The last American flight has left Kabul airport, to the din of celebratory Taliban gunfire. The US and western debacle in Afghanistan is setting off alarms from eastern Ukraine to the Taiwan Strait. The Taliban’s lightning seizure of the country after a 20-year war has spread a chill across Central and South Asia.
Yet in the Middle East, arena of serial Anglo-American forays, leaders’ reaction to the US capitulation has been restrained. It was already dawning on allies and adversaries alike that they cannot count on the US.
No one is blind to the military might the US possesses in unique abundance. But long before Washington accepted defeat in Afghanistan, the 2003 US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq showed the limits to America’s power and its inability to shape geopolitics in the region.