What The Exit From Afghanistan Tells Us About How Biden Sees The World

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Foreign policy experts are asking how decades of foreign policy experience could have led President Biden to oversee such a chaotic withdrawal.





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Asia
She Fled Saigon As A Child. Now She’s Seeing Parallels In Afghanistan

Jones says this withdrawal seems to have taken place in reverse.

«When you do these kinds of things, however big or however small they are, the first thing you do is you get the civilians and families out, then you get the U.S. government personnel out if that’s required. And then the last people to leave is generally the military who are providing the security for the orderly evacuation, Jones said. «It appears to me that we did this exactly backwards and I don’t know why.

Another veteran of the Obama administration, Leon Panetta, former director of the CIA and secretary of defense, has compared the withdrawal to the «Bay of Pigs — the botched 1961 invasion of Cuba under President John F. Kennedy.

The White House, he says, should have been better prepared to deal with the fall of Kabul.

Biden «has always had strong views about our role in Afghanistan, Panetta said. «But the issue that concerns me is that when the president does want to make a decision that you want to be able to implement that decision in the right way, which means that you have to look at all the contingencies, you have to look all the possibilities that could develop.

Given his experience, the president is known to trust his own instincts.

«He’s someone who feels that he’s had a great deal of experience in dealing with the world. I think he does have a deep sense of confidence in his views, said Panetta.


Biden’s foreign policy is about personal relationships






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President Biden hosts Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House on June 25 in Washington, D.C. Biden’s foreign policy is based on personal relationships, experts say.





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As vice president, Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 in Beijing. Biden’s foreign policy as president is focused on China.





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Biden Transition Updates
Why Biden’s National Security Adviser Plans To Focus On The U.S. Middle Class

Biden’s team often refers to this idea of creating a «foreign policy for the middle class, with a greater focus on how actions abroad will affect Americans at home, especially economically. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told NPR in December that the Obama administration «did not elevate and center middle-class concerns in our foreign policy. Sullivan saw that disconnect as part of the reason for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump and his «America First nationalism.

«I think there’s a recognition that so much of the way that foreign policy was talked about and made in Washington had become completely detached from the kind of lived experiences of Americans, said Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

«And Trump kind of effectively zeroed in on that disconnect in a really divisive and racist and disunifying way. But still, he identified something valid, Duss said.



Politics
Withdrawing From Afghanistan May Be The One Thing Biden And Trump Agree On

Biden, like Trump, made a commitment to end the so-called forever wars, which meant retreating in some parts of the world, even as Biden promised to reengage with America’s allies around the world.

«I think Joe Biden sees Afghanistan as a distraction from the defining fight that he’s engaged in between democracy and autocracy, said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. «Every day that we have thousands of troops and tens of thousands of contractors and trillions of dollars being spent in Afghanistan or Iraq is another day that we are not able to train the full foreign policy might of this country on the most important long-term threats that are presented to the United States, mostly emanating out of a place like China.

Murphy scoffs at the critics who say the Afghanistan exit is a knock on the president’s foreign policy abilities. The Connecticut senator insists the chaos was inevitable, and praises Biden for having «the guts to pull the United States out of a «failed enterprise, knowing it wouldn’t be tidy.

A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that roughly two-thirds of Americans did not think the Afghanistan war was worth fighting.

The president said he stands by his decision. He seems to be hoping that Americans will soon forget the chaos and desperation in Kabul, and see it as a necessary consequence of ending the 20-year war.