NEW YORK – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country. His government has collapsed as Taliban fighters enter Kabul. Bringing back memories of the ignominious fall of Saigon in 1975, two decades of America’s military presence in Afghanistan has vanished in a matter of weeks. How did it come to this?

There are wars of necessity, including World War II and the 1990-91 Gulf War. These are wars in which military force is employed because it is deemed to be the best and often only way to protect vital national interests. There also are wars of choice, such as the Vietnam and 2003 Iraq wars, in which a country goes to war even though the interests at stake are less than vital and there are nonmilitary tools that can be employed.

Now, it seems, there are also withdrawals of choice, when a government removes troops that it could have left in a theater of operation. It does not withdraw troops because their mission has been accomplished, or their presence has become untenable, or they are no longer welcomed by the host government. None of these conditions applied to the situation the United States found itself in Afghanistan at the start of President Joe Biden’s administration. Withdrawal was a choice, and, as is often true of wars of choice, the results promise to be tragic.

American troops first went to Afghanistan 20 years ago to fight alongside Afghan tribes seeking to oust the Taliban government that harbored al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the US. The Taliban were soon on the run, although many of its leaders escaped to Pakistan, where over time they reconstituted themselves and resumed the fight against the Afghan government.

Troop numbers increased over the years – at one point during Barack Obama’s presidency to over 110,000 – as US ambitions in Afghanistan expanded. The cost was enormous: an estimated $2 trillion and close to 2,500 American lives, over 1,100 lives of its coalition partners, as well as up to 70,000 Afghan military casualties and nearly 50,000 civilian deaths. The results, however, were modest: while an elected Afghan government (unique in the country’s history) controlled the big cities, its grip on power remained tenuous, and the Taliban regained control over many smaller towns and villages.

The US intervention in Afghanistan was a classic case of overreach, a limited war of necessity initiated in 2001 that morphed over the years into a costly war of choice. But by the time Biden assumed the presidency, overreach was a thing of the past. American troop levels were down to around 3,000; their role was largely limited to training, advising, and supporting the Afghan forces. There had not been an American combat fatality in Afghanistan since February 2020. The modest US presence was both an anchor for some 8,500 troops from allied countries and a military and psychological backstop for the Afghan government.

In the US, Afghanistan had largely faded as an issue. Americans did not vote in the 2020 presidential election with the country in mind and were not marching in the streets protesting US policy there. After 20 years, the US had reached a level of limited involvement commensurate with the stakes. Its presence would not lead to military victory or peace, but it would avert the collapse of a government that, however imperfect, was far preferable to the alternative that is now taking power. Sometimes what matters in foreign policy is not what you can accomplish but what you can avoid. Afghanistan was such a case.

But this was not US policy. Biden was working from a script inherited from the administration of Donald Trump, which in February 2020 signed an accord with the Taliban (cutting out the government of Afghanistan in the process) that set a May 2021 deadline for the withdrawal of US combat troops. The agreement did not oblige the Taliban to disarm or commit to a ceasefire, but only to agree not to host terrorist groups on Afghan territory. It was not a peace agreement but a pact that provided a fig leaf, and a thin one at that, for American withdrawal.

The Biden administration has honored this deeply flawed agreement in every way but one: the deadline for full US military withdrawal was extended by just over three months. Biden rejected any policy that would have tied US troop withdrawal to conditions on the ground or additional Taliban actions. Instead, fearing a scenario in which security conditions deteriorated and created pressure to take the politically unpopular step of redeploying troops, Biden simply removed all US forces.

As was widely predicted, momentum dramatically shifted to the Taliban and away from the dispirited government after the announced (and now actual) US military departure. With the Taliban taking control of all of Afghanistan, widespread reprisals, harsh repression of women and girls, and massive refugee flows are a near certainty. Preventing terrorist groups from returning to the country will prove far more difficult without an in-country presence.

