US soft power takes a hit among allies with Afghan withdrawal

WITH the US airlift from Kabul ending on Tuesday, many searching questions are being asked about what the chaos in Afghanistan means for US hard power amid claims of the end of the 'American era' of leadership.

It is too early to definitively answer such questions, but what is much clearer is that US soft power and moral credibility have taken at least a short-term hit with allies from the Asia-Pacific to the Americas. This is troublesome for President Joe Biden as he seeks to rebuild the global reputation of the United States after the travails of the Trump era.

While Mr Biden claims he has no regrets about the nature of the US-led pull-out from Afghanistan, key mistakes were made. While the US president is correct that not all Afghan forces distinguished themselves on the battlefield in recent weeks, that begs the question of whether a slower-paced, calibrated withdrawal might not have led to such a precipitous victory by the Taliban.

Inevitably, this is raising questions about the credibility and the reliability of the US as an ally, including in nations like Taiwan and Ukraine. It is also emboldening US competitors, and not just radical terror groups around the world like Isis-K which was behind Thursday's horrific Kabul airport attack last Thursday.

Take the example of China where the Communist Party's Global Times newspaper has written that "the fall of Kabul marks the collapse of the US international image and credibility". An editorial in that same outlet forecast that the Afghan withdrawal is an "omen of Taiwan's future fate" in that "once a cross-straits war breaks out while the mainland seizes the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam if it wants to intervene".

While Mr Biden has few strong defenders of his Afghan policy, it is noteworthy that he is himself framing his actions in the context of wider US national security interests arguing that "if you are sitting in Moscow or Beijing, are you happy we left? They love nothing better for us than to continue to be totally occupied with what is going on there".

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Far from being the end of the US era of global power, this points to the Afghan withdrawal being potentially a key enabler, rather than impediment, of US overseas engagement going forward, especially in the Asia-Pacific. However, even some of Mr Biden's allies acknowledge that the events of recent weeks, including the Kabul evacuation frenzy, may now mean that the US will not - in the short term - fully recover from the soft power nadir of the previous administration when Donald Trump became one of the most unpopular presidents, internationally, in US history.

LITTLE CONFIDENCE IN TRUMP LEADERSHIP

One Pew Global poll then, for instance, found that around three quarters of the thousands surveyed internationally had little or no confidence in Donald Trump's global leadership. Key decisions that chafed with allies include his withdrawal from the Paris global climate treaty, and pulling out from the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. Indeed, the survey showed Mr Trump enjoyed significantly less support than did George W Bush at the height of his own foreign policy travails after the controversy of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

One of the ways that Mr Biden will now course-correct US foreign policy is not just by re-embracing alliances and multilateralism. Through Samantha Power as head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), he wants US policy to become a voice of conscience and moral clarity again, which is complicated in the eyes of many by the nature of the Afghan withdrawal.

Beyond the long-standing programmes in food security, education, global health and women's empowerment, USAID will focus on four key international issues during Mr Biden's presidency. These are the pandemic, climate change, conflict and state collapse, and democratic backsliding.

The first two areas are common ones that the US and developing countries can easily identify with and work together. The latter two areas - conflict and state collapse, and democratic backsliding - are harder to pursue and Ms Power's experience with various challenges (including in Africa, during her years as the US Ambassador to the UN) may have persuaded her that some key conflicts and state collapses could be ameliorated if Washington is willing to engage constructively and that humanitarian intervention is justified to save lives from genocidal regimes.

So while the challenges ahead are huge, what Mr Biden is convinced by (unlike Mr Trump) is the importance of soft power. That is, the ability to achieve goals by attracting and co-opting others, rather than by coercing.

At a time when the president is facing a series of complex foreign policy challenges, especially in Asia-Pacific, he recognises that Washington will benefit from more engaged, strong, and supportive allies. And this is true from helping to find a resolution to the nuclear stand-off in Korea; combating the continuing threat from international terrorism; and tackling the range of threats posed by sizeable, revisionist powers such as Russia.

President Biden is also trying to learn from some of the soft power successes and failures of the Obama presidency. Coming into office in 2009, Barack Obama confronted a situation in which anti-US sentiment was at about its then-highest levels since at least the Vietnam War. The key factor driving this was the international unpopularity of the Bush administration's policies, not least the war in Iraq.

During the Obama years, there was a substantial increase in foreigners regarding the US as the most admired country in the world again. And this turnaround in fortunes was not only welcomed in Washington but also in corporate America following concerns during the Bush years that US-headquartered multinationals were becoming a focus for commercial backlash from anti-Americanism.

Yet, while Mr Obama made progress with global public diplomacy, the scale of the challenge he faced meant that he left much undone some eight years later. Some internationally, for instance, were disappointed by his failure to close Guantanamo Bay, which still remains open for around three dozen inmates, and which Mr Biden hopes to close during his presidency.

Post-Afghan withdrawal, the Biden team will therefore now seek a sustained, significant push on these issues to try to turn around the spike in anti-US sentiment during Mr Trump's presidency. Despite the recent chaos in Kabul, there is still upside opportunity in the next three and a half years as the White House seeks to create a more fertile global environment for covert and overt economic and political policy cooperation with US officials.

• The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics