Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered remarks Monday after the Pentagon announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was officially complete. Blinken said the Taliban has to earn “international legitimacy.”
Now that the Taliban is the dominant political force in Afghanistan, the US has to grapple with how to engage with the country. “Going forward, any engagement with the Taliban-led government in Kabul will be driven by one thing only, our vital national interests,” Blinken said. “The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support. Our message is, any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned.”
The Biden administration has frozen billions in Afghan reserves that are held in US accounts and successfully pressured the International Monetary Fund into suspending Afghanistan’s access to IMF funds. Blinken suggested the US will use its financial power and influence over other countries as leverage over the Taliban, in part to ensure Americans and Afghans that worked with the US who are still in Afghanistan are free to leave the country.
“More than half the world’s countries have joined us in insisting that the Taliban let people travel outside Afghanistan freely,” Blinken said. “So the international chorus on this is strong, and it will stay strong. We will hold the Taliban to their commitment on freedom of movement for foreign nationals, visa holders, at-risk Afghans.”
While the US has significant power over the world’s financial system, US sanctions and economic warfare generally does nothing to oust the target government and only inflicts harm on the civilian population.
Blinken said that the US no longer has a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, and has moved Afghanistan-related operations to Qatar. When President Biden ordered the withdrawal back in April, the Pentagon initially planned to keep a troop presence of about 600 soldiers at the US embassy in Kabul, but those plans were spoiled by the rapid Taliban take over. The US is leaving open the possibility of bombing Afghanistan from afar, and Blinken said the US will “maintain robust capabilities” in the region to “neutralize threats” inside the country.
The Afghan people will determine the Taliban’s ‘international legitimacy’, not NATO.
Russia & China’s recognition works for Afghanistan.
Morally speaking Blinken is gone down Alice’s rabbit hole. Not only should the US hand over Afghanistan’s banking assets, nor the contractors and collaborators be allowed to leave with their foreign bank accounts looted from the war, the US & NATO should have to pay substantial reparations.
Only Afghan construction firms and ONLY Afghan construction firms should get contracts for rebuilding. NO outside corporations.
And, Russia should sell Afghanistan s-400 ground to air missiles to deter our “robust capabilities”. Innocents on the ground demand it.
The US and it’s vital national interests bought the last afghan government and expects to do the same with this one. So who needs to restore their international legitimacy? The victims of America’s continuing attacks, of course. Our highest officials are determined to learn nothing regardless of experience.
Blinken also needs to earn international legitimacy back after it was destroyed by Trump.
He has not. He is doing more of what Trump did, as in Iran, and with China and obeying the lunatics from Israel. Warmongers still rule.
If we had legitimacy before Trump it wasn’t based on our actions. Especially with Iran. The Obama administration didn’t honor the deal either.