The Twitter hot takes regarding Afghanistan that have appeared in the last month went from entertaining to irritating rather quickly. Something that I have heard ad nauseam recently is that America’s failure in Afghanistan proves that American empire is crumbling. Regardless of my opinion on said empire, I can say with relative certainty that America’s foreign engagements will not be ending anytime soon. The United States did not leave Afghanistan because the war was economically costly, but because it was unpopular. Unlike American engagement in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the majority of the U.S. population wanted out of Afghanistan. One may look to recent history in order to understand the difference between the end of empire and the conclusion of a losing war.
If one examines the end of the British and French empires during the 20th century, they would find that those powers were forced to withdraw from their outposts across the world in a rapid process that occurred after the Second World War. Economically and politically destroyed by the war’s devastation, London and Paris were forced to withdraw from their settlements in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Similarly to the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, the British withdrawal from its colonies had some public popularity, but the driving factor of British decision-making was largely economic in nature.
In comparison, America’s departure from Afghanistan does not necessarily indicate any major policy changes outside of that one issue. There is no natural tide of decolonization like there was in the early and mid-20th century. There was also no serious economic basis for the withdrawal. Though costly, the war in Afghanistan could likely have been maintained for some time if the will to continue the mission had been present in the U.S. public. However, that will to continue the fight was not present, and, for a myriad of reasons, most Americans wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, thus directing Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s respective decisions to follow that policy trajectory.
Was Vietnam the end of American empire? Was the Iranian Revolution the end of American empire? No, they were not. You can ask this question about every policy failure the U.S. has experienced in the last 70 odd years. There is quite literally nothing to necessitate the belief that Joe Biden, and whoever succeeds him next for that matter, would seek to withdraw from other foreign engagements across the globe.
Now, the policy failure in Afghanistan might be a sign that America has lost global hegemony, but I would argue that this was lost years before 2021, and, again, does not necessarily indicate anything regarding the U.S. empire itself. The U.S. likely had a solid hegemony over international affairs for about 15 years, from 1991 to about 2006, but this in and of itself is a flawed conjecture to some degree. Though, for instance, the disintegration of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s is usually given as an example of the unipolarity of international affairs during that period, one can also observe that there was certainly international dissent, notably from Russia, regarding the fate of the Balkans. By the later end of the 2000s, Russia and China had gained a good deal of influence internationally, with China becoming America’s biggest competitor in recent years.
The U.S. may be the most powerful state in contemporary international affairs, but China is becoming an ever-closer second. Some believe that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a win for China and Russia, but it is not that cut and dry. The U.S. essentially took Afghanistan off of the geopolitical chessboard by occupying it for 20 years and imposing a government that would generally follow U.S. interests in the region. Now, China and Russia will have to deal with an Afghanistan ruled by a Pakistani-backed group of Islamic extremists.
Though it is not often observed in U.S. media, Russia and China both view Islamic extremism as a major threat to their geopolitical interests, and given the fact that it is they, and not the U.S., that live near Afghanistan, they will need to figure out how to deal with the Taliban in a way that avoids the spillover of violent extremism. Evidence of this is the fact that Russia buffed up security in Tajikistan weeks before the Taliban entered Kabul in mid-August.
China may have a lot to worry about regarding the Taliban’s disposition to the Uyghur issue. The Taliban have already been talking with China, and want to have good relations with them, but they may not be able to stop an influx of Islamic militants into the region. Uyghur militants in Syria could make their way to Afghanistan if the conditions there were appropriate, which would definitely give China some anxiety.
Overall, U.S. global hegemony is likely over, having died not too long after the onset of hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, this does not mean that the American empire is about to crumble. All it means is that U.S. foreign policy must account for a multi-polar geopolitical order. The withdrawal from Afghanistan will have little overall effect on America’s foreign engagements.