In the 19th one C , the phrase " The Great Game " was used to describe competition for power and influence in Afghanistan , and neighbour key and south Asia territories , between the British and Russian Empire .
Neither side prevail in what became known as the " memorial park of empires . "
Two one C later , an American superpower has been reminded of asimilar reality .
The Afghanistan debacle , in which a 300,000 - warm U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan Armycollapsed in hoursserves as a admonisher of the limit of American power in the wide Middle East .
U.S. President Joe Biden may be weather thesharpest criticismfor a disastrously executed withdrawal . But there is plenty of blame to go around , date back to the original ill - fated conclusion to " state build " a nation that has defy outside interference for yard of years .
After thefall of Kabuland the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from a country on which it had squandered $ 1 trillion , the question remains : What ’s next for the Middle East ?
This is a question whose arc stretches from Morocco in the west to Pakistan in the east , from Turkey in the north down into the Gulf and across to the Horn of Africa .
Every corner of the Middle East and North Africa will be touched in some way by the failure of American authority in Afghanistan , the longest war in its account .
America ’s reckoning is also shared by itsNATOallies and countries like Australia . Australia’sill - considered involution in an candid - ended commitment to Afghanistanshould draw in censure .
A New Saigon?
Inevitably , comparisons are being madebetween America ’s panicky coitus interruptus from Kabul and like scenes in Saigon , Vietnam , 46 years ago .
In some regard , the Afghanistani berth is more concerning because so much of the Middle East is at danger of descending into chaos .
The frustration of the South Vietnamese army in 1975 might haveinfluenced developments in the neighboring states of Indochina , but radioactive dust was largely contained .
Afghanistan is different in the horse sense that while America ’s credibleness and ego - self-assurance was battered in Vietnam , it stay the rife military force in the western Pacific before China ’s rise .
In the Middle East , a decrease Washington — in which assurance in its ability to abide by its commitment has been shaken , if not shattered — will find that its authority will be much question .
This comes at a time when China and Russia are testing American resolve globally . In the region itself , TurkeyandIranare already seeking to fill a vacuum exposed by an American failure .
Beijing and Moscow , for their own reasons , have aninterest in Afghanistan ’s future . For China that goes beyond just sharing a border , while for Russia it is historic concerns about Afghan extremism infect its ownMuslimpopulations and those of nation state on its periphery .
Recently , China has been cultivating Taliban leaders . Its extraneous minister Wang Yi guard awell - publicized meetingwith the Afghan Taliban ’s political head Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar last calendar month .
Then there isPakistan , which has supported the Taliban both covertly and overtly over the years . Islamabad will see in the American utmost discomfort opportunity for itself to assume a more significant regional function .
This is not to forget Pakistan ’s close ties to China , and its fractious relationship with the United States .
In Afghanistan itself , the Taliban may know up to its undertakings that it has convert and that it will attempt to establish consensus rule in a country riven by crashing ethnic and tribal division .
Given former denotation ofbrutal Taliban reprisalsagainst its enemies and the panicked reaction of eggshell - shock Afghanistani universe it would take a leap of faith to believe much has changed .
What Implications Will It Have in the Middle East?
In other countersign , will the Taliban change its ways and behave in such a manner that it does not constitute a threat to its neighbors , and the region more generally ?
From America ’s perspective , its exit from Afghanistan leaves its attempts tobreathe biography into the nuclear deal with Iranas its master piece of unfinished Middle East business — if we put away the apparently intractable Israel - Palestine difference of opinion .
effort to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA ) have constitute a fundament of the Biden establishment ’s efforts to prosecute more constructively in the Middle East .
progression has been falter . The election of a fresh hard-line Persian prexy further complicates efforts to achieve via media . unsuccessful person to resuscitate the JCPOA , abandoned by President Donald Trump , will add a novel layer of dubiousness — and jeopardy — to Middle East calculation .
There will have been no more interested party in developing in neighboring Afghanistan than the leadership in Tehran . Iran ’s relationship with the Taliban has been fraught at times , accommodative at others , given the anxiousness in Tehran over mistreatment of Afghanistan ’s Shia universe .
Shia Iran and the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban are not raw partners .
Further afield , the latest developments in Afghanistan will be capturing the close tending of Gulf states . Qatar has provided a diplomatical harbour for the Taliban during public security talk with the vanquished Ghani governance . This peacefulness initiative , under U.S. protection , is now revealed to have been a foil for the Taliban ’s ambitions to rejoin to mightiness in its own rightfulness .
How any sane observer could have believe otherwise is fuddle .
Saudi Arabia will be unnerve by developments of the past few days because it is not in Riyadh ’s pursuit for American confidence in the region to be undermined . But the Saudis have their own longstanding connection with the Taliban .
In Saudi Arabian foreign policy , Afghanistan is not a zero - sum game .
More loosely , the bang to U.S. standing in the neighborhood will be worrying for its restrained Arab allies . This includes Egypt and Jordan . For both , with their own versions of the Taliban lounge in the shadows , events in Afghanistan are not effective news .
The Taliban success in Afghanistan will also have conditional relation for the most combustible corner of the Middle East . In both Iraq and part of Syria where the U.S. maintain a military front , the American exit will be unsettling .
In Lebanon , which has become to all intents and purposes afailed commonwealth , the Afghanistan trouncing will be adding to the glumness .
Israel will be figure the entailment of the black eye lose by its master ally . Increased Middle East unstableness would not seem to be to Israel ’s advantage .
In this next stage , America will no doubt pull back from all but its most pressing Middle East commitments . This will be a time for it to reflect on what lesson might be learned from the dreadful Afghanistan experience .
One example that should be paramount as far as America and its ally are interest : Fighting " bomb state " war is a losing suggestion .
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license . you’re able to detect the original article here .
Tony Walker is a vice chancellor ’s fellow at La Trobe University .
