 Welcome to another International Relations Capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. We have been discussing the future of Afghanistan in the last few weeks, but now suddenly the accent has shifted to the future of the United States itself, because what has happened in Afghanistan has shaken up the US administration. And has landed President Joe Biden in trouble. People go as far as to say that this is the end of US domination in the world. They also say that facts America, which has been in the world for many, many years, has ended in Kabul. So we'll examine how much this is true and what has exactly happened to President Biden so early in his presidency. There was no great honeymoon between the people of the United States and President Biden, because he was elected at a time when President Trump was challenging his election and there was an insurrection and the 75 million people who voted for President Trump never supported him. But the United States and the whole world had great hopes about Biden's presidency because they were quite fed up with the unpredictable ways and the strange diplomacy of President Trump. The allies had gone away. He had himself focused on countries which were not friendly to him. His China policy was somewhat indeterminate and generally the whole world was a bit concerned about what the way the United States was going and on top of it the pandemic came and affected the United States more than any other country and President Trump's attitude to the pandemic of neglect and negligence also aggravated the situation. He had moved out of the Paris Agreement. He had moved out of the Iran nuclear deal so everybody looked at President Biden with great hope even though the Republicans never changed their position. They still admired and respected President Trump. But President Biden very earnestly went about bringing United States back to the sector of the world and he did the right things. He rejoined the Paris Agreement. He resumed the Iran box. He cultivated the European allies. He made it clear that he was going to be competing and cooperating at the same time with the Chinese. He had a meeting with President Putin and so he had done everything that was possible to normalize the situation and also in the case of the pandemic he was seen as some kind of a savior. Of course it did not work out because many people still believed, did not believe in vaccination and therefore a lot of resistance was there but still he moved forward and did what he could with the governors and others to persuade people to take vaccination. But unfortunately that did not have the impact that was expected and therefore United States is going through another pandemic crisis. So in spite of all that it was generally believed that President Biden will bring the United States back to the center of the world and therefore his announcement of withdrawal from Afghanistan did not make much news. After all President Barack Obama had decided to withdraw after that President Trump followed it and made an agreement with Taliban in February 2019. So it was a gradual process and probably because of that reason he did not or his administration did not look at all the aspects of the withdrawal. So on the one hand generally the impression is that in any case the honeymoon with the people is over because there is general dissatisfaction with what has happened in Afghanistan. Many lives were lost, just billions of dollars were spent and therefore everybody had expected that this would be a quiet withdrawal without any incident. But all that he did in a normal way did not turn out as he had expected. He had made a few decisions which with hindsight we can see that could have been better. For example there was a negotiation taking place in Doha between the concerned parties. Agreement was quite near. There was an agreement already signed by Trump's representative and so he could have insisted that he will withdraw or at least he should not have announced the withdrawal without this agreement in place and if possible a new government in place. So that is where he made the first mistake. He made the mistake of announcing his date and therefore all the negotiators said that if he is in any case leaving, first he said September and he actually left in July to surprise out everybody else, particularly the allies who were fighting in Afghanistan together with the United States. So it was a big surprise for everybody but still nobody expected the kind of chaos that came about in that situation. So the next thing, the next mistake he made was not to have evacuated all the American personnel and all the Afghan personnel who they wanted to take back to the United States. Quite a few numbers were prepared to go and he had this huge airport from where he could have taken them away before he left but then when he handed over the background airport to the Afghan forces then they lost that facility and then it was difficult to do it from the regular airport in Kabul. So there was total chaos and the impression was created that was a defeat for the United States. So this is probably the first time in history that a president is being accused of withdrawing troops in a hurry. Generally American public likes the idea of American troops coming back and therefore there was general support for what Biden wanted to do but the issue was that the whole thing appeared to be in such a chaotic situation that the responsibility was placed on President Biden himself and this is called for, this is a resultant in a call for his resignation even. Of course President Trump was the first to say that but now more people are saying that there is something wrong with him personally and he's unable to grasp issues properly and also he seems to be under the direction of some others and he's not his own man. So these are very strange things to happen for the President of the United States. The mistakes that he made were serious that was no doubt about it and he had not predicted the kind of consequences which eventually happened but to say that this is the end of United States domination of the world and this should be the end of the presidency of Mr Biden seemed to me to be a little bit excessive because this was a mistake, an honest mistake in that sense because he had expected the Afghan forces who were trained by the United States and President Ghani was in power at the mercy of the United States, did not resist the Taliban even for a day after the Americans left. This was a wrong judgment, was it letting down of the Americans by the Afghans and President Ghani, was there some kind of conspiracy to defeat their foreign power which the