Over time, there is the added danger that the Taliban will seek to extend their writ to much of Pakistan. If so, it would be hard to miss the irony, as it was Pakistan’s provision of a sanctuary to the Taliban for so many years that allowed it to wage war. Now, in a modern-day version of Frankenstein, it is possible that Afghanistan will become a sanctuary for taking the war to Pakistan – potentially a nightmare scenario, given Pakistan’s fragility, large population, nuclear arsenal, and history of war with India.

The hasty and poorly planned US withdrawal may not even provide sufficient time to evacuate now-vulnerable Afghans who worked with the US and Afghan governments. Beyond the local consequences, the grim aftermath of America’s strategic and moral failure will reinforce questions about US reliability among friends and foes far and wide.

Biden was recently asked if he harbored any regrets about his decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. He replied that he did not. He should.

NEW DELHI — The terrorist takeover of Afghanistan, following President Joe Biden’s precipitous and bungling military exit, has brought an ignoble end to America’s longest war. This is a watershed moment that will be remembered for formalizing the end of the long-fraying Pax Americana and bringing down the curtain on the West’s long ascendancy.

At a time when its global preeminence was already being severely challenged by China, the United States may never recover from the blow this strategic and humanitarian disaster delivers to its international credibility and standing. The message it delivers to US allies is that they count on America’s support when they most need it at their own peril.

After all, the Afghanistan catastrophe unfolded after the US threw its ally – the Afghan government – under the bus and got into bed with the world’s deadliest terrorists, the Taliban. President Donald Trump first struck a Faustian bargain with them, and then the Biden administration rushed to execute the military exit dictated by the deal, even though the Taliban had been openly violating the agreement.

The dramatic collapse of the Afghan defenses and then the government was directly linked to the US betrayal. Biden admits Trump “drew US forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500” in Afghanistan. By refusing to retain that small military footprint and by ordering a rapid exit at the onset of the annual fighting season, Biden pulled the rug out from under the Afghan military’s feet, thus facilitating the Taliban’s sweep.

The US had trained and equipped the Afghan forces not to play an independent role but to rely on American and NATO capabilities for a host of battlefield imperatives – from close air support, including drones for situational awareness, to keeping US-supplied weapon systems operational. Biden’s calamitous troop pullout without a transition plan to sustain the Afghans’ combat capabilities unleashed a domino effect, with 8,500 NATO forces and some 18,000 US military contractors also withdrawing and leaving the Afghan military in the lurch.

As former CIA Director General David Petraeus has explained, ever since US combat operations in Afghanistan ended on January 1, 2015, Afghan soldiers had been bravely “fighting and dying for their country” until the US suddenly ditched them this summer, mortally compromising Afghan defenses. This assessment is reinforced by the number of military deaths: Since the US combat role ended more than six and a half years ago, Afghan security forces lost tens of thousands of soldiers, while the Americans suffered just 99 fatalities, many in non-hostile incidents.

This is not the first time the US has dumped its allies – or even the first time in recent memory. In the fall of 2019, the US abruptly abandoned its Kurdish allies in northern Syria, leaving them at the mercy of a Turkish offensive.

But in Afghanistan, the US sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Its self-inflicted defeat and humiliation have resulted from a failure of political, not military, leadership. Biden, ignoring conditions on the ground, overruled his top military generals in April and ordered all US troops to return home. Now, two decades of American war in Afghanistan have culminated with the enemy riding triumphantly back to power.

Whereas 58,220 Americans (largely draftees) were killed in Vietnam, 2,448 US soldiers (all volunteers) died over the course of 20 years in Afghanistan. Yet, the geopolitical implications of the US defeat in Afghanistan are much more significant globally than the American defeat in Vietnam.

The Pakistan-reared Taliban may not have a global mission, but their militaristic theology of violent Islamism makes them a critical link in an international jihadist movement that whips hostility toward non-Sunni Muslims into nihilistic rage against modernity. The Taliban’s recapture of power will energize and embolden other violent groups in this movement, helping to deliver the rebirth of global terror.

