There is plenty of time for the second and third acts of the Biden administration, but the first act has now been clearly framed.
The US has been razor-focused on confronting both China and Russia, including much closer coordination with European allies, as US President Joe Biden is convinced the country could lose out in both geopolitical and technological influence races if anything distracts it from barreling forward in cyber, 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and forming a united wall of free democratic countries to resist the Chinese and Russian adversaries’ influences.
But by so doing, the Biden administration has made a clear choice to refocus nearly all its energies in these areas, while entirely dropping, or mostly ignoring, Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism.
Washington’s calculation has been one of the most brutal versions of realpolitik.
Biden does not want to use force in almost any way against Iran to slow its march toward a nuclear weapon, including covert or cyber, so he wants to return to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal at nearly all costs.
America has done almost nothing, whether exerting pressure or engaging, to reduce the nuclear dangers posed by North Korea. This is despite clear signs that Pyongyang is on course toward carrying out new nuclear tests, incrementally amassing a larger nuclear arsenal to rival some other medium nuclear powers and eventually having intercontinental ballistic missiles that could hit the US.
There are no good or easy choices, so why invest time and energy?
Ending combat operations in Iraq? Most of the soldiers who were there before Biden’s big announcement remained thereafter; their mission simply changed to passive advisers.
The important thing for Biden was to inform Americans, Iraqis and others that the US was no longer responsible for what went on there and would not be investing any more “blood” but only limited amounts of “treasure.”
Afghanistan, where the pro-Western government fell on Sunday, is only the latest and most dramatic manifestation of Biden’s doctrine not to invest in anything that he views as secondary to confronting China and Russia.
In Biden’s vision, the only difference between Afghanistan and the other countries, such as Iraq, where there is still some very limited US investment in power, was that it had zero geopolitical value for future US interests as long as he managed to convince the Taliban not to attack the US in the future.
Banking on the Taliban leaving the US alone and the fall of ISIS a few years ago, Biden has also starkly reduced US investment in the global war on terrorism – once again to devote more resources to confronting China and Russia.
It is unclear whether these moves will be a political win for Biden, considering that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans supported withdrawing from Afghanistan and foreign conflicts in general. But they also do not like to be seen as losing.
In foreign policy and defense circles, Biden has received heavy criticism from interventionist Republicans and Democrats either concerned about America’s reputation globally or protecting human rights by using force.
Former Trump administration official Lt.-Gen. H.R. McMaster said over the weekend: “Another lesson to learn here from 9/11 and I would say from COVID, is that challenges to our security that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. That, I think, is the strongest and most important argument for remaining engaged with partners who are sharing the burden against this jihadist terrorist threat.”
“We set an unrealistic objective, I think in the minds of Americans… The narrative was: ‘We failed in Afghanistan because Afghanistan wasn’t Denmark.’ Afghanistan doesn’t need to be Denmark, it just needs to be Afghanistan. Was it still a violent place? Heck yes. Was it still dependent on international support? Heck yes… Was it worth it, with that relatively small effort, to prevent what’s happening now? I’d say the answer to that has to be hell, yes it was,” he said.
So there will be three real tests that will lead to history’s judgment of this first act of the Biden era.
Will the Taliban and other jihadi groups now leave the US alone and focus on their own local conflicts, or will they use the lack of American pressure abroad to bring conflict back to the US mainland?
Will Iran, North Korea and other nuclear or regional threats create new crises because they are being ignored or dealt with from a weaker position?
Will Biden be more effective than Trump in rolling back Chinese and Russian global moves seeking global and technological influence?
It is unclear given that China and Russia focus single-mindedly on a complex mix of carrots, giving individual countries, including Democratic ones such as Germany, major economic deals and boosts; and sticks, threatening the security or economic stability of countries that become dependent on them.
If reallocating resources makes the difference in those critical competitive races, he may yet be given a pass – at least by Americans – for going lighter on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and global terrorism.
In contrast, if any of these ignored “secondary” problems blow up, it will be a major challenge to his legacy.
Meanwhile, Israel is just one of many countries that may be left fending for itself with its local “secondary” challenge, Iran. The Afghanistan collapse cannot have made that more clear.