Afghans are very fond of? So these are not known, so the accusation is that as President, as the commander-in-chief, he should have known better what the situation was. How was it that he did not know that the Afghans were not going to fight? He talked about six months, at least two months before the Taliban might win the war and how about all these military equipment that was left behind? Why did they not take them away before handing over? So now the United States left in the situation that first of all there is no resistance to Taliban government. At the same time the Americans are not able to do a clean operation of withdrawal and they have left behind so many weapons and other things which will fall into the hands of the Taliban which might be used against the United States or against the interests of the United States elsewhere. So the general conclusion is that this issue, apart from what is happening today and crisis and people are unable to leave Afghanistan and there are many others who are wanting to leave, American citizens are still there and Taliban is talking about 31st being the last day, that is 31st of August being the last day on which the Americans will be allowed to evacuate people. So this has completely destroyed the capability of the United States as a world power. This is what is being suggested and therefore this is likely to affect the reputation of the United States, the present presidency, it lose faith of the allies in the United States. The Chinese might be delighted, they will probably join up with Pakistan and Taliban in order to fight American interests in different parts of the world and terrorism might also increase with all these weapons that are falling into the hands of the Taliban. But if we look back at the history of the United States, you will find that this is not the first fiasco there being. One thing, one fiasco we can remember is in Vietnam, when they had to leave Vietnam it was complete defeat of the US forces and everyone said at that time that this is the end of American domination, it is a disgrace to the United States. There was greater controversy on Vietnam inside the United States itself and abroad. Many people abroad even India was demanding that the United States must withdraw from Vietnam. But how fast they have recovered from it? So if we look at history, you will find that even a bigger tragedy like the Vietnam War and the consequences it had in the whole of Asia, in the rest of the world, the United States was able to contain it and resume its role in the world. Another crisis again where the whole world felt that the United States had gone on its knees was the bombing of the New York World Trade Center and other destinations, the 9-11, which was again a big shock. We still do not know the whole story of 9-11, there are several theories, whatever it may be, the world's biggest power, the most important nuclear power was helpless in front of a few terrorists who managed with knives and forks that picked up from the aircraft and the most unorthodox, non-traditional kind of a war was imposed on them, many lives were lost but more than anything else it was the shock to the biggest part of the world that they are not effective, they are not able to stand up to a few people who are determined to kill themselves and that was the feeling that in the first place provoked the United States to go for a war against terror. There again they made a mistake when they launched this was President Bush, when they launched the war on terror, they chose Pakistan as their partner, nobody else in the area, India of course they would not have even thought about it because of our problems with Pakistan but they forced Pakistan to be a partner and being a partner of Pakistan, of United States, Pakistan made a lot of money, there is a lot of resources and probably channeled them to the very Taliban who they were supposed to be fighting. So the United States was fighting not only the Taliban but also Pakistan and this was announced only by President Trump after some years of fighting in Afghanistan, they stopped the assistance and then the process started of United States directly training Afghan forces but there again there was a mistake because Afghan forces were not trained to fight by themselves, they were trained only to fight under a United States umbrella. So but I am referring to the consequences of the bombing because people thought that the world had completely changed the way of war making relevance of nuclear weapons because even if you have nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over happening like 9-11 will certainly not help the United States and many things changed the approach to security. After that if you go on a travel you have to go to the airport two hours in advance, the security check is so difficult, people are put to so much inconvenience and the very approach of the United States to administration, welfare of the people and security became, homeland security became the most important preoccupation for the United States administration but how well they have recovered from it. Now there is only one relic of it that the airport is still you have to go earlier to the airport and security is tough but there was never another attack terrorist attack in the United States in the last 20 years and it had come back to normal, air travel had come back to normal, it was not held against him against the United States that this happened and United States prestige or its relationship with the rest of the world was not affected at all and terrorism did not stop it continued and everybody expected that by the time the operation in Afghanistan is over you know things will be back to normal. So looking at these two game changing experiences of the United States and this time the two other game changing experiences one is the pandemic itself and the other is the bad name United States has got by messing up making it making the withdrawal chaotic. So the question is whether United States can survive it whether it can come back first of all whether President Biden can survive it whether there will be challenge to him that is not likely within the democratic party there is not likely to be any move against him and what he did was in good in with good intentions he was following up the decisions taken by the by his predecessors and therefore I personally do not think that this will affect President Biden's presidency but and many most presidents normally lose their popularity rating as they go on and sometimes it goes down sometimes it goes up but doesn't really affect there and many of them have also been re-elected President Trump was