Washington : Kurt Campbell, the White House’s top Asia adviser, declared last month that a historic change in U.S. foreign policy was afoot, one that would shift U.S. focus away from the Middle East to Asia, where China’s growing might has cast shadows over Washington’s allies.
“It will be painful, in all likelihood. We’ll see some real challenges in places like Afghanistan,” Campbell told an Asia Society webinar, a blunt assessment of what since has come to pass as the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country has sparked a humanitarian crisis.
Officials argued that withdrawing from Afghanistan would free up time and attention of senior U.S. political and military leaders, as well as some military assets, to focus on the Indo-Pacific.
But experts and former officials say President Joe Biden’s poorly executed troop withdrawal from Afghanistan appears – in the near term and possibly for much longer – to be undermining the very goal of freeing the United States to concentrate on China, something successive presidents have sought, only to be pulled back to the Middle East.
