OPINION:
America’s most effective foreign policy tools have always been diplomacy and our military might. One brings the promise of a positive relationship with the world’s most powerful nation, while the other is a more forceful tool that we employ when diplomatic efforts fail.
The carrot and the stick approach are two gears of our foreign policy engine that must work together. We use diplomacy to cajole, influence, and gather intelligence, and when this gear works well, it can eliminate the need for war.
The key is knowing when to shift between these gears, and unfortunately, the Biden administration showed in Afghanistan that it simply doesn’t know how to work this engine. The White House for too long trusted a clearly volatile situation to diplomats whose skill in reading and influencing landscape either failed or was ignored and who are now caught in a situation more suited for warriors.
It’s a lesson the Biden administration – and President Biden specifically, as someone who toiled in foreign affairs for years in the Senate – should have already learned. Afghanistan is not our first embarrassment.
In 1979, Islamic fundamentalists took control of Iran and our embassy in Tehran along with fifty-two hostages that would be held for the rest of President Carter’s term. They were released on the day he stepped down after a failed military operation went tragically wrong. Also, in 1979, across the border in Islamabad, Pakistan, Americans hid in a vault while students burned down our embassy.
In 1998, truck bombs exploded at American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, leaving more than 200 dead, including 12 Americans. The U.S. responded promptly with military strikes against al Qaeda targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, then rebuilt the embassies.
In 2015, U.S. embassy staff was forced to flee Yemen from advancing Houthi rebels, who took possession of more than two dozen vehicles and other equipment and forced Marines to destroy their personal weapons before escaping on a commercial flight.
It’s also impossible to forget the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in America. At a time when our embassies should have been thinking about security, the Benghazi compound was caught flat-footed and was overrun while violent extremists killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
These events and other attacks on U.S. posts show just how important it is for our government to keep a hand on the gear shift in unpredictable parts of the world. Our history reveals the stark truth – for whatever reason, State Department diplomats don’t always see around corners well when things are turning violent.
Perhaps those who believe in the power of cajoling, influencing, and intelligence gathering believe these tools can turn any tide. We admire anyone who believes in their craft so much that they risk their lives pursuing it. But combat-experienced soldiers fear something else is at play – optics. We worry that too often, the push to keep things in the hands of the optics-centric State Department and create an appearance of tranquility where danger abounds.
Regardless of what State prefers or why, the job of a president is to judge the effectiveness of the diplomatic strategy, keep a close ear to the ground for signs of a shifting environment, and have a hand on that gear shift in case it becomes time to drop the pen and pick up the sword.
In Afghanistan, Americans are left to wonder whether Mr. Biden was so focused on withdrawal that he closed off the option of seeing this as a military operation. Biden’s sequencing decision was as simple as it was devastating – ignore all the obvious signs of a quick Taliban takeover, slow-walk the processing of Afghan interpreters who are most at risk, shut down key military airports, and assume it would be safe for anyone to leave the country at their leisure.
In the weeks of chaos that followed, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reminded us over and over again that the mess we saw on the ground – people scrambling to get through the gates, beatings and shootings, and a growing fear that the lives of many Afghan allies and possibly even some Americans are in grave danger – is a State Department operation. Austin let us know that U.S. troops have the capacity to rescue Americans outside the airport and extend operations past Aug. 31, but only if those in charge of this non-military operation agree.
This is an error of devastating proportions. A president so steeped in the slow-churning art of diplomacy should know better that our communique and demarches are not powerful enough to stop insurgent armies that are breaking down the doors of our embassies. Our diplomats deserve better.
Our service members deserve better too. Afghanistan has always been a military operation. In its waning days, the decision to hand it to the diplomats is a shameful slight to the men and women who provided the only success we have seen in this country. It is a slight that the next generation of American soldiers will not forget.
• Jason Beardsley (@JasonRBeardsley) is a Navy veteran and Green Beret and a member of the Veterans 4 America First Institute board of directors.
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