What a Still Vibrant Superpower and its Friends Can Do

November 3, 2021

The United States is engaged in an intense and ongoing debate about who lost Afghanistan. While Congress presses the nation’s generals, pundits and veterans of America’s longest war search for answers.

As a reasonably well-informed foreign observer with a vested interest in this country’s continued commitment to principled leadership on the world stage, I am struck by what this debate misses. Much of the prevailing narrative focuses on the loss of U.S. credibility abroad and the shaken faith of allies and prospective partners in America’s willingness to stand by them in future conflicts.

Largely absent from this discussion is how, in a seminal moment of need, the United States was able to call upon those same allies to effect the largest airlift in history and save tens of thousands of lives. When asked if evacuating 124,000 Afghans, Americans and other foreign nationals out of Kabul could have succeeded without the support provided by its friends in the region, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “The short answer is no. We wouldn’t have had the legs. The aircraft could not have reached the United States. ... Our allies and partners have enabled us to do things that have never been done before.”

Read the full article from Stripes.