U.S. soldiers at Kabul airport. Illustrative image
Written by Don Hank
If you look back to the US’s first involvement before the start of the Afghan war in 2001, a case can be made that Biden’s decision to pull US troops out of the country was planned as part of the ongoing US attempt to weaken Russia. After all, the Democrats have been accusing Putin of meddling in the 2016 election and they seem to have fallen for their own proofless narrative.
Bringing down (Soviet) Russia was the goal when the CIA invaded Afghanistan covertly in 1979 and I posit that it has not changed since.
But this time, it is failing.
It should not surprise anyone that the US, which entered Afghanistan to defeat Russia by supporting terrorists, has failed to stabilize the country.
Remember that the US military always has 2 kinds of missions:
1—an apparent, or generally, a stated, mission intended for public consumption, and
2—a hidden mission intended to achieve an unstated goal. In the Middle East the goal is typically to weaken a country that Israel sees as a potential threat. This goal is best explained by the Yinon Plan, drafted by a former Israeli foreign minister and first published in 1982.
The underlying US mission in military confrontations with countries friendly to Russia is typically to deprive Russia of a strategic partner.
Whatever the apparent mission might be, the real goal at bottom is always to strengthen US dominance (hegemony) in the world.
The CIA’s apparent goal in Afghanistan was to “stop the spread of communism” by defeating Russian forces in that country, but the real goal was to weaken Russia, not communism. After all, Richard Nixon, arguably the most “anti-communist” US president, turned around after the Vietnam fiasco, and pled for granting Most Favored Nation status to communist China.
The only thing that changed since the rout of the Soviets in Afghanistan is that Russia got smarter, having learned from the experience, and will not send troops to Afghanistan this time around.
Of course, the stated goal of the Afghan war for consumption by a gullible public was to stabilize the country and defeat the terrorists, which the US Establishment absurdly claimed intended to invade the US.
Since the start of the war in 2001, no one in msm ever reminded us of why the CIA went into the country in the first place.
The CIA had invaded the country covertly in 1979 to support the Mujahideen terrorists in their fight against Russia and then was surprised when the ignorant jihadists could not be civilized and made sympathetic to Washington. Just as it was surprised when the Arab Spring, the US-led West’s pet project in the ME, got out of hand and made it impossible to claim true victory in Iraq.
Amazingly, the US Establishment succeeded in making many gullible Americans think that, after creating the Taliban from the Mujahideen, it actually wanted to defeat the terrorists that they had created. A brainwashed, unthinking public has always been the US Establishment’s key ally.
Of course, the US Establishment never had any intention of defeating the Taliban, except in those territories where the US was operating, and the goal is still to use these terrorists to destabilize Russia’s neighbors, thereby weakening Russia. One difference is that China is also now targeted in the US’s Afghanistan games.
However, in a twist of fate, and unexpectedly for the Washington manipulators, all of Afghanistan’s neighbors are now looking to Russia and China — as well as others — for help. Thus the US, in its apparent attempt to destabilize Central Asia, where China and Russia — which it has both absurdly declared “enemies”— are both impacted by its madness, has driven essentially all the region’s countries into the arms of both “enemy” countries.
The original US post-Afghanistan plan was to send its troops and materiel to bases in the former Soviet republics, but one after the other, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan either politely declined to host US bases or denied reports of such planned hosting. This is startling news since the US once had military cooperation with all of these countries!
Likewise, Pakistan, which had allowed the US to use its airspace to bomb targets in Afghanistan, has decided against further cooperation with the losers of the war against the Taliban.
Clearly, the US’s sense of invincibility and its extreme cockiness, born of dependence on a bloated military budget, was a mixed blessing, which could have been a benefit in the hands of wise administrators, but instead became a curse in the hands of a foolish government lacking in the most rudimentary skills of strategic statecraft.
A turning point clearly has been reached. The US is no longer welcome in either the Middle East or in Central Asia, two key regions that it had once sought to dominate.
Thus, the destabilization targeted by the US happened but seems likely to benefit – rather than weaken – Russia and China. Further, the Taliban is now concerned about its international image and does not appear to threaten its neighbors, from which – notably China – it expects benefits, notably help with rebuilding the country.
The whole world watched as the US deserted Afghanistan at a crucial time when the Taliban was strong enough to take over the majority of Afghan districts, leaving hapless Kabul surrounded by terrorist fighters, and at the same time, it watched as the US lost its legitimacy in Iraq — with the Iraqi parliament having voted to evict all foreign troops thanks to the foolish murder of high-ranking official Qassem Soleimani on orders from Trump, and the equally foolish murder of Iraqi paramilitary fighters (supposedly linked to Iran) on orders from Biden. The latter helped steel the Iraqi parliament’s resolve to be done with US influence once and for all. The US pull-out is already underway, thanks to Washington’s short-sightedness.
Further, while some of the aforementioned former Soviet partners may once have had misgivings about their ties with Russia, they now are all strengthening those ties out of necessity. For example, Russia has just held drills with Uzbek and Tajik troops near the Afghan border with a view to stopping any potential Taliban invasion that may occur here or any potential infiltration of ISIS fighters.
This cooperation with the former Soviet states comes of necessity — a necessity created by the precipitous pull-out of US troops from Afghanistan. This tense situation, while apparently putting Russia in a bind, has had the ultimate effect of making all of Central Asia more dependent on Russia – and likewise on China.
More importantly, Russia is playing a vital role in the peace keeping process.
Embarrasingly for the US, an unconfirmed report has surfaced that Putin offered Biden to allow the US to use Russian bases for gathering intel on Afghanistan. The Russian foreign ministry neither denies nor confirms this report.
If the report is true and if the US accepts this assistance, the US will be forced to accept Russian terms.
Russian prestige is now higher than it has been in years, thanks to Washington’s opaque, inconsistent and unpredictable foreign policy and the attendant loss of trust in the US. A loss suffered not only in specific regions but everywhere.
China has also stepped up as a negotiator, and the Taliban, the heir apparent of Afghan political power, is looking to Beijing to aid in lending it prestige. This stands to make Afghanistan a willing partner of the BRI, which the US has desperately, hysterically, tried to block.
Even as the US denounces the BRI project, its withdrawal from Afghanistan is an unintended invitation for the entire region to join forces with China.
Thus, if the original US plan was to put Russia – followed by China – in a bind by allowing the Taliban to seize power, then the plan has backfired spectacularly and soft power has shifted massively from West to East.
If Washington had sincerely wanted to defeat the Taliban, its only choice would have been to team up with Russia. But it had painted itself into a corner in two ways:
It had sent in the CIA to aid the Mujahideen terrorists in ousting Russia in 1979, and it has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, kept up a propaganda campaign, falsely branding Russia an enemy.
Like the story of the shepherd boy who cried wolf when there was no wolf, the US now faces a real wolf and all its cries for help are going unheeded.
is this part of the purposeful and controlled demolition of america that will usher in one world government
American fools were simply outplayed. They incorrectly assumed their ponzi dollar scheme could win them any war or geopolitical objective.
The fools from the west simply do not learn and adapt. They are a bloated and sick death machine. Contrast to the careful calculated behavior from many Eurasian countries.
Afghanistan has world’s largest largest untapped deposits of Lithium. Guess what you need to make high end lithuim-ion batteries…?! And ergo western consumer technology from Ipads to ‘green’ Telsa’s (note some European gov’s claims of full electric vehicle manufacturing in next decades). And guess who may now be in position to make deals/build infrastructure and mine that Afghan Lithium in future? Many speculate with the governing changes in Afghanistan its likely to be China.