In the Taliban’s emirate, al-Qaeda, remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS), and Pakistani terrorist groups are all likely to find sanctuary. According to a recent United Nations Security Council report, “the Taliban and al-Qaida remain closely aligned” and cooperate through the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network, a front for Pakistani intelligence.

The unraveling of the effort to build a democratic, secular Afghanistan will pose a far greater threat to the free world than Syria’s meltdown, which triggered a huge flow of refugees to Europe and allowed ISIS to declare a caliphate and extend it into Iraq. The Taliban’s absolute power in Afghanistan will sooner or later threaten US security interests at home and abroad.

By contrast, China’s interests will be aided by the Taliban’s defeat of the world’s most powerful military. The exit of a vanquished America creates greater space for China’s coercion and expansionism, including against Taiwan, while underscoring the irreversible decline of US power.

An opportunistic China is certain to exploit the new opening to make strategic inroads into mineral-rich Afghanistan and deepen its penetration of Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia. To co-opt the Taliban, with which it has maintained longstanding ties, China has already dangled the prospect of providing the two things the militia needs to govern Afghanistan: diplomatic recognition and much-needed infrastructure and economic assistance.

The reconstitution of a medieval, ultra-conservative, jihad-extolling emirate in Afghanistan will be a monument to US perfidy. And the images of Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters transporting Americans from the US embassy compound in Kabul, recalling the frenzied evacuation from Saigon in 1975, will serve as a testament to America’s loss of credibility – and the world’s loss of Pax Americana.

WASHINGTON, DC – It has been excruciating to watch the Taliban roll across Afghanistan, undoing in a matter of months two decades of efforts by the Afghan people and the international community to build a decent, secure, and functioning state. The Taliban effectively wrapped up its stunning sweep of the country on Sunday, moving into Kabul and prompting President Ashraf Ghani to flee.

The Taliban’s virtually uncontested takeover over Afghanistan raises obvious questions about the wisdom of US President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US and coalition forces from the country. Paradoxically, however, the rapidity and ease of the Taliban’s advance only reaffirms that Biden made the right decision – and that he should not reverse course.

The ineffectiveness and collapse of Afghanistan’s military and governing institutions largely substantiates Biden’s skepticism that US-led efforts to prop up the government in Kabul would ever enable it to stand on its own feet. The international community has spent nearly 20 years, many thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars to do good by Afghanistan – taking down al-Qaeda; beating back the Taliban; supporting, advising, training, and equipping the Afghan military; bolstering governing institutions; and investing in the country’s civil society.

Significant progress was made, but not enough. As the Taliban’s speedy advance has revealed, even two decades of steady support failed to create Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.

That is because the mission was fatally flawed from the outset. It was a fool’s errand to try to turn Afghanistan into a centralized, unitary state. The country’s difficult topography, ethnic complexity, and tribal and local loyalties produce enduring political fragmentation. Its troubled neighborhood and hostility to outside interference make foreign intervention perilous.

These inescapable conditions ensured that any effort to turn Afghanistan into a modern state would fail. Biden made the tough and correct choice to withdraw and end a losing effort in search of an unattainable goal.

The case for withdrawal is also buttressed by the reality that even if the United States has fallen short on the nation-building front, it has achieved its primary strategic goal: preventing future attacks on America or its allies from Afghan territory. The US and its coalition partners have decimated al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The same goes for the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, which has demonstrated no ability to carry out transnational attacks from Afghanistan.

In the meantime, the US has built a global network of partners with which to fight terrorism worldwide, share relevant intelligence, and jointly boost domestic defenses against terrorist attacks. The US and its allies are today much harder targets than they were on September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda has not been able to carry out a major overseas attack since the bombings in London in 2005.

There is of course no guarantee that the Taliban will not again provide safe harbor to al-Qaeda or similar groups. But that outcome is highly unlikely. The Taliban has been doing just fine on its own and has little reason to revive its partnership with the likes of al-Qaeda. The Taliban will also want to maintain a measure of international legitimacy and support, likely quashing any temptation to host groups seeking to organize terrorist attacks against foreign powers. Moreover, those groups have little incentive to seek to regroup in Afghanistan when they can do so more easily elsewhere.