the only one perhaps who was not re-elected because of his record as president in the first term. Secondly how much will China be able to take its place when the pandemic came the Chinese expected that United States was in a in a big mess and therefore they could make some advances and they did try that they tried with Europe they tried in Asia etc to become a very serious problem for the United States it did not happen then the Chinese of course have not yet given up their effort they're trying in Ladakh they're trying elsewhere in order to get their prominence and they expect that it'll be accelerated their progress towards number one position in the world but that is also quite a down a little bit and if the United States is able to recover from the present situation of COVID it'll be able to concentrate as Mr Biden has promised that he will be back in the in the position that the United States occupy of course on Paris Agreement there's not been much progress in what the world can do the latest report from the IPCC has shown that Paris Agreement as it exists today will not be of much help to save the world the Iran discussions have taken place but there is no decision we don't hear much about it perhaps there is something happening and that may come about Cuba there has been a problem because the United States changed its policy and now there are other other things which give the impression that the United States is recovering so what I wanted to share with you is the general assessment that the United States is on its way out of the world stage but this has been predicted before books have been written about a post-American world some years ago so there is that kind of tendency to tendency to predict the end of the American civilization or the end of American predominance but my own feeling is that the United States continues to be the strongest nation in the world economically as well as militarily and that will be maintained in spite of these challenges so the Afghanistan situation as I see it does not foretell a really serious situation for the United States I think the United States will be able to handle the rest of the things properly and even if Afghanistan has a Taliban regime this will not make any difference either to President Biden or to the United States itself thank you well if that is a question the answer is they will there will definitely be problems for us if the Taliban government is like in the past that is they continue to be a fundamentalist anti-women anti-India policies will naturally be the threat to us and of course the relationship between Taliban and China not only that now Russia and Iran are also have also indicated that they are ready to recognize so we do not know we don't even know what the composition of the government will be it is all very uncertain but certainly there is a possibility of Taliban China and Pakistan getting together to work against the interests of India and also against the interests of the United States so the question of our own relationship with the United States our membership with the Quad our ability to win American support in case there is an issue with China all these are answered so we have to just wait and watch no at the moment we have no role we have never had any role in the past also we were supportive of the US intervention Soviet intervention and we are supportive of American intervention and therefore we have not had taken an independent line with Afghanistan now that is probably because of our complications with Pakistan and therefore now and we are never part of the negotiations except bilaterally with the parties concerned but directly in the negotiations we were not there and we have withdrawn our mission but that is no problem if the Taliban government is interested in having diplomatic relations with that we will definitely respond and so but that's what we are doing and recently there was a an important leader of Taliban said that relations with India are important and because we have not responded to that yet so we are watching and waiting and it will not change our approach to helping Afghanistan people the people of Afghanistan under whatever regime and that is our policy but what we will do with the Taliban government or what they will do with us we'll have to wait and see that I don't believe that will happen I don't think the United States will come back to support the Afghan government or oppose Taliban in the present circumstances they will not take any aggressive lines now I don't think so it's a it'll be a very subtle game what the Chinese will try to do is to pour in money into Afghanistan and get their positions strengthened and then extend themselves to the Central Asia etc they'll use that as a then nobody is going to attack us directly what will happen is perhaps in Jammu and Kashmir there will be greater activity terrorist activity in Jammu and Kashmir and that is something which we are prepared for definitely other than that there may not be any direct attack but it's also possible for that the Chinese may you know they may take a rigid position on disengagement from Ladakh because the disengagement is halted now and they may because of the situation they may not agree to a disengagement immediately they will want to wait and see what India can do well the UN as you know can act only the Security Council is unanimous the permanent members of the Security Council is unanimous that is not likely to happen in the present context because the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other so they will be able to only take very what shall we say baby steps to stop the war or give humanitarian assistance etc but for the United States to the United Nations to act against the Taliban is not a practical thing and they are in fact trying to soften it the name of Taliban has been taken away from the recent appeal launched by the Security Council so there will not be any unlike in Iraq there will not be any military action or anything by the United States they will be helpful they will try to persuade the members of the Security Council to come to terms with the situation and create a better atmosphere of peace and that is all that they can do they cannot do anything more serious than that even for the pandemic they could not do anything because of the Chinese veto here again there will be a Chinese or a Russian veto you the United Nations as a whole wants to take any action in Afghanistan but they will be very helpful in evacuating people they will be able to give humanitarian assistance and generally help the people of Afghanistan rather than the particular government all right thank you very much