From Kabul to Tehran: How US diplomacy turned transactional

“From Kabul to Tehran: How US diplomacy turned transactional Submitted by Tam Hussein on Wed, 05/06/2026 - 11:36 Afghanistan showed America’s allies what transactional power looks like in retreat. Iran now shows what it looks like in escalation US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised Nato allies for failing to support the US-Israeli attack on Iran on 28 February, an escalation that led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz - the world’s most critical energy artery - bringing misery to millions across the globe. Trump has gone so far as to threaten his allies, especially Spain, over their intransigence. In March, sitting in the White House, he warned that the US could “fly in” and use Spain’s military bases and cut off all trade. Last week, a leaked memo reported by Reuters suggested that Trump is considering expelling Spain from Nato. But what appears today as a rupture in US international relations under a pugnacious Trump administration is, in fact, the continuation of a policy forged during the Afghanistan withdrawal - when American diplomacy shifted from alliance-based coordination to transactional deal-making. On the face of it, pursuing high-stakes negotiations while bypassing allies - as we are seeing now in the US-Iran war following US Vice-President JD Vance's talks with Iranian negotiators in Islamabad last month - may appear novel, expressed in its most brazen form when Trump said at a press conference in March: “We don't need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world.” But in truth, American policy has been moving in this direction for some time. In researching my new book Shadows Over Kabul: An Insider Account of the Fall of the Afghan Republic , written with Hamdullah Mohib, a former Afghan ambassador in Washington and Afghan national security advisor, I found that the willingness of US foreign policy to sidestep allies and negotiate directly with adversaries it had fought for over a decade did not begin with Trump’s second presidency. Trump's blockade of Hormuz is another own goal in the war on Iran Read More » Rather, it was forged and normalised in Afghanistan, marking a pivotal moment when US foreign policy turned transactional. Aside from its many victims - and arguably contributing to the decline of American hegemony - this way of doing politics may prove to be the most enduring legacy of the US in Afghanistan. In the course of researching this book over four years, I interviewed former government insiders - from national security advisers and senior negotiators to spy chiefs and top generals within the Afghan government - and this is a view that is widely shared. One government minister even showed me the LinkedIn page of an American military contractor who suggested that it was time for President Ashraf Ghani to go. Top General Zia Yassin told me that “every president came with a new policy, and a new policy written by some scholars sitting in Washington”. But I am not sure whether Trump’s policies in Afghanistan were formed by such scholars. Fireside chats Perhaps under George W Bush that was the case. He took a multilateral approach - as Bob Woodward notes in Bush at War . Following the 9/11 attacks, his administration worked hard to bring its allies on board for the initial invasion. Bush was also known for his paternalistic fireside chats with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. By 2014, that approach was strained under Obama - not because multilateralism itself was under threat, but because Obama, alongside Vice President Joe Biden, was sceptical about US war aims in Afghanistan. Woodward notes in Obama’s Wars that he was just as meticulous; it was almost painful to read the handwringing when it came to Afghanistan. But the question Obama and Biden kept returning to was simple: what were the Americans doing there? US President George Bush hosts Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai at the White House in 2008 (AFP) Obama was also deeply conscious of the corruption in the country. And yet, despite the strained relationship between Obama and Karzai, the US still had over 50 nations contributing to the war in 2014. When Trump took office in 2017, the former Apprentice star presented himself as a dealmaker - and there was a shift towards bilateral negotiations with the Taliban at the expense of the Afghan government. Although the Afghan cabinet was divided by internal political conflict, the arrival of Ashraf Ghani as president in 2014 saw relations between Washington and Kabul begin to thaw. As my co-author Hamdullah Mohib, the Afghan republic's national security advisor from 2018 to 2021, told me, the government in Kabul did not initially view the Trump administration in a negative light. 'The optics were clear: Afghanistan’s future was being negotiated without its own elected government at the table' - Hamdullah Mohib, former Afghan ambassador in Washington He believed that US National Security Advisor HR McMaster’s South Asia strategy was a step in the right direction, as it sought to treat Afghanistan not as an isolated part of Central and South Asia, but as part of a broader regional dynamic that included Pakistan - a major supporter of the Taliban. However, the chaotic nature of the Trump administration, with ministers constantly keeping an eye on Trump’s Twitter feed and appointees leaving their posts as quickly as they arrived, meant that the momentum behind the South Asia strategy was lost once McMaster was dismissed in March 2018. In June 2018, there was a glimmer of hope that the Taliban and the Afghan government might reconcile. After 17 years of war, the Taliban declared a ceasefire for Eid celebrations. "It was the first time,” Mohib recalls, “both sides embraced peace - even if only briefly.” It was a promising sign. But according to many insiders, trust began to erode with the appointment of Afghan-American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad in 2018. A veteran negotiator, Khalilzad’s unorthodox tactics undermined intra-Afghan peace efforts. He bypassed the Afghan government to open talks directly with the Taliban; it was unclear whether this was his own initiative or directed by his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In the past, Washington made contact with the Taliban secretly and indirectly through middle men, but this approach came straight from Trump’s playbook. As former defence secretary Mark Esper wrote in his memoirs, Trump even proposed meeting the Taliban at Camp David in 2019; the plan only collapsed after a US serviceman was killed. The Trump administration seemed to care far more about optics than its allies. The issue was not the withdrawal of US troops - the Afghan republic understood that this had to happen - but rather how that process was carried out. Afghan leaders had always been given reassurances that it would be heard and given primacy in negotiations. 