(To Pasquale Preziosa) According to some American analysts, Afghanistan's National Security has deteriorated further since NATO, in 2014, reduced its presence on the ground and did not allow the Afghan security forces to reach the training levels required by US plans.
Not so, this is just a little "superfine" way to ward off responsibility from those in authority.
The real reasons must be sought through the historical analysis of all the events and strategic decisions that have affected that tormented country.
The level of National Security of Afghanistan has never depended on NATO's levels of presence in that theater either because the NATO military component has always been, of very small dimensions, ancillary to the US component, both in terms of strategic choices and points of fall of this strategy have been elaborated by the USA and illustrated to the allies for the sharing of sustainable parts from the political, economic and legal point of view.
The 21 last August, President Trump said that Afghanistan had to take more responsibility for the war and its future.
In the same speech the American president stressed that India will be the USA's partner country in South Asia.
The official speeches must be purged from the usual rhetoric to examine the salient geopolitical aspects of interest.
The first aspect that emerges from the examination of the president's speech is the indication of who should be responsible for the conflict in Afghanistan and not for the resolution of the conflict, thus allowing a glimpse of a probable removal of the coalition's military support to the current government of that country .
With this background, the Doha talks with the Taliban continued, where the Special Assistant for South Asia, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, is negotiating the conditions for the country's passage into Taliban hands.
In summary, these negotiations can be summarized in the following points: sticking to the Constitution in force in the country, not granting training bases for terrorists and fighting ISIS training present.
The negotiation currently underway, by the US with the Taliban, has almost come to an end, unfortunately in the moment of "minor military stage presence" in Afghanistan.
We recall that in the 2011 there were 100.000 US soldiers, British 10.000 and 30.000 NATO soldiers in addition to American contractors, such forces were not enough, to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Today, with Western troops on the ground reduced to a flicker, the possibility that it is the Afghan forces we trained to defeat the Taliban is pure fantasyindeed one wonders with what spirit today the Afghan soldiers can fight the Taliban if, in the short term, the Americans and allies will leave Afghanistan in their hands, "Afghanistan under the Taliban had been a brutal theocracy" said the January Tommy Franks (Centcom Commander up to 2003) in his writings and nothing has changed since then.
Once again the strategic plan for Afghanistan is in the hands of the US and not in the decisions of NATO, as is natural.
Let us now examine some important dates of these 18 years spent by the coalition in Afghanistan, to verify the existence of strategic flaws in the conduct of operations ...
When US troops intervened in the 2001 in Afghanistan, there were the Taliban who ruled the country, who had given hospitality to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorism and Afghanistan was the first world producer of Marihuana.
The objectives established at the time were: elimination of both the Taliban and the organization of Al Qaeda, eradicating opium cultivation, freeing women, renewing the country in a democratic sense, so that it could no longer be a danger to humanity ; the USA proclaimed, the "Global war on terrorism".
The levels of ambition established for Afghanistan, in the wake of the excitement of the 11 September, were very high, as were the budget allocations for funding both from the country and from military operations.
The participation of individual nations in support of US operations also reached the considerable number of 53 countries, and NATO for the first time in its history (which is also our story) as a result of the 11 September terrorist act, he invoked the 2 Oct. 2001 Article V of the Atlantic Pact, which states that an armed attack against one or more members of the Alliance must be considered as an attack against all the countries of the Alliance itself.
In the 2003 the US greatly reduced troops in Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq, without waiting for the completion of the work begun in Afghanistan: Bush already in the 2002 spoke of axis of evil e Rogue states, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
The opening of two war fronts, unfortunately with the same amount of US forces present in that operational area, led to the need to feed Iraq not with new military forces (170.000 units), but at the expense of fighting units in Afghanistan .
The absence of sufficient military forces on the Afghan land, as early as the 2003, allowed the Taliban to resurrect and begin the gradual reconquest of the lost territory.
