Biden Was Wrong: Afghan Government Fall Wasn't Inevitable

If you listen to President Biden and his advisers, they had no alternative but to set in motion the collapse of Afghanistan’s government, leaving tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with, and trusted, the United States in the lurch.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday argued “that when a civil war comes to an end … there are going to be scenes of chaos” and “that is not something that can be fundamentally avoided.” He also argued that it “is simply wrong” to imagine “that with 2,500 forces … we could have sustained a stable, peaceful Afghanistan.” That “would have taken a significant American troop presence, multiple times greater than what President Biden was handed. … And we would have taken casualties.”

Is the Biden administration right that the fall of Afghanistan was inevitable, unless the United States was prepared to pay a heavy price in blood to avert it? That is a historical hypothetical with no certain answer. But the bulk of the evidence suggests that the administration is wrong.

Biden, admittedly, was left in a tough spot by his predecessor. President Donald Trump reduced U.S. forces in Afghanistan from roughly 13,000 to 2,500 and promised to pull all of them out by May 1 of this year in return for next to nothing from the Taliban. That agreement, reached in February 2020, demoralized Afghan forces and emboldened the Taliban.

Sullivan probably has a point that 2,500 troops was too small a presence to assure the survival of the Afghan government. The congressionally chartered, bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group concluded in February “that around 4,500 troops are required to secure U.S. interests under current conditions and at an acceptable level of risk.” But the study group did not call for sending U.S. troops into ground combat. Its report argued that a slightly larger U.S. force focused on “training, advising, and assisting Afghan defense forces” would be enough.

There is no reason to believe that this slightly increased U.S. presence would have resulted in many U.S. casualties. U.S. troops stopped suffering heavy losses after they transitioned in 2014 to a primarily advisory mission. Most troops were relatively safe on large bases the Taliban could not effectively attack. Yet the support they provided to the Afghan government — both material and psychological — remained crucial.