Declining American Prestige

With Joe Biden you never know whether he is lying or stupid or demented. It’s a tough call.

When Biden declared forcefully that his pathetic performance in Afghanistan had not cost America any respect or prestige, he might have been lying or stupid or demented. Surely, he was not in touch with reality.

Coming fast upon Biden’s statement the EU minister for foreign affairs, Joseph Borrell, called the Biden policy a “catastrophe.” It was not an ambiguous statement.

This morning Tony Blair, not a member of the vast right wing conspiracy, wrote this in The Daily Mail:

The abandonment of Afghanistan and its people is tragic, dangerous, unnecessary, not in their interests and not in ours.

In the aftermath of the decision to return the country to the same group from which the carnage of 9/11 arose, and in a manner that seems almost designed to parade our humiliation, the question that allies and enemies alike pose is – has the West lost its strategic will?

By that I mean, is it able to learn from experience, think strategically, define our interests strategically and on that basis commit strategically? 

Is 'long term' a concept we are still capable of grasping? Is the nature of our politics now inconsistent with asserting our traditional global leadership role? And do we care?

Such judgments are not the only ones coming from America’s allies. Though, Blair is obviously too nice to attribute it all to Joe Biden. One feels obligated to recall the point that Blair alluded to, but did not state overtly, namely that Biden was acting unilaterally in Afghanistan.

One suspects that Joe Biden, having witnessed the rank corruption of the American media, concluded that he could say whatever he felt like saying, and that the media and foreign leaders would naturally fall in line and salute.

Apparently, senile old Joe misplayed his cards. We are all the worse for it.