Biden’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan: There Starts Multipolar Mapping
The American withdrawal of Afghanistan was the last sign of the emergence of a totally new multipolar world to be radically restructured by new lines of powers.
The world geopolitics after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan of American troops and disgusting and shameful treatment of pro-American collabos falling from the planes has fundamentally changed. This change is so huge and massive that we cannot yet evaluate it as it deserves.
We can trace the decline of American hegemony starting from the 9/11 attack on WTC. If the ex-territorial network organization can cause such harm to the world's unique hyperpower (expression of Hubert Vidrine), something was wrong with it already at this moment.
The constant growth of independence of two alternative poles – China and Russia – we can observe also from the very beginning of 2000 – the starting point of rising Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia.
But right after 9/11, the USA has decided to ignore Russia and China that seemed still too weak and irrelevant, and concentrate its efforts on the Islamic world: The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, occurred the new wave of Arab spring revolts, supported by the West. The main enemy of the unipolar world was identified in radical Islam – first of all in its Salafi version – hence Al-Qaida, later ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra, and so on. Fukuyama coined the term “Islamofascism” – a kind of a new “doctor evil” personification.
It was fake news from the very start. It is common knowledge that the US has largely supported extreme Sunni Fundamentalist movements during the cold war period in order to use them against pro-Soviet regimes, secular nationalist parties, and Shia’ organizations – all of them being decisively anti-Western. So, the idea of Washington strategists was generally to use their clients once more in new conditions. This time, the exterritorial nature of the jihadist network served the USA as a seemingly sufficient pretext to invasion in any sovereign country. The reference to some secret classified information of the CIA was enough to justify intrusion and regime change operation.
During the 9/11 period, the US fought this spectral foe of “Islamofascism” desperately trying to reinforce unipolarity and globalization.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan of American troops is the final element of this strategy with an obvious and irreversible end. The US and the West in general have lost the battle against a fictive enemy. This battle was won by the most populist movement in the Islamic world fighting against intervention and colonization. It is the final point in miserable neocons strategy that is proved to be a total failure.
Things went wrong already with Obama. He pretended to be “pacifist” but started new wars and didn’t finish any already started ones. During his rule, The Greater Middle East Project, as well as the Arab spring, were disastrous for the American image. The US could not fulfill any promise to any participant – nor pay back the service of pro-American local players. They provoked chaos but were totally unable to bring order. So, Obama was obliged to follow neocons politics but has shown some reluctance in doing this, demonstrating not only the lack of the will but the exhaustion of the resources.
With Trump, things became clearer. Trump has explicitly refused globalization and internationalism and advocated old-fashioned paleo-conservative American nationalism. In the Middle East, Trump gave his unique support to "Israel" and abandoned the “deep democratization” of Islamic societies. He promised to get American troops out of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, but couldn’t do that being under attack of democrats.
But the American power in Central Asia and the Middle East was deteriorating more and more during Obama and Trump notwithstanding their contradictions in other fields.
The last reality check was made by Biden. Being a radical opponent of Trump and a clear neocon, he was obliged to do more than his predecessors – to put the symbolic point ending the 20 years long American strategy of fight against “Islamofascism”. In spite of its inexistence “Islamofascism”- this spectral imagined by crude liberal propaganda entity - has won.
With Biden, Washington was obliged to recognize the reality, as all the political power was in the hands of globalists and neocons– American Century is over, the US has proved to be incapable to lead the world, globalization is a failure, and Western hegemony is no more viable. If 9/11 was the beginning of a decline, the late summer of 2021 is the finalization of it.
The US has lost its hegemony from the very beginning of its war against “Islamic fundamentalism”. Washington was obliged to deal from now on with real irreversible multipolar world order. Here two poles – China and Russia – are already here, contesting American interest everywhere. In the Islamic region, almost full independence from the West is gained and preserved by Iran standing strong in spite of all pressures and sanctions. It is a stronghold for all Shia networks and first of all for Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the Sunni world, Erdogan - knowing perfectly that the attempt of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen coup d’état of 2016 was organized and plotted by the CIA - started to lead sovereign politics pursuing its national goals and making new alliances (including with Russia or China) whenever it seemed to be useful. Pakistan has as well freed itself almost completely from USA influence making a strategical pact with China.
Russian successes in Syria restored a certain amount of Russian prestige that grew at the same time when American prestige declined. That was remarked by many Arab countries – including Qatar, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia that also began to seek new ties with Russia.
The American withdrawal of Afghanistan was the last sign of the emergence of a totally new multipolar world to be radically restructured by new lines of power.
The AUKUS and QUAD initiative of Biden has hit NATO solidarity where France and Italy were particularly affected losing huge contracts in submarines and military ships revoked by the US and Great Britain (including Australia) Anglo-Saxon alliance. QUAD invited Japan and India to share with Anglo-Saxons their agonizing camp desperately trying to contend with China. But the unity of NATO is already so damaged that the bloc itself hardly can be saved in the middle-term period of time, not to speak of the long term.
So, Biden has cut off the Atlantist camp in two parts – the Anglo-Saxon pole and the European pole. All that we saw already in Bush’s presidency (once more neocon anti-European unipolar tendency), was partly in Obama’s epoch and assuredly in Trump nationalism. But once more, Biden has finalized the whole process.
With AUKUS, the US didn’t gain a new member (Australia was obviously already a part of the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence) but lost Europe. In QUAD Japan is not an independent entity but the involvement of India is still uncertain and it is hardly thinkable that the growing nationalism of Modi’s India would accept the extreme liberal LGBT+ agenda of Biden, using Americans only pragmatically in its regional competition with China and Pakistan, but avoiding ideological dimension of such alliance. Russian special relations to India can in the future play its role.
So, all steps of Biden’s foreign policy are clear signs that the unipolar moment is definitely over. Anglo-Saxon pole is no more unique, universal, and doesn’t represent a hegemonic instance. The US is not a hyper-power anymore. It is still a big power, maybe the biggest, but this comparison is valid only when we take into consideration the USA (or Anglo-Saxon block as a whole) on one scale and the other existing pole (Russian, Chinese or Islamic) separately. But when we consider the sum of military and energetic resources of Russia, financial and economic stature of China, the religious and cultural anti-Western zeal of Islamic societies, and the EU abandoned and betrayed by the USA, we get the picture where no more unilateral hegemony is possible. The competition between the Anglo-Saxon pole and the other poles in different combinations reduces the American full-scale dominance to an empty concept.
We cannot make Biden the only responsible figure for that. He just finishes what started his predecessors much earlier. We could expect that from Trump who openly rebuked globalization. But the irony of history has appointed the main gravedigger of globalization its most zealous advocate.
I suggest not arguing about how correct and precise these considerations at the end of the unipolar moment are. For sure, the US is still alive and is going to be an important and serious player. More than that, the liberal globalist elites in agony can cause serious harm to humanity – we cannot exclude the global war or something like this.
But more fruitful would be to concentrate on the emerging future where multipolarity is an accomplished fact. That changes everything. Not only in the minds of those who believed that the American century will last forever. But as well in the minds of those who fought it. There is some inertia of permanent war. It seems to last when it is already over. Maybe this time, it is an exaggeration that we have won. But the fact is that they have lost. So, we need to accept it and get further looking forward to the future.
That demands a new approach to political analysis, ideological mapping, and geopolitical monitoring. New poles are already here. After American withdrawal from Afghanistan, there can be no doubt about it.