British MPs bemoan 'catastrophic miscalculation' of Afghanistan as post-mortem begins

To hear the British foreign minister tellit,the biggest mistake made by some in his government and many others across Europein the lead-up to the fall of Afghanistan was "optimism bias."

Essentially, having too much hope that U.S. President Joe Biden would change his mind and keep American troops in Afghanistan longer than the Aug. 31 deadline, so as to avoid thecatastrophic humanitarian crisis many fear has started.

"There was some wishful thinking in some quarters internationally that the Biden administration would change. But the election campaign had baked in somefinality to this," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told British MPsWednesday during a grilling before theHouse of Commons foreign affairs committee.

Biden, of course, had held firm to the deadline, fulfilling a campaign promise to see all U.S. troops exit Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 even as chaos erupted at Kabul's international airport, as thousands of fearful Afghans flooded the area in an attempt to flee the Taliban.

According to Raab, that same wishful thinking is also the reason why NATO planners were unable topredict the extremist group's rapid march across the country:They simply didn't want to believe it was possible.

Intelligence failures

British parliamentarians have just begun the job of trying to get to the bottom of a series of intelligence failures that preceded the Taliban's takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, which ultimately left tens of thousands of Westerners and Afghans who had worked for Western forcestrapped inside thecountry as the mass airlifts ended this week.

Raabwho has faced scathing criticism for being on holiday in Greece as Taliban forces entered Kabulhas also faced repeated calls for his resignation for not predicting the stunning speed of the Afghan government's collapse.

There have been other blunders, too.

In the rush to close the U.K. Embassy in Kabul,papers detailing the names of Afghans who had worked with British forces were found by the Taliban. Raab told the committee all those mentioned in documents have since made it to safety.

The foreign minister has also acknowledged that thousands of emails detailing the pleas of Afghans trying to get to the U.K. went unread by his office.

And while Raabemphasizedthat the U.K. military managed to rescue some 15,000 Afghans and Westerners from the war-torn country in thosefinal chaotic two weeks of August, he admitted Wednesday that the U.K. government isn't certain how many people remain in Afghanistan who would be eligible to come to Britain.

'Special relationship'

The MPs on thecommittee, along with many others in BritishParliament,clearly have another agenda, too: Assessing whether the so-called "special relationship" with the U.S. that's endured since the end of the Second World War is really still so special.

The Biden administration's unilateral decision to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, followed by the decision not to extend the exit deadline as the Taliban took hold, has infuriated many governments across Europe.

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U.S. President Joe Biden says the threat of terrorism has spread across the world, well beyond Afghanistan, and that the U.S. must change its focus and approach to meet that threat.

While American troops made upthe majority of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan over the 20-year conflict, Britain's forces were No. 2. More than 100,000 British soldiers and air personnel served in the country,sufferingnearly 500 combat-related deaths.

Yet in the end,the decision to strike a deal with the Taliban and to hold to the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline was made by the White House with little input from NATO allies.

Looking inward

"This is a significant change in U.S. foreign policy,"Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood said in an interview on the BBC

With the U.S. becoming more inward-looking and shifting its focus to confronting China, Ellwood said traditional allies in Europe need to respond with a more robust security policy that doesn't involve reliance on the Americans.

"It's confirmation of just how weak the West has become in shaping our world for the better. And we should not underestimate the geopolitical significance of what we're witnessing," he said.

The opposing Labour Party,whichtook Britain into the Afghanistan conflict in 2001 under Tony Blair,has been scathing in its criticism of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government and the Biden administration for making what it calls a "catastrophic miscalculation."

"We've completely traduced the British reputation for standing by those who stood by us," said Labour MP Chris Bryant, as he decried the fact that hundreds,possibly thousands,of Afghans who worked alongside British Embassy staff or armed forces didn't make it out before the last evacuationflights took off on Monday night.

Analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, however, doubt the hand-wringing in the U.K. Parliament will last long, nor will it lead to significant changes in the structure or work of NATO.

New alliance?

"The structure of this operation was that the Americans would control it.And not only was it something the Europeans accepted,it was something the Europeans actively wanted," said Jeremy Shapiro,research director with the European Council on Foreign Relations, an international think-tank.

"So to show up at the last moment and say, 'We don't like what you're doing, you didn't consult' is to pretend they didn't acquiesce to that structure for the past 20 years and that's disingenuous at best."

The reality is that there is nothing to take the place of a U.S.-led alliance such as NATO,nor is there much appetite in Europe's capitalsto spend what it would take to create one, saidJulie Norman,a lecturer on international relations atUniversity College London.

"I don't see many European states wanting to further increase budgets for military and security that would make up for a gap of walking away from the U.S.,"she said in an interview.

WATCH | British MP calls Taliban takeover of Afghanistan 'predictable':

'It wasn't just predictable, it was predicted,' says British MP of Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

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British Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan, joined Power & Politics Friday to discuss the Taliban's takeover in Afghanistan and the resulting chaos and violence: "That's the reality of defeat, we cease to be able to control events on the ground."

In their official statements, Britishministers have been extremely careful not to be overlycritical of the Biden administration even earlier this week, when anonymous sources in the U.S. military appeared to blame the U.K. for contributing to the carnage from thedeadly suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26.

At Wednesday's committee hearing, Raabwas grilled repeatedly on whether the U.K. could trust or even needed the U.S. partnership anymore. But he remained steadfast in his support.

"I have no doubt that for all the criticism of the U.S. the U.S. will bounce back," he said."It is indispensable. And we work with it closely."