Another Afghanistan? Never, says US

A lot of people in the West seem to believe that the US capitulation to the Taliban and the withdrawal of all American troops mean the Biden administration is going into isolationist mode which is bad for the world and particularly bad for European/Nato allies. This is a natural gut reaction but I doubt it's really true. One thing that is true is that the Pentagon will try to avoid ever again sending tens of thousands of troops into a foreign country and engaging in a long counter-insurgency and nation-building mission. As far as the Pentagon is concerned that is the main, if not the only, lesson learned from the Afghanistan campaign. Most generals would argue that when the president gives you an operation, you stick to the objective, complete the mission and then get the hell out. The trouble with Afghanistan is that the mission may have started as a simple objective - the elimination of al-Qaeda - but as the years went by the objectives proliferated and some idiot suggested it might be a good idea to transform Afghanistan into a democracy-loving, non-corrupt, sensibly governed nation that could stand on its own two feet and be an upstanding member of the international community. There was zero chance of that ever happening, mostly because of in-built corruption that snatched away vast sums of money donated by the US and the rest of the sympathetic and generous world but also because the country never changed from being a nation of disparate farmers, poppy-growers and tribes who weren't interested in becoming westernised. Why should they? So for all these reasons, the Pentagon will say NEVER AGAIN. The military are brilliant much of the time but nation-building is not part of their DNA. So, farewell Afghanistan. There will never again be American military boots on the ground there and if any other nation, like in Africa, needs sorting out in the future, it will involve small units of special operations troops, large doses of State Department and USAID and that's it. The US will still be a world policeman but on a much much smaller scale. Until China becomes a real threat to the world that is.