After afghanistan: the three urgent crises that now face the west | thearticle

It is an understatement to say, as many do, that the fall of Kabul has sent shockwaves around the world. (It is also an invidious metaphor, given that Haiti has just suffered yet another

actual earthquake.) Yet there is a reason why we resort to such clichés in dark times. The events now unfolding in Afghanistan do indeed have consequences for all of us, however indifferent

or unaware of their implications we may be. Even in the despondency of defeat, is possible to discern three urgent crises that now face the West. First, this _bouleversement _has revealed a

crisis of Western leadership that can no longer be ignored. This crisis is most obvious in the case of the United States, though it goes much wider and deeper. Joe Biden is a decent enough

man, with almost unrivalled experience at the highest levels of American politics — but he is no leader. His failure to heed warnings from his own intelligence services that a US withdrawal

would precipitate the collapse we have just witnessed is culpable. His failure to consult allies or to consider the consequences for them makes a mockery of Nato. His failure even now to

grasp what damage the defeat has inflicted on his country’s honour and prestige is striking. Biden’s reaction shows that he still doesn’t get it: “I am President of the United States and the

buck stops with me. I am deeply saddened by the facts we face but I do not regret my decision.” Biden had indeed pledged to abide by Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw and was elected on that

basis. But he did so unconditionally, precipitately and (as the chaotic spectacle at Kabul airport shows) incompetently. The results are now indelibly linked to his name as well as to the

reputation of the US and the rest of the free world. Why should our allies across the globe, many of whom face similar enemies, ever trust us again? This leads us to the second crisis that

the Afghan scuttle has emblazoned across the firmament. However often it is repeated that appeasement never works, we keep venturing the same policy, expecting a different result. But the

outcome is always the same. The Taliban interpreted the offer of power-sharing as a sign of weakness and exhaustion. They have been proved right. But if appeasing the Taliban was wrong, so

too are all the other similar policies in which the West is presently engaged. Most of these policies, in fact, have been in place for years. We have been appeasing Iran over its threat to

become a nuclear power. We have been appeasing Turkey over its threat to unleash millions of migrants on Europe. We have been appeasing Russia over its occupations and “frozen conflicts”

with its neighbours, its lethal attacks on dissidents and émigrés, its energy blackmail and its cyberattacks. Above all, we have been appeasing China across the entire gamut of foreign and

economic policy for decades, turning a blind eye to genocide and to a global expansion without precedent. Enemies all — and all feast on appeasement. The weakness of Western leadership and

the reliance on appeasement are, of course, connected — just as they were during the 1930s when the policy was first adopted as a method to contain the Nazi threat. Faced by the manifest

failure of that policy in the face of Hitler’s radicalism, new leaders eventually emerged: too late to save Europe and the Far East from their most terrible ordeals in modern history, but

not too late to prevent the permanent establishment of Nazi or Japanese hegemony in either region. The new style of leadership that won the Second World War was continued during the Cold

War. Postwar containment no longer implied appeasement and détente did not preclude strategic competition, leading ultimately to Western dominance. At present, however, there is no sign that

the West is ready to draw the necessary conclusions from its crises of leadership and policy. This leads us to a third consequence of the Afghan débacle: a new crisis in the Islamic world.

The perception that the West has been defeated by an Islamist insurgency and has finally lost its appetite for foreign intervention is bound to resonate across more than fifty

Muslim-majority countries. As we saw in the initially inspiring but ultimately disappointing Arab Spring of 2011, many of these states are precarious. Hardly any of their governments owe

their legitimacy to what the West understands by democracy; even those that do are corrupt and led by hypocrites. The reaction of Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of neighbouring Pakistan, to

the triumph of the Taliban — a movement that explicitly repudiates democracy as a Western plague, utterly incompatible with its interpretation of Islam — spoke volumes. Afghanistan, he

declared, had “broken the chains of mental slavery”. This is the former cricketer and playboy, whose country has been bankrolled, armed and propped up by the West since its inception. Other

Muslim leaders have mostly been more circumspect; many have been silent; none, except the Turks (who belong to Nato) have lifted a finger for those now fleeing Kabul. The _Ummah — _as the

global Islamic community is known — has proved yet again to be no more relevant to the refugee problem than Christendom. But the leaders of the _Ummah _have got the message: that the West

will no longer risk blood and treasure to promote its own ideas of freedom, democracy and the rule of law in Islamic lands. This impression — that Western civilisation has lost the will to

endure sacrifices even for its own survival — must not be allowed to sink in. The world cannot be left to the mercy of the marauders. Some have commented on the _schadenfreude _that has

greeted the news from Kabul in Moscow and Beijing. It should be the task of Western leaders to wipe the grins off the faces of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and their cronies. How do we do

this? Boris Johnson is reportedly organising a video conference of Western leaders to discuss the crisis. They urgently require a unifying theme. That should not be difficult. The Taliban

have echoes of both  Nazi and Communist ideologies in their brutal targeting of certain groups, above all educated women, and their totalitarian control of society. They are also unrepentant

in their support for jihadist terror. So the West is confronted by an enemy reminiscent of those we fought in the last world war, in the Cold War and the War on Terror. But first our

leaders need to recognise whom they are up against. John Bolton, the former US National Security Adviser who left the Trump administration amid acrimony over the then President’s

isolationism, was no less scathing about his successor: “Biden’s confession that he sees the unfolding chaos in Afghanistan as validating our retreat is outrageous. This is not an Afghan

civil war. We ceded control to a terrorist threat that now endangers innocent US citizens, as before 9/11. This is a huge, potentially fatal mistake.” Biden must find his backbone or be

written off as a worse failure than Jimmy Carter (whom he admires)  or Donald Trump (whom he abhors). Even Neville Chamberlain stood up to Hitler in the end. He even had the humility to give

his bitter rival Churchill the Admiralty. Biden should do the same: bring in the best of his critics, including Bolton. The 20th anniversary of 9/11 is approaching in less than a month. If

we wish to avoid a repetition of such attacks, or even worse ones, the West needs to wake up now. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every

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