Finally, Biden is right to stand by his decision to end the military mission in Afghanistan, because doing so is consistent with the will of the American electorate. Most of the American public, Democrats and Republicans alike, has lost patience with the “forever wars” in the Middle East. The illiberal populism that led to Donald Trump’s election (and near re-election) emerged in part as a response to perceived American overreach in the broader Middle East. Against a backdrop of decades of economic discontent among US workers, recently exacerbated by the devastating impact of the pandemic, voters want their tax dollars to go to Kansas, not Kandahar.

The success of Biden’s effort to repair American democracy depends principally on delivering domestic investment; the infrastructure and social policy bills now moving through Congress are critical steps in the right direction. But foreign policy also matters. When Biden pledges to pursue a “foreign policy for the middle class,” he needs to deliver by pursuing a brand of statecraft that enjoys the backing of the American public.

Afghanistan deserves the support of the international community for the foreseeable future. But the US-led military mission has run its course. Sadly, the best the international community can do for now is help alleviate humanitarian suffering and press Afghans to look to diplomacy, compromise, and restraint as their country now searches for a peaceful and stable political equilibrium.

LONDON – There is only one good thing about the fact that the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks will take place less than a month after the Taliban have re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It will serve as a reminder of why it was necessary to invade the country and topple the Taliban government two decades ago.

When nearly 3,000 people are slaughtered on your soil in an operation planned and ordered by a known terrorist group residing in a country whose government refuses to cooperate in bringing that group and its leader to justice, there are no good options. The retaliatory attack on Afghanistan was the only time Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, under which signatories agree to consider an attack on one as an attack on all, was invoked. The United States-led invasion was widely supported; unlike the invasion of Iraq two years later, only a few countries condemned or opposed it.

For these reasons, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will be an even more somber occasion than usual. Alongside the terrible memories of that day will now stand a powerful sense of two decades of failure in Afghanistan, of the betrayal of all those Afghans who had become convinced that they could live in a freer and somewhat more prosperous country, and of a major blow to the international credibility of America, NATO, and President Joe Biden personally. But while most of the recrimination focuses on what has and has not been done in Afghanistan, the real failure since September 2001 has been regional. And that failure centers on Pakistan.

David Frum, who was writing President George W. Bush’s foreign-policy speeches in 2001-02, has commented that if the US-led invasion had achieved its primary goal of killing or capturing Osama bin Laden in December 2001, the story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan would have ended very differently: a faster withdrawal and handover to some sort of new Afghan government, and no long-term commitment. We can’t know whether this counterfactual is true, but his point does highlight an overlooked issue in the aftermath of the Afghanistan debacle.

For nearly a decade, until he was killed by US Special Forces in 2011, bin Laden hid in Pakistan, and not simply the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the government’s writ hardly ran. He was in Abbottabad, a mid-size city just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, and home to the Pakistan Military Academy.

Moreover, while some Taliban leaders decamped to Qatar after being driven from power, most based themselves in Pakistan, with the backing and apparent blessing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The fact that the Taliban still existed as an opposition group with whom President Donald Trump’s administration negotiated its exit deal last year is largely due to Pakistani support.

The biggest failure in the aftermath of 9/11 was the failure to secure long-term support from the front-line states surrounding Afghanistan: Iran, China, Russia, Central Asia’s five “Stans,” and India, but above all Pakistan. To be sure, support would never have been forthcoming from some of them. But Pakistan had long been a recipient of American aid, military and otherwise, and was considered a US ally during the Cold War. The fact that it was also snuggling up to China, and that its nuclear-weapons program benefited from Chinese support and technology, ought to have been viewed as an indicator of its slight commitment to the American camp.

It would never have been easy for the US to achieve sufficient leverage over Pakistan after 2001 to stand a chance of securing long-term stability in Afghanistan, especially at a time when Pakistan and India were at military loggerheads, which in 2001-02 fueled plausible fears of nuclear war. Moreover, during this period, a major goal of US foreign policy was to establish a closer relationship with India (leading to the 2005 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement), in large part to offset against China’s rising power in the Indo-Pacific. These ties are now the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, through an enhanced role for the “Quad” countries (India, Japan, Australia, and the US).

