Hal Brands, Columnist

Biden’s Afghan Withdrawal Achieved Nothing But Disaster

A tiny group of U.S. troops was staving off the collapse and humanitarian disaster to come.

August 13, 2021 at 2:26 PM UTC

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Taliban onslaught.
Source: AFP/Getty Images

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What difference could a few thousand U.S. troops possibly make to the outcome of a decades-long war in a broken country? That question constituted President Joe Biden’s central argument for withdrawing from the conflict in Afghanistan.

Now, unfortunately, we have our answer. Those troops were the crucial difference between an ugly but acceptable stalemate and a stunning collapse of the Afghan government, with all the humanitarian and strategic traumas that will follow.