Читать книгу America's Great-Power Opportunity - Allison Graham, Ali Wyne - Страница 7

The final draft of this book was completed in fall 2021, shortly after the Taliban stormed back to power in Afghanistan. Though most observers had anticipated that the drawdown of US forces would encourage the organization to reassert itself, the speed with which it advanced—and with which the Afghan army collapsed—stunned even the most pessimistic of them: on August 15, just nine days after it had captured its first provincial capital, the Taliban entered the presidential palace in Kabul.

The outcome elicited a heated debate in Washington. Some observers argued that the United States should have maintained a small military presence in Afghanistan to hold the Taliban at bay. Others concluded that it should have accepted defeat and cut its losses far sooner. Some feared that the Taliban’s resurgence would undermine US credibility in world affairs. Others believed that it was the decision to stay in Afghanistan for so long that called America’s judgment into question. Some warned that America’s departure would only exacerbate instability in the Middle East and make it harder for Washington to rebalance to the Asia-Pacific.¹ Others assessed that it was precisely this kind of argument that had kept the United States preoccupied while China’s resurgence was transforming world affairs. Although America’s intervention in Afghanistan has concluded, the reckoning over what lessons Washington should learn is likely just beginning.²