The former speaker of the US House of Representatives Tip O’Neill famously observed that “all politics is local”. What follows is not an attempt to excuse the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, but to explain why domestic politics in the US and UK is the key to understanding why it is happening and the implications for all of us.
When Barack Obama was nominated as Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, I attended his party convention in Colorado. Waiting for the big evening event, I took a drive and found myself lost in a low-income Denver suburb. I stopped to ask for directions in what turned out to be a funeral parlour. The rooms were full of American flags and pictures of US service personnel in military uniforms, along with special deals of reduced prices on coffins for US troops who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Obama inherited those two thankless foreign wars. His vice president, Joe Biden, spent years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and became increasingly sceptical about what he and former US president Donald Trump (in surprising agreement) treated as “forever wars”. But as we have seen, Mr Biden’s first major strategic decision as president – to leave Afghanistan – has been condemned by many of America’s friends and allies. US casualties in Afghanistan in recent months were low.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair was scathing: “We didn't need to do it. We chose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’.” Mr Biden’s approval rating has dipped below 50 per cent.
But because “all politics is local”, Mr Biden, faced with Mr Trump’s existing commitment to withdraw US troops, could only reverse that policy by owning the renewed commitment, in a struggle that he clearly judged had no obvious successful end point, ever. Voters would think “how many more American men and women would end up in those specially discounted bargain coffins?” Mr Blair again got it right: “We did it because our politics seemed to demand it. And that's the worry of our allies and the source of rejoicing in those who wish us ill. They think Western politics is broken.”
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also discovering that “all politics is local”. Afghanistan has again shown his government as missing in action. Mr Johnson himself, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and three top civil servants were on holiday when the crisis exploded. Mr Raab claimed to have delegated a phone call to a junior colleague to contact the Afghan government. The call didn’t happen. Mr Johnson’s own party colleagues publicly attacked his failures. Theresa May, his predecessor, pointed out the hollowness of the Johnson slogan of creating some fantasy “Global Britain”. She asked where Global Britain was on the streets of Kabul. Nowhere, apparently.
Yet Mr Biden may ride out his political storm. He can survive being condemned in the US media if leaving a thankless war resonates with Middle America. But Mr Johnson may well be further and permanently damaged. The debacle has exposed the key strategic failure of post-Brexit Britain. A thinking British leader such as Mr Blair understands that American presidents (not just Mr Trump) inevitably put America first.
US allies are often informed by the White House about major strategic decisions, rather than consulted. Moreover, Mr Johnson’s Brexit Britain is less useful as a US ally because the UK has lost influence in Europe. Any “Global Britain” role in future will depend upon rebuilding damaged relations with France and Germany in particular, and Mr Johnson is incapable of this. He simply is not trusted, in Berlin or Paris or Washington or even by some of his own Conservative MPs.
The former CIA counterterrorism chief for South and South-West Asia, Douglas London, this week wrote that “the decision Trump made, and Biden ratified, to rapidly withdraw US forces came despite warnings projecting the outcome we’re now witnessing". What is significant here is not that Mr London questions the decision to leave, but rather Mr Biden’s key mistake in setting a deadline of the 9/11 anniversary to leave so quickly and brutally. If there really were intelligence “warnings” of the rapid collapse of the Afghan government, British intelligence undoubtedly would know this, too.
The short-term question for both Washington and Westminster is therefore why they were surprised by a predictable crisis. The longer-term and much more important question is about the deep politicisation of foreign and security policy on both sides of the Atlantic. This makes both the US and UK seem less reliable allies.
Mr Blair again sees the British dilemma: “For Britain, out of Europe and suffering the end of the Afghanistan mission by our greatest ally with little or no consultation, we have serious reflection to do… we are at risk of relegation to the second division of global powers.” The “local politics” question is whether Mr Biden’s decision to rush through withdrawal from Afghanistan despite the predictable humanitarian cost means he can realistically claim to voters by the anniversary of September 11 that a “forever war” is forever over. I doubt it.