With hindsight, we ought to see that the key mistake of the period lay in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address when, using Frum’s words, he described America’s enemies as an “axis of evil.” None of the three countries he accused of being state sponsors of terrorism – Iran, Iraq, and North Korea – is responsible for America’s failure in Afghanistan and for the return of the Taliban.

The blame for that lies largely with Pakistan and America’s inability to bring the country onside. Even if the US had not diverted its attention and resources to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that failure would have doomed its policy in Afghanistan.

To say this is not to divert attention from the more immediate and tragic failures – the moral lapses and indications of incompetent planning that are not a new feature of America’s international engagement. As the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman has put it, there can now be no real doubt that we are living in a post-American world. When Fareed Zakaria published a book with that title in 2008, months before that year’s financial crash, many believed it to be premature. Now it looks prescient.

NEW YORK – The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in US policymakers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical.

Almost every modern US military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the US fought in Indochina – Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – eventually withdrawing in defeat after a decade of grotesque carnage. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon, share the blame.

In roughly the same years, the US installed dictators throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, with disastrous consequences that lasted decades. Think of the Mobutu dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, or of General Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military junta in Chile after the US-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

In the 1980s, the US under Ronald Reagan ravaged Central America in proxy wars to forestall or topple leftist governments. The region still has not healed.

Since 1979, the Middle East and Western Asia have felt the brunt of US foreign policy’s foolishness and cruelty. The Afghanistan war started 42 years ago, in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter’s administration covertly supported Islamic jihadists to fight a Soviet-backed regime. Soon, the CIA-backed mujahedeen helped to provoke a Soviet invasion, trapping the Soviet Union in a debilitating conflict, while pushing Afghanistan into what became a forty-year-long downward spiral of violence and bloodshed.

Across the region, US foreign policy produced growing mayhem. In response to the 1979 toppling of the Shah of Iran (another US-installed dictator), the Reagan administration armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. Mass bloodshed and US-backed chemical warfare ensued. This bloody episode was followed by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and then two US-led Gulf Wars, in 1990 and 2003.

The latest round of the Afghan tragedy began in 2001. Barely a month after the terror attacks of September 11, President George W. Bush ordered a US-led invasion to overthrow the Islamic jihadists that the US had backed previously. His Democratic successor, President Barack Obama, not only continued the war and added more troops, but also ordered the CIA to work with Saudi Arabia to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading to a vicious Syrian civil war that continues to this day. As if that was not enough, Obama ordered NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, inciting a decade of instability in that country and its neighbors (including Mali, which has been destabilized by inflows of fighters and weapons from Libya).

What these cases have in common is not just policy failure. Underlying all of them is the US foreign-policy establishment’s belief that the solution to every political challenge is military intervention or CIA-backed destabilization.

That belief speaks to the US foreign-policy elite’s utter disregard of other countries’ desire to escape grinding poverty. Most US military and CIA interventions have occurred in countries that are struggling to overcome severe economic deprivation. Yet instead of alleviating suffering and winning public support, the US typically blows up the small amount of infrastructure the country possesses, while causing the educated professionals to flee for their lives.

Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the US invested roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the US few hearts and minds.

Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan. That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.”

In short, less than 2% of the US spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The US could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation. Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%.

The US should never have intervened militarily in Afghanistan – not in 1979, nor in 2001, and not for the 20 years since. But once there, the US could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like. Such humane investments – especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank – would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars.

Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt.

In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the US mass media is, predictably, blaming the US failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the US has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand.

LONDON – By hastily withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden has made a grave mistake, or so many argue. US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example, has called the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country an “even worse sequel to the humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975.” That sequel, top US generals, conservatives, and even some liberals predict, will be characterized by the resurgence of transnational terrorism.

