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Senior U.S. national security officials will meet with key allies in the Arabian Gulf and Europe this week to see how the failed war in Afghanistan might reshape U.S. relations in the Middle East.
Secretary of State Anthony Brinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went to the Gulf region separately and left on Sunday. They will hold talks with leaders who have tried to prevent the threat of armed groups in Afghanistan from rising again. Some of them have been partners in the 20-year struggle with the Taliban.
Austin and Brinken’s trip together was to reassure Gulf allies. President Joe Biden decided to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan in order to pay more attention to other security challenges such as China and Russia. This does not indicate that the U.S. will abandon cooperation in the Middle East. partner.
The U.S. military has been stationed in the Gulf region for decades, including the Navy’s Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain. Biden did not recommend ending this existence, but he-like the Trump administration before him-called China the most important security priority, as well as a strategic challenge from Russia.
Biden said within a few hours after the last batch of U.S. troops left: “In this competition, there is nothing China or Russia is more willing and wanting than the United States in Afghanistan for another decade.”
When announcing his trip to the Gulf, Austin said at a Pentagon press conference that continuing to pay attention to the threat of terrorism means relentlessly responding to “any threat to the American people from anywhere”, even if the United States puts a new focus on On the strategic challenge from China.
Brinken went to Qatar and will stay in Germany to visit the Afghan evacuees who are waiting for permission to go to the United States at Ramstein Air Base. There, he will participate in a virtual meeting with colleagues from 20 countries on the way forward in Afghanistan.
Spokesperson Ned Price said on Friday: “The Secretary of State will express the United States’ gratitude to the German government’s invaluable partners in Afghanistan over the past 20 years and Germany’s cooperation in transporting people out of Afghanistan’s transit operations.”
Austin plans to begin his trip, thanking Qatari leaders for their cooperation during the Kabul airlift, helping to evacuate the pipeline of desperate evacuees that was initially blocked.
In addition to allowing the use of al-Udeid air base to handle U.S. evacuees, Qatar also agreed to receive the U.S. diplomatic mission evacuated from Kabul at the end of the war. Qataris also cooperated with the Taliban to help reopen Kabul Airport.
During his stay in Bahrain, Austin planned to talk to the Marines who had spent several weeks at Kabul Airport conducting crazy and dangerous evacuations of Afghans, Americans and others. On August 26, a suicide bomb attack occurred at the airport, killing 11 Marines and injuring 15 others. That attack killed dozens of Afghan civilians and 13 American soldiers.
The Pentagon chief also plans to visit Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and meet a senior leader in a region he is familiar with. He is a retired army general and the former commander of the US Central Command in charge of all military operations in the region.
Saudi Arabia is clearly absent from the Gulf States Group that helped facilitate the U.S.-led evacuation from Kabul Airport. The relationship between Riyadh and Washington is strained by Biden’s efforts to restore the nuclear agreement with Iran and other issues. Just a few days before the United States left Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia signed a military cooperation agreement.
Biden stated that his decision to leave Afghanistan in 20 years is part of his foreign policy “page-turning” plan since 2001, which he believes has allowed the US military to stay in Afghanistan too long. Allies in the Gulf, where the threat of extremism is within easy reach, they want to know what the next US policy page will look like.
In Europe, the allies are also assessing what the defeat of the war in Afghanistan and its direct consequences mean for their collective interests, including the multi-year question of whether Europe should reduce its dependence on the United States.
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, wrote on Twitter on Thursday: “We need to increase our ability to act autonomously when necessary.”
The United States’ European allies in NATO have more troops in Afghanistan than the United States when Biden announced in April that he would withdraw in September. Europeans have almost no choice but to join the export. Considering their limited combat power away from home, they rely heavily on American air transportation to evacuate, although they did fly some evacuations.
Some NATO allies doubt whether Biden’s decision to withdraw is wise, but they are not sure whether the Afghan crisis will weaken the ties between the United States and Europe. In an article, two European experts from the Center for Strategic and International Security-Rachel Elerhus and Pierre Mokos-wrote that the crisis did reveal the “transatlantic relations” The truth about the inconvenience”.
They wrote: “For Europeans, this exposes their inability to change American decision-making calculations and their inability to defend their interests (for example, withdrawing their citizens and allies) without Washington’s support.”
Germany, Spain, Italy and other European countries allow the United States to use its military bases to temporarily relocate Afghans who have been airlifted from Kabul but have not yet been approved to resettle in the United States or elsewhere.
Bahrain and Qatar have also made similar arrangements. Together, these arrangements eased the pressure of the evacuation operation from Kabul, which was initially so urgent that the airlift had to be suspended for several hours because there was no place to house the evacuees.
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