The Trump and Biden administrations have spent an enormous amount of energy blaming each other for the final collapse. Pompeo excoriated Biden in his memoir, fully blaming him and claiming the Doha agreement had nothing to do with Afghanistan’s subsequent collapse. In turn, the Biden White House released a twelve-page document in April 2023 with their version of events, placing blame on the Trump administration. In their mutual finger-pointing, they are both right: Trump signed the deal, and Biden implemented it. Trump was determined to withdraw from Afghanistan irrespective of what the Taliban said or did, weakening the United States’ diplomatic and military position to the point of collapse. Biden, despite having campaigned on a promise to undo Trump’s legacy, inexplicably followed Trump’s example and implemented Trump’s strategy. Thanks to Trump, Biden inherited an extremely difficult situation – one he managed to make even worse. He played a bad hand badly. And he did so, in large part, because when he looked at Afghanistan, he saw Vietnam.

Trump’s newly empowered foreign policy led to the Doha agreement with the Taliban and America’s final defeat in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s principal demand and the central element of the eventual Doha agreement was the full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. It was hardly something the Taliban needed to demand because Trump was demanding it too. Trump was not inclined to enforce the agreement anyway. Trump campaigned on getting out of Afghanistan and repeatedly and publicly announced his intent to withdraw, which undermined negotiations just as much as Obama’s timetable had done.