The prediction is straightforward. As an Islamist militant group, the Taliban will inevitably provide al-Qaeda – and potentially other extremist groups, such as the Islamic State (ISIS) – with a sanctuary to recruit, train, and plan attacks against the West. By next month, McConnell warns, al-Qaeda and the Taliban will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by “burning down [the US] embassy in Kabul.”

But there is a flaw in this assessment: it assumes that there is not much daylight between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In reality, while the two groups do share a similar religious ideology and worldview, they have very different objectives.

The Taliban aims to establish a theocracy, or Islamic Emirate, in Afghanistan, but has indicated no ambition to expand beyond that country’s borders. By contrast, al-Qaeda has no national identity, nor does it recognize borders. It is a borderless movement, with branches in scores of countries worldwide, that seeks to spread its ideology near and far by any means, including violence.

It is also worth noting that al-Qaeda is a shadow of its former self. Relentless US attacks have substantially degraded its ability to mount major attacks against Western targets from either Afghanistan or Pakistan. It now lacks the necessary operational capabilities. Meanwhile, transnational jihadism had metastasized well beyond Afghanistan, throughout the Middle East and into Africa and South Asia.

One might counter that, with sanctuary from the Taliban, al-Qaeda could rebuild in Afghanistan. This possibility, and the security threat it poses to the West, should not be ruled out. But, for now, the group lacks the charismatic leadership and skilled cadres it would need to restore and reinvigorate its ranks. It is not even clear whether Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s current (divisive) leader, is alive.

More important, the Taliban are unlikely to allow al-Qaeda to establish new bases in the country immediately. At last February’s talks with then-US President Donald Trump’s administration in Doha, they promised as much, declaring that they would not allow al-Qaeda or other militants to operate in areas they controlled.

This was not mere appeasement. The Taliban were describing a course of action that was – and remains – in their own interest. Over the past year, the Taliban have pursued a diplomatic “charm offensive,” talking to their bitter foes, including the Americans, Russians, and Iranians. They want to cement their control of Afghanistan and gain international recognition and legitimacy.

Hosting al-Qaeda would not advance these objectives. On the contrary, it was al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, that sent the Taliban into exile in the first place. They may be back in power, but it took 20 years, and they are not about to risk what they have regained.

This is not to say that there is nothing to worry about. While the Taliban’s impressive military victory implies discipline and coherence, the movement is not politically monolithic. Rather, it comprises competing factions and clans. So, there is always the risk that some elements of the Taliban could link up with al-Qaeda and other radical groups in Pakistan.

There is a precedent for this. In the late 1990s, a majority of the Taliban consultative council (its executive body) voted to expel al-Qaeda and its then-leader, Osama bin Laden, from Afghanistan, in response to international pressure. Yet the head of the movement, Mullah Omar, decided to allow bin Laden to remain, demanding only that he desist from launching attacks from Afghanistan. As the world clearly saw on 9/11, the wily Saudi played his Afghan host for a fool.

So, while the Taliban is unlikely to welcome al-Qaeda with open arms, the terrorist group does have some chance of benefiting from the Taliban’s return to power. The same cannot be said of ISIS, which the Taliban fiercely opposes. In fact, the Taliban has waged a war against ISIS in the areas under its control, to neutralize any potential threat to its domination of the country.

The world should not ignore the risk that Afghanistan could become a breeding ground for international terrorism. But nor should it be so fixated on this prospect – which is far less likely than many seem to believe – that it neglects the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding before our eyes. Images of desperate Afghans clamoring to get onto flights out of Kabul and stories of women being forced from their jobs – or worse – by Taliban fighters make it all too clear that the US and its allies have abandoned the people of Afghanistan, leaving them at the mercy of a brutal and repressive movement.

America’s 20-year-old “War on Terror” is the greatest strategic disaster in the country’s modern history. It should never have been fought. And while the US has decided to cut its losses, Afghans will continue to pay an ever-higher price for it.