The few US reinforcements then sent by the 2009, after 6 years of absence, little they could do to conquer what regained by the Taliban,
The new 2011 reinforcements, resulting from the new US focus change from Iraq to Afghanistan, with troop withdrawals from Iraq and repositioning in Afghanistan, were ineffective to eliminate all the terrorist and criminal metastases developed since the 2003 with the first change of operational focus (strategic strabismus) USA from Afghanistan to Iraq.
The terrorist situation was further complicated by the withdrawal of US troops from IRAQ, which saw the budding of a further terrorist organization: the ISIS which also affected Afghanistan, aggravating the already critical security level of the country.
Therefore, the current problems of insecurity in Afghanistan are only the consequence of the decisions taken in the far 2003 by the USA, which decided the significant reduction of military forces on the ground, which could not consolidate and stabilize the results achieved with the victory achieved with the invasion started on 7 October 2001.
The second point of the president's speech concerned the American partnership with India in Asia.
There are not many strategic insights to be made on this subject: the choice of India by the US, automatically makes Pakistan's strategic and operational support for operations in Afghanistan lapse, pushes Pakistan into Chinese, Russian, and for certain also Iranian.
The joint reading of the two points touched by the US president, therefore highlights profound geopolitical changes, in other words: Afghanistan and terrorism, reduced in their revolutionary aspirations, will have a lower priority in the new geopolitical cycle, compared to the new element that was on the horizon but now China has consolidated.
The USA and consequently China have already identified the new allied countries for the next geostrategic comparisons.
Such comparisons, in the early stages will not be comparable to the "cold war" because the assumptions that developed that war have changed, Michael McFaul proposes to call it Hot Peace.
We will see in the near future how this comparison between further Chinese economic and commercial expansionism and the US response, linked both to the "Trade War with the world" and to the policy of containing Chinese expansionism will be consolidated.
This new confrontation is born in the digital age and will be characterized by the new cyber domain with the "information trade".
According to some scholars, the domination of cyberspace will be the key factor to gain power in the future.
Today's Afghanistan, therefore, is immersed in a different geopolitical framework than that of 18 years ago for three reasons: the end of the terrorist cycle linked to religions, China's interest in stabilizing Afghanistan for national convenience and the achieved "dominance" of the US in the energy field thanks to the large reserves of "shale oil" identified on its territory.
David Rapoport, in his studies on the terrorist waves that have characterized our history (four), has foreseen the term or rather the attenuation of this cycle, started in the 1979, in the not far 2025, with the birth of a new cycle of different typology and not in Afghanistan.
China established itself as a great power, has more interest today than yesterday in stabilizing Afghanistan for economic, strategic and internal security reasons (Limes); in Xinjiang "a tough anti-terrorism campaign is already underway to stem the extremist fringe of the Uyghur ethnic group, the Muslim minority and the Turkic language."
Furthermore, the protection of infrastructure projects along the route of the new silk route, requires a more stable Afghanistan.
Finally, Afghanistan, although it has no oil, is important for transporting Caspian oil to the Pakistani warm seas through the obligatory mountain pass of Khyber, part of the old Silk Road, a crossing point between Central Asia and Meridionale: the US interest in the passage of energy resources through Afghanistan has weakened to achieve the status of "dominance" in the energy sector thanks to the "shale oil and gas" discovered in its territory.
The US then, assessed, not profitable to remain in the Afghan area, which today presents a lower terrorist risk than the 2001, in a framework of resource prioritization (Resource Triangle).
From a geo-strategic point of view, "Beijing wants to tighten Kabul to itself to erode India's sphere of influence" (Limes).
Afghanistan, with the withdrawal of the USA from the theater in the coming years, will prepare to enter a possible Chinese orbit with the support of Pakistan, a bitter enemy of India which in turn is not a good friend of China.
With all due respect to US analysts, NATO acted as a valued ally alongside the US, bearing costs and paying its contribution, as well as Italy, with human lives. without however any influence on the geostrategic decisions that have been operated independently by the USA and without great recognized honors. Sometimes in the accounts of the costs of participation in the Alliance, we add one more line, to consider what has been done and paid in the 18 years by the Allies and Italy as a national contribution to our collective security and we avoid putting others on their responsibilities .