The hidden way Biden will salvage value from the Afghanistan debacle

The hidden way Biden will salvage value from the Afghanistan debacle

Opinion by

Greg Sargent

Columnist

Today at 11:10 a.m. EDT

A narrative is taking shape around the Afghanistan debacle that goes like this: The failure of our mission, and the terrible humanitarian consequences of the botched withdrawal, badly complicate President Biden’s claim that “America is back.” In this telling, whatever pretentions Biden had to rehabilitating the United States’ global leadership role after Donald Trump have been utterly shattered.

This narrative, I submit, is terribly flawed. But the pressure is on Biden to prove it’s flawed by replacing it with something better. And in an underappreciated way, this ratchets up the stakes for passage of Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure and jobs agenda.

What does the $3.5 trillion bill, which Democrats hope to pass by the simple-majority Senate reconciliation process, have to do with Afghanistan? Nothing direct. But the core of this agenda could help reorient our post-Afghanistan narrative and trajectory in a more constructive way.

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That core is the bill’s massive suite of proposals to combat global warming. If it becomes law, it will also boost the United States' credibility at the global climate summit this fall in Glasgow, and allow the United States to influence other countries to do much more themselves.

Right now, the reconciliation bill is on a knife’s edge. A few conservative Democrats still insist the House must vote on just the $1 trillion bipartisan “hard” infrastructure bill that passed the Senate, before waiting for it to pass the reconciliation one.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will hold a vote on a rule that will advance the reconciliation bill’s framework — laying the groundwork for the House to pass a full reconciliation one later — and move the bipartisan bill forward without passing it. That would lock in her “two track” strategy and dare conservative Democrats to scuttle it.

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The White House is backing Pelosi’s approach. It’s obvious why: It’s the only way to ensure passage of a sufficiently ambitious reconciliation bill later.

The stakes suddenly look higher after the Afghanistan debacle. The Post’s John Hudson and Missy Ryan report on an argument among foreign policy thinkers over the question of whether it has shattered the “America is back” narrative:

Would a withdrawal from Afghanistan convey weakness, provoke aggression and shatter America’s ability to lead on the international stage, or would it reflect a sound realignment of the national interest, put the country on better footing to deal with the new challenges of the 21st century, and clarify to allies and adversaries what the United States is and is not willing to expend resources on?

The answer is the latter. If anything, this is a pivot point for reorienting toward something more constructive internationally. As one scholar put it: “ending the long and futile war in Afghanistan will allow Washington to focus more attention on bigger priorities.”

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That’s where the fall’s climate summit — and the reconciliation bill — come in. The bill’s climate agenda contains two big things. There’s the Clean Energy Standard, which would ratchet down production of greenhouse gas emissions in generating electricity. And there are massive subsidies for production of renewable energy sources.

As David Roberts writes in an important piece, these reinforce each other. The first increases demand for renewable energy sources to produce electricity. The second boosts supply of those sources. This could have real impact at home and at the COP26 international climate conference:

If both these policies are put in place, it could set the U.S. power system on a new course and strengthen American credibility at the upcoming COP26 international climate meeting.

But as Roberts notes, if reconciliation fails, “the U.S. will surrender all hope of meeting its climate targets or influencing others to do the same.”

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So the big story here could end up being that after Afghanistan, the United States quickly pivoted around to showing itself capable of large-scale governance and a display of international leadership in the face of our most pressing long-term global challenge.

Of course, Biden must do many other things to make this the story. The Afghanistan failure calls into question our ability to defend human rights abroad, but a seriously expanded effort to take in Afghan refugees might show that we can still exercise leadership on that front.

This also requires Biden to drop his misguided use of a covid-19 health rule to keep out asylum seekers and, possibly, articulate a longer-term multilateral vision on refugees and displaced persons. Biden must also do more to lead a global covid response in the face of the new delta variant surge.

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As Jake Werner argues, the more the United States does on fronts like those, the more credibility it will have in pitching the virtues of democracy in the international arena, since we will not simply be representing the world’s rich democracies in doing so. All of those, plus climate action, could represent the pillars of a new U.S. international posture.

This needn’t be the same old liberal internationalism. It should be accompanied by a constructive reckoning with the bipartisan folly and hubris that undergirded the loss in Afghanistan, as Stephen Wertheim says. Hopefully it will also be accompanied by the largest governmental effort in decades to rebuild our country and create opportunity for millions struggling to enter the middle class, clearing more political space for international engagement.

If things go well, perhaps the Afghanistan exit will be seen as the first chapter in a new “America is back” narrative. To paraphrase Biden himself, the story might be “America is back — better.”