'Game changer' Instead, the US opened direct contact with the Taliban and brushed aside every diplomatic convention, protocol, and notion of sovereignty, negotiating on the republic’s behalf. As one of the government’s top negotiators, Abdullah Khanjani, put it, the Afghan government had become merely “an optional layer” in talks with the Taliban. US, Taliban historic deal paves way for foreign troops withdrawal Read More » It signalled to the Taliban that there was simply no need for having intra-Afghan talks with the government, since they were already negotiating with their backers. Neither was there an incentive to settle for a negotiated peace. As Mohib puts it: “We were excluded from key conversations in Doha, while the Taliban were granted international legitimacy. “The optics were clear: Afghanistan’s future was being negotiated without its own elected government at the table. This exclusion wasn’t just diplomatically humiliating – it was politically corrosive. It sent a signal, loud and clear, that the United States no longer viewed the Afghan government as a necessary partner.” When the Doha accords were finally signed in Qatar in February 2020, setting a timeline for a fourteen-month withdrawal of US troops, the Trump administration secured its photo opportunity. Pompeo and Khalilzad, the architects of the deal, chose to sit with the Taliban’s deputy leader, Mullah Baradar, in Doha, rather than with their ally Ashraf Ghani, who was in Kabul alongside US Defence Secretary Mark Esper and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. It sent a clear signal to the rest of the world about what this accord meant. As Khanjani points out, Pompeo sitting there to endorse the deal “was a game changer for the Taliban”. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Taliban negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Doha in November 2020 (Reuters) Less than a week after the accords were signed, two Taliban gunmen attempted to assassinate Abdullah Abdullah, a former political rival and presidential candidate who had finally agreed to join Ghani in a government of national unity following fiercely disputed elections in 2019. What is more, the agreement the US offered the Taliban differed from that presented to Ghani. As Mohib told me, “we had not seen the final text of the deal before it was signed, which was a deliberate sleight of hand.” Afghan officials had seen several iterations of the draft and had objected to the release of 5,000 prisoners. But when the US-Taliban text was published, it remained in its original form - with the prisoner release included. “We,” Mohib said, “had been betrayed.” It forced Ghani to publicly declare that “the government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners”. 'We have released the wolves. The Americans have abandoned us, and the Taliban are circling for the kill' - Afghan President Ashraf Ghani He could not endorse such a move without risking political suicide, but the US administration ultimately pressured the government into agreeing. While it strengthened the Taliban’s position and eroded the Afghan government’s morale, the prisoner release also caused uproar among US allies. Four hundred of those freed were described by Ghani as “a threat to the world” - men implicated in high-profile incidents including the 2017 German embassy attack, the January 2018 Intercontinental Hotel bombing, and the G4S compound assault. Many had been involved in the killing of US-allied servicemen and women. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pressed Trump not to release a notorious prisoner responsible for the deaths of Australian troops. The Americans pressed ahead regardless. “For us,” Mohib recalls, “the release was another humiliating moment - a public admission that we no longer controlled our own destiny.” Ghani, in turn, lamented: “We have released the wolves. The Americans have abandoned us, and the Taliban are circling for the kill.” Biden accelerates pullout Of course, such acts had a cascading effect on regional partners too. Seeing that the US was withdrawing from Afghanistan, Central Asian countries began hedging their bets. When the last Afghan spy chief, Zia Siraj, organised a security conference in February 2021 with several regional intelligence heads in attendance, he warned them of the security implications of a Taliban victory. But, as he put it, “they didn’t take it as seriously as they should have; in a symbolic way they showed their sympathy, but not in practice.” The Afghan administration hoped that with the arrival of President Joe Biden, things would be different - that there would be a return to a more traditional form of diplomacy. 'It's a prison': Afghans stranded in US camp in Qatar exposed to Iranian strikes Read More » But Biden had long been sceptical of the US presence in Afghanistan, and instead chose to accelerate the American exit. In some ways, the decision made sense. Intra-Afghan politics was in disarray, and the 2019 elections had only deepened divisions. The Ghani administration claimed a bruising victory, but with Abdullah Abdullah also declaring himself the winner, the political stalemate had resulted in two presidential inaugurations - and the prospect of a civil war. Meanwhile, intra-Afghan negotiations in Doha fared little better. The 20 or so negotiators were preoccupied with learning English and living in plush hotels, often appearing to stall the process for as long as possible. The only side to benefit from these preliminary talks was the Taliban, who continued not to take the negotiators seriously while steadily consolidating their relationship with their erstwhile enemies. Biden’s decision to accelerate the pullout blindsided his ally, and left the Ghani administration reeling. The push for withdrawal also left the Afghan army facing acute shortages - particularly in air support, on which the government had become heavily reliant. Meanwhile, the Taliban skillfully avoided US forces, targeting government troops and soft targets instead. The fall of Kabul Gradually pressing their advantage, they overthrew the US-backed administration, culminating in the fall of the Afghan republic. The ensuing chaos - set in motion by Trump and brought to a head by Biden’s chaotic evacuation of Kabul airport - continues to reverberate. What the US ultimately developed was a willingness to sideline local and regional allies. In the Middle East, partners are sacrificed for the US-Israel relationship; Nato allies are lambasted for failing to support US priorities. If one looked closely, Afghanistan showed America’s allies what transactional power looked like in retreat. Iran now shows what it looks like in escalation. In both cases, the lesson is the same: alliance politics bends around Washington’s immediate objectives, rather than any durable idea of collective strategy. In that process – and especially in the context of the US-Iran war - there has been a growing realisation that the United States has become a rogue state. That might not matter so much if it were a small, isolated country with limited influence. But as a nuclear superpower, its actions carry global consequences, and that presents the world with a far more serious problem - one that may eventually force a reckoning with American power itself. - Shadows over Kabul: An Insider Account of the Fall of the Afghan Republic is published by Bloomsbury Diplomacy News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:28 Update Date Override 0

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