFK’s statesmanship. However, the feeble Mr. Biden refuses to take responsibility for the Afghanistan debacle or purge his cadre of Obama-era officials. As Mr. Biden withdraws, the fanatical Taliban go door-to-door, executing pro-American Afghans, torturing women and enslaving girls. Therefore, bold, pro-active action is imperative. Furthermore, the current president must level with the American people.
MORAL OBLIGATION
However, the nondescript career politician in Mr. Biden cannot continue look to public opinion polls for guidance or continue to deflect accountability with word games or contrived optics. Moreover, reliance upon “over the horizon” intelligence capability is debatable. To make matters worse, Mr. Biden has dangerously entrusted the Taliban to control the fate of the evacuation, and the terrorists have demanded compliance with Mr. Biden’s impracticable August 31 deadline. At a minimum, the commander-in-chief has a moral obligation to ensure that all American citizens are evacuated from anywhere in Afghanistan. Next, he must ensure the safety of Afghans who qualify for the Special Immigrant Visa, Afghan civil servants and journalists. Mr. Biden must unambiguously demand Taliban compliance, or else. But on August 24, the leader of the free world gave in to the contemptuous enemy command.
ENGAGE AND LEAD
But Mr. Biden must gather himself, engage and lead. He should have be prepared to extend the evacuation beyond his August 31 deadline and force Taliban compliance. Firstly, he must be willing to apply the full force of the American armed forces. Next, Washington and the civilized world must not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, but the amoral Beijing has and others will. The president can designate the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Mr. Biden must interdict the opium-dependent and criminally funded Taliban access to capital by freezing assets (90% held in the U. S.), although Beijing wants the assets released. For the moment, the clear and present course for Mr. Biden and the American government is to focus on competently saving lives, destroying equipment and incapacitating the co-mingled Taliban, Isis-K, Al Qaeda and Haqqani. Anything less is a dishonorable dereliction of duty.
BIDEN UNMASKED
Consequently, it is encouraging to witness the airlift professionalism of the U. S. Air Force and courage of Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel on the ground. To remove his predecessor, the Washington establishment and the media ardently endorsed and have continued to cocoon Mr. Biden. However, the Biden façade is now clearly unmasked. Given the evident stress of this serious situation, everyone must also be concerned about the president’s health and well-being. Furthermore, Afghanistan was never only a choice, as Mr. Biden describes, between withdrawal or escalation. Declining the opportunity to become a profile in courage, a flawed and diminished Joseph Robinette Biden has exposed America to forces far more dangerous than the Afghan warlords.
Dennis M. Spragg is the author of America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism and Glenn Miller Declassified, from the Potomac Books imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.