LONDON – This month marks the 50th anniversary of the end the Bretton Woods system, when US President Richard Nixon suspended the US dollar’s convertibility into gold and allowed it to float. We are also approaching the 20th anniversary of the Taliban’s removal from power in Afghanistan at the hands of US-led coalition forces. Now that the Taliban has again prevailed, we should consider whether its victory over the world’s most powerful military and largest economy will have any implications for the dollar and its role in the world.

Looking back over the 50 years since Nixon closed the gold window (39 of which I spent being professionally engaged in financial markets), the biggest takeaway is that the floating-exchange-rate system, and the dollar’s dominant role in it, has turned out to be more robust than initially expected. Even knowing what we know now about the evolution of the world economy, most experts would have doubted that the system could survive for as long as it has.

Given this resilience, it is tempting to dismiss America’s failure in Afghanistan as inconsequential for the dollar. After all, the greenback weathered the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the debacle in Iraq following the US invasion in 2003. Why should this time be any different? Ultimately, the answer depends on one’s expectations about the evolution of the world economy and the behavior of its principal financial players, namely China and the European Union.

To understand the dollar’s prospects, consider three key reasons why the current system has persisted. First, most countries did not choose to have their currencies float freely against the dollar. Even though more countries have floated their currencies in recent decades, others have maintained fixed exchange rates, devised their own regional exchange-rate relationships, or launched a common currency – as in the case of the euro.

Second, and on a related note, the few countries that had enough economic heft to influence the global monetary system – Japan, Germany (previously West Germany), and, more recently, China – made a conscious decision not to do so. True, the German Deutsche Mark played a regional role from 1973 until the establishment of the European Monetary Union in 1992 and the introduction of the euro in 1999. But beyond that, Germany consistently took steps to keep its currency from assuming a larger global role.

Moreover, German authorities have persistently opposed the idea of pan-European bonds (notwithstanding the EU’s decision last year to launch a COVID-19 recovery fund based on mutualized debt obligations). Without a common budget, the euro will always be held back from competing with the dollar or playing a much bigger role in the world financial system.

As for Japan, it never showed any interest in a global role for the yen, even in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was fashionable to believe that the Japanese economy would catch up to that of the United States.

Finally, despite its frequent objections to the current global monetary system, China has long been reluctant to expand the renminbi’s footprint in financial markets – both internally and internationally. Instead, China has indicated occasionally that it would prefer a global monetary order centered more around the special drawing rights (SDRs), the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset, whose value is based on a basket of five currencies (the US dollar, the euro, the renminbi, the yen, and the British pound).

This idea has some appeal, especially in terms of global fairness. But it would be difficult to implement in practice. Not only would it depend on China allowing for more free use of the renminbi; an SDR-based monetary system also would have to be embraced by the US, which is probably a non-starter – at least for now.

That brings us to the third reason why the current system has lasted: the US wanted it to. As we saw during Donald Trump’s presidency, the US enjoys the benefits conferred by issuing the dominant global currency, not least its potential as a tool for pursuing diplomatic and security objectives. The Trump administration’s use of secondary sanctions against countries that did business with Iran was a perfect example of this. If current or future US leaders choose to use the dollar’s dominance in a similar fashion – perhaps against countries doing business with a hostile Afghanistan – that could have a significant bearing on the currency’s future.

While the world marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, the IMF will be working on its mandated five-year review of the composition and valuation of the SDR basket. To the extent that the exercise increases the share allocated to renminbi, that will be taken as a sign that the world’s currency system is slowly but ineluctably evolving.

Just as China’s growing share of the global economy implies the need for a fundamental rebalancing, the renminbi’s share of the SDR basket cannot continue to grow without that increase meaning something for the future of the world financial system.

BISHKEK – The days and nights following the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and the collapse of the Afghan government have been remarkably calm. Most shops and businesses are closed. Ordinary Afghans are hiding in their homes. The Taliban are acting as a police force, protecting the city from marauders. And yet, in this moment of relative stillness, Afghans are facing a monumental realization: they now live in a completely new country.

