Final Word from Wednesday, September 1, 2021

"My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over," declared U.S. Pres. Joe Biden yesterday. "This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries." Human rights will remain at the center of U.S. foreign policy, he said, "but the way to do that is not through endless military deployments, but through diplomacy, economic tools, and rallying the rest of the world for support." He plans to "turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nation the last two decades." In his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance document in March, he had said that the "use of military force should be a last resort, not the first." As if to emphasize the new direction, Biden's administration left behind billions of dollars in military equipment in Afghanistan. Under these new conditions, it will be difficult to continue to demand that other Nato countries devote 2% of their GDP to defense. Biden has given Czech politicians a once-in-a-lifetime campaign topic five weeks before the elections, if only they knew what to do with it. [ Czech Republic United States Joseph Alliance ]