We need the Americans back on parade

With the exception of the Headingley Test match, the world has never been so full of bad news since the eve of Pearl Harbor. Everyone is focusing on Afghanistan, but it is not the only crisis. While no-one has been paying any attention, the French have lost a small war in Mali: small in scale, not in consequences. It threatens to destabilise the whole of the Sahel; there is already trouble in Tunisia. We can expect the Turks to meddle. Mr Erdogan is always looking for opportunities to be unhelpful. Strife and chaos will exacerbate the refugee problem. Millions of Africans will want to move to Europe. Fortress Europe, anyone? The need grows more urgent by the day.

Returning to Mali, both we and the Americans gave assistance to the French, receiving no gratitude. Mr Macron is a Gaullist and when it comes to the Anglo-Saxons, the Gaullists have no word for gratitude. In Paris, they were delighted that the whole Mali affair has received so little attention. They would like to hush-up D-Day, if they could. There are those who argue that we should strive for strategic cooperation with France. Chance would be a fine thing.

Strategic cooperation with the Americans is another matter: as indispensable as it is difficult. There is only one consolation. Neither President Trump nor President Biden is the final expression of American democracy. Which of them is worse?  ‘There is no setting the point of precedence between a louse and a flea’, said Dr Johnson. In character, Mr Trump is a louse. Mr Biden lacks a flea’s mobility. 

Brain-power is another matter. Whatever his medical condition, he has demonstrated that he is morally and intellectually unfit to be President. The first harvest of the Afghan degringolade is already ripening. The Russians, Chinese and Iranians are going to hold joint exercises in the Gulf. the West’s back yard. Although it is not quite Admiral de Ruyter sailing into the Thames, it is geopolitical audacity, and cheek.

There are bound to be recurrences. In Tony Blair’s words, the only people who have welcomed the American withdrawal are the West’s enemies. Mr Biden’s fundamental miscalculation is easy to identify. He is unhappy about ‘forever wars’: why? They are surely preferable to forever terrorism and a virus of instability raging through the non-existent immune system of a profoundly unstable region. In recent years, Afghanistan had calmed down. There were few Western casualties, and the American’s efforts were costing them only around five percent of their defence budget. Withdrawal will not save the USA one cent of the money it has already spent, any more than it will resurrect the slain or heal the maimed. 

The cost of perseverance is a price worth paying. The alternative is a threat from the new Afghanistan’s three principal exports. HRT – heroin, refugees and terrorism.

So what now? The first priority is to supply military assistance to Ahmad Massood in the Panjshir valley. He and his loyal followers inhabit inhospitable terrain. Even equipped with the American hardware that they have virtually been gifted, the Taliban would find it hard to overrun the Panshir. With a bit of help from the West, it should become impossible. This is one ally whom it would be folly to abandon, as well as deeply immoral. As long as Masood holds his fastness, there will be some restraint on the Taliban’s ambitions. They would have to be wary in case the Northern Alliance re-emerged.

The danger is, however, that a softer target than the Panjshir could be vulnerable. There have always been close links between the Taliban and the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. Pakistan is chronically unstable. Its politics are a mess – and it has nuclear weapons. That is an unattractive combination. Yet there could be some grounds for restraining one’s pessimism. The Afghans have never accepted the Durand line, their border with Pakistan. Might that lead to trouble? We can hope.

Equally, the Chinese will want to buy up Afghanistan’s natural resources. But might there be some prospect that elements in the Taliban will be unhappy about the treatment of the UIghurs? Again, we can hope. 

Pakistan, China and Afghanistan: the prospect of encirclement must be causing alarm in Delhi. It remains to be seen whether Premier Modi might be encouraged to rein back his extreme Hindi nationalism and try to conciliate India’s Muslims. But it is probably too late for that. The sub-continent is full of ancestral hatreds in the foreground: nuclear weapons in the background. It is difficult to overestimate the dangers. 

We need the Americans back on parade. From Harry Truman onwards, there was a continuity in American foreign policy, even under the weak Presidents, Carter and Obama. From Churchill and Roosevelt onwards, almost all British Prime Ministers have extolled the special relationship, without ever fully trusting it. Even Ronald Reagan vacillated at the beginning of the Falklands War. Later, he was unsound on nuclear weapons. The Americans almost always give priority to their own interests. Yet we Brits could usually take comfort from a paradox: that the special relationship had never really existed, and was as strong as ever.

We just have to hope that normal service is resumed after the next Presidential election and that this latest weak President does not do too much damage before then. But there are positive steps which Britain could take. Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Australia could well be in the mood for an alliance. If their next elections go the right way, Canada and New Zealand could join them. Joint exercises in the Pacific, joint ventures on space and cybernetics: there is great scope for partnership. Although Beijing would hate it, the Chinese would be unable to pick off individual members as long as the allies held together. 

A post-Biden America would be a welcome addition. “The whole world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis,” says Jack Boyle at the end of Juno and the Paycock. He spoke truer than he realised. Things were even worse than he thought. Let us hope that, today, this is not true of us.