It’s Time for Australia to Leave Afghanistan

After nearly two decades of military engagement, the United States has started reducing its troop presence in Afghanistan after signing a peace deal with the Taliban. U.S. President Donald Trump is hoping to be able to claim, before the November election, that he brought an end to the conflict and began the process of bringing U.S forces home. This scenario would also mean that Australia would be withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan (currently around 400 troops). Such a withdrawal would bring an end to a military engagement for Canberra that has been unclear in its purpose, while costing the country 41 defense force personnel and over $10 billion.

Australia’s costs in Afghanistan pale in comparison to those of the United States, but they remain significant for a country of its size. When al-Qaeda launched an attack on the United States in September 2001, then-Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington, D.C. Days after the event, Howard invoked the ANZUS Treaty to commit Australia to the U.S.-led War on Terror, leading to involvement in Afghanistan.

The ANZUS treaty was signed by Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in San Francisco on September 1, 1951, and came into force the following April. New Zealand effectively (although not formally) withdrew from ANZUS in the mid-1980s after it declared itself a nuclear free zone, banning nuclear powered or armed U.S Navy vessels. But Australia has maintained the treaty as the central pillar of its foreign policy. The text of the treaty is not a formal commitment that an attack on one country is considered an attack on the others; instead it only commits the countries to consult over common dangers.

However, Australia has committed itself to every military action that the United States has engaged in since the treaty’s signing, not due to any explicit common dangers – or direct attacks like 9/11 – but in an attempt to build enough goodwill to secure U.S. intervention should Australia face a military threat. In doing so Australia has made a wider strategic calculation that has subsumed any direct interests in a regional conflict like Afghanistan to a continual enhancement of this goodwill as its primary security insurance policy.

That said, Australia would certainly have had a stake regardless in preventing terrorist organizations from gaining a global reach, as was the initial goal of the Afghanistan conflict. However, the conflict moved on from this initial justification into something more nebulous. According to U.S. government documents obtained by the Washington Post in December last year, after al-Qaeda’s leadership had been killed, captured, or fled (within six months), there was confusion as to the purpose of the mission, with no strategy or even knowledge of who the enemy was. The United States had created a protracted conflict with no concrete purpose.

For Australia this generated a problem. As a country of limited security resources the justification for the use of these resources is paramount. While maintaining a steadfast and interoperable relationship with the United States is important, clear combat objectives from senior security partners are also important. Indeed, it is vital in order to maintain the credibility of the alliance in the Australian public’s eyes, and justify Canberra’s continued strategy of walking in lock-step with the United States.

The fact that Australia’s immediate region has quickly become the world’s primary strategic theater at the same time Canberra has been investing resources in far-off Afghanistan is also a considerable problem. Australia should have been using these past two decades to enhance its Indo-Pacific capabilities. Tensions over the South China Sea will most likely escalate in the coming years and Australia’s investment in regional security will become more vital. This investment should be considered both in its direct interests, and also as a significant contribution to its alliance with the United States.

If the peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban holds, then Australian Defense Force deployments in the country will be withdrawn by the end of April 2021. But this remains a big “if.” It is still unknown whether the Taliban are capable of the organizational control and rank and file discipline to commit to the agreement. Meanwhile, the current political destabilization in Afghanistan, with a disputed election result handing Ashraf Ghani the presidency and threats by Abdullah Abdullah to form a “parallel government,” do not inspire confidence that the country’s security and stability is certain.

Australia may need to make its own firm commitment to a withdrawal from Afghanistan regardless of how the situation develops, and regardless of how the United States approaches any changes in the situation.