America

On Monday, Tony Blair addressed a military think tank in London and stated that the West should continue to intervene in countries under threat from Islamist extremism. According to the former PM, who led Britain as it joined the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, an isolationist policy would serve no purpose because:  Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat and, unchecked, it will come to us even if centred far from us… Its defeat will come ultimately through confronting both the violence and the ideology, by a combination of hard and soft power. His declaration was along the lines of the one he made in

Britain’s evacuation of Kabul began with an admission of defeat. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said that the UK would probably leave having failed to assist everyone who had been promised safe passage. ‘Some people won’t get back,’ he said in tears in one interview. When asked why he was taking it personally, he replied: ‘Because I’m a soldier.’ He’s the first defence secretary for 29 years to be able to make such a claim. He served with the Scots Guards in Germany, Cyprus, Belize and Northern Ireland before entering politics. His experience in uniform, he says, has given him different insights into the job: in this case, recognising just

Two weeks ago, CIA director William Burns – who has rather a lot on his plate just now – had a quiet word in the Israeli prime minister’s ear about Chinese investment in the Jewish state. It was the latest and most urgent of America’s attempts to prevent Israel from slipping further towards the Beijing dragon’s maw, an issue which has increasingly threatened to drive a wedge between the two allies. It’s no secret that in recent years, Uncle Sam has found himself asleep at the wheel while China has been pushing ahead in the global race. Four decades of pursuing a policy of friendship towards Beijing had simply opened

Empathy won Joe Biden the White House, we were told. Indeed, as former Republican speechwriter Peter Wehner informed us, ‘In the entire history of American presidential campaigns, there may never have been a wider gap in empathy than between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.’ Sen. Chris Coons said Biden’s ‘ability to comfort and listen and connect with people who have just suffered the greatest loss of their lives’ is his ‘superpower’. That fabled empathy hasn’t been much on display in the last fortnight, however. The president called the images coming out of Afghanistan during his disastrous withdrawal ‘heart-breaking’, but his own heart didn’t seem to be in it any time

The bomb attacks at Kabul airport were what US and allied commanders overseeing the mass evacuation had most feared. In so far as they could be, they were prepared. They had, it appears, received very specific intelligence — perhaps based on a trial run by the bombers — that such attacks were in the offing. They warned people to stay away from the airport. Guards were doubtless on extra-high alert. And yet the perpetrators got through. More than 60 civilians were killed along with 13 US marines. Dozens more were injured and taken to already overburdened hospitals in Kabul. The carnage of 26 August was the costliest day in the

After two tours of Iraq as a soldier, I spent six months in Afghanistan in 2007 as part of Operation Herrick VI. My deployment came a year after the then Defence Secretary, John Reid, said we would be ‘perfectly happy to leave the country in three years’ time without firing one shot’. However, the very first night I arrived in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, troops were battling the Taleban across the province, with thousands of shots fired every day. Plans were being made about how we would evacuate our camp if it was overrun. Today, 14 years on, as the final US troops depart, left behind are more

On 7 October 2001 President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom – the invasion of Afghanistan. The operation sought to bring the architects of 9/11 to justice and reduce the threat of terrorism. Twenty years later, President Joe Biden has pledged to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by 31 August, bringing to a close the United States’s longest-ever conflict – known colloquially as ‘the forever war’. But Biden, who supported the invasion, is pulling out at a time when the Taliban – the highly-conservative Islamic organisation that was harbouring al-Qaeda in 2001 – is sweeping through half the country, killing civilians and human-rights defenders and besieging three cities. The US

Will the EU stand up for eastern Europe? This question is now being asked by Ukraine following the announcement of a deal between Germany and the USA which paves the way for the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and western Europe. The deal reached by Merkel and Biden may have placated critics in Washington, but it has failed to allay eastern European concerns over the security implications of the project. The state most affected by Nord Stream 2, Ukraine, has now requested urgent consultations with the European Commission and the German government, adding an air of legal weight to its complaints by invoking provisions