In defending his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden acknowledged that events unfolded “more quickly” than US officials had anticipated. According to Biden, that is because Afghanistan’s political leaders, including President Ashraf Ghani, “gave up and fled the country,” and “the Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.” Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, defended the military, tweeting, “They tied our hands from behind and sold the country. Curse Ghani and his gang.”

Whatever happened in Kabul’s corridors of power last week, now it is the Taliban that occupies them. But who are the Taliban, which the world’s mightiest country spent more than $2 trillion attempting to defeat, and what will their return to power mean for Afghans and their neighbors?

The Taliban are not a unified force, but rather a motley collection of groups with conflicting interests. There are significant differences between the “civilized” political wing represented by the political office in Doha, influential clergy, and the numerous warlords on the ground. Afghans’ prospects depend crucially on which elements of the Taliban prove dominant. That is why it is essential to identify and support the more moderate Taliban leaders.

Here, there might be good news. The latest information suggests that Taliban co-founder and political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will become Afghanistan’s new leader. He has positioned himself as a pragmatic, experienced, and thoughtful leader, capable of uniting influential Taliban groupings around him and negotiating effectively with international actors. On August 17, Baradar arrived in Afghanistan.

Moreover, Taliban leaders have also pledged to create an “inclusive Islamic government.” According to Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesperson, such a government would include non-Taliban Afghans, including some “well-known figures.” One such figure could be former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has formed a coordination council to manage a peaceful transfer of power. That council – which is now in Doha to meet with Taliban leadership – also includes Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Ironically, this sort of “inclusivity” would exclude many of the Taliban’s more radical segments, raising the risk that the extremists will seek partnerships with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. But the bigger risk would arise from efforts to turn Afghanistan into a mono-ethnic (Pashtun) state, based on a winner-take-all mindset. This would almost certainly reignite civil war.

Beyond building an inclusive government, the Taliban will need to strengthen its army and police force, and establish diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. Among the group’s fastest friends are likely to be Russia and China. Zamir Kabulov, a Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan, says that the Kremlin maintains good relations with the Taliban, so Russia is not worried about what is happening in the country. On a recent phone call, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that they should “protect the legitimate interests” of their respective countries in Afghanistan, “report on the situation, and support each other.”

The Taliban might also find willing partners in Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors. The leaders of Afghanistan’s ethnic Uzbek and Tajik communities – the warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor – did flee the country after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, which they had been defending. Many commentators viewed this as a rejection of the Taliban. But I believe that it reflects an unwillingness to continue fighting, and expect both men to return to Afghanistan soon.

More broadly, Central Asian countries seem to be cautiously optimistic about the potential for cooperation with a Taliban-led Afghanistan. After all, Baradar has pledged not to “allow the emergence of a threat and danger from Afghanistan” to Central Asian countries, and has welcomed the Uzbek-initiated plan to construct the “Kabul Corridor” railway from Termez in Uzbekistan to Peshawar in Pakistan via Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul. In fact, with the United States gone, the vision of a “Greater Central Asia” with more open trade and improved infrastructure among the countries of the region could gradually become a reality.

Afghanistan’s future will also be shaped by the policy of the US and its allies. America’s humiliating defeat and chaotic retreat has severely undermined its international standing. The question now is how much responsibility, if any, the US will take for ensuring the Afghan people’s well-being, given the leading role it played in destroying their country.

For now, the Biden administration says it is waiting for the Taliban to demonstrate their commitment to governing inclusively and preventing terrorism. But the US and its allies must do more to help ordinary Afghans. Given the people’s lack of confidence in Western partners, independent Western-led initiatives are unlikely to work. Afghanistan’s neighbors and Russia must be involved.

The first step should be to convene a special international conference on Afghanistan involving all interested parties, with China and Russia central players. Donor countries must be united under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council, and with the involvement of the UN system and multilateral development banks, they should create a special fund to assist in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

On the diplomatic level, whether one likes it or not, Russia, with its deep influence in Central Asia, holds the key to rebuilding Afghanistan. If the West embraces this process, perhaps its relations with Russia can improve as well.