Some thoughts on Afghanistan, and what comes next for President Biden

Given how much legitimacy, support and time to organize President Trump and Mike Pompeo had given to the Taliban, President Biden’s decision to complete the American withdrawal from Afghanistan this year was the right call, and perhaps the only call. There will be time to discuss and dissect the Biden Administration’s clear mistakes in managing the endgame, but now the US must focus its energies getting our allies out safely, resettling tens of thousands of Afghan refugees here in the US, keeping the pressure on the new government to respect human rights particularly for women and girls, and staying vigilant about what could become a more dangerous terrorist threat landscape.

In a lengthy Newsy interview last Friday, I discussed the big Biden strategy behind his decision to leave Afghanistan. The President has repeatedly stated that it is time for the US to turn the page now on our decades of deeply disappointing involvement in the broader Middle East/Afghanistan and create more space and resources to tackle new challenges, among them

• defeating COVID here and everywhere
• fighting climate change and bringing an end to the era of petro-dictators
• fashioning far more cogent strategies to compete against Russia and China
• shoring up and modernizing the global liberal order so essential to our economic and geopolitical success
• creating some kind of new global cyber regime…