American Credibility Is on the Line in Ukraine

Proving to be an untrustworthy ally is not without consequences.

Sergeant First Class Joseph Denny of Franklin, Indiana (R) shakes hands with an Afghan boy during a patrol on June 6, 2010 in Rambazi, a village south of Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

MUHAMMAD TOOK ONE LAST PULL off his cigarette before putting it out next to the other three he’d smoked in our hour-long meeting. He was a middle-aged Sons of Iraq commander from Diyala, the governate between Baghdad and the Iranian border, and he was responsible for security in a few critical towns near Forward Operating Base Warhorse. By the time of our conversation in 2010, Iraq’s security had improved so much that I could walk in certain areas without my Kevlar. Muhammad’s group of former Sunni nationalist insurgents who flipped during the Anbar Awakening was largely to credit.

“What will happen to us when you leave?” Muhammad asked. He had good reason to worry. Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia, had the security apparatus under his thumb and was using them to target Sunni leaders like Muhammad.

“We’re not going anywhere, sir,” I responded.

Muhammad laughed dismissively. “In 1991, you told the Kurds to rise up against Hussein. And they were slaughtered when they did. But where were you?”

I did not have a good response.

“Captain, this has been a good conversation. I know you have reports to write. You Americans are always writing reports. Please write this down: If you leave us to fend for ourselves, we will remember it,” he warned.

The next year, as American troops left Iraq, Muhammad’s Sons of Iraq were targeted not only by al-Maliki’s henchmen, but also eventually by a new group, the Islamic State.

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TWO YEARS LATER, I HAD AN EERILY SIMILAR conversation in a qalat in Ghorak, Kandahar—one of the most remote, rural, and conservative spots in the entire country. I lived in a village stability platform—a tiny outpost about the size of a football field with a few buildings and a fuel tank—with a group of Green Berets conducting village stability operations (VSO). VSOs were part of an effort to replicate the Sunni Awakening in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Local Police playing the role of the Sons of Iraq.

My main job was advising a district governor—the Afghan analogue of a county commissioner. Over thousands of cups of tea and Pine cigarettes, we tried to devise ways to extend the reach of the Afghan government into regions that were lukewarm—to say the least—about the United States and the Afghan government. Most of the village elders kept their distance from us, correctly deducing that we wouldn’t stay for long and it wasn’t worth risking their lives for us.

I remained undeterred and tried to convince the district governor to press the elders to change their minds. Finally, after growing tired of my American persistence, he grabbed a dried apricot and, tossing it into his mouth, said, “Brother, I’m going to let you know the truth.

“These elders, they aren’t dumb,” he told me. “They know what happened to a lot of the Sons of Iraq. They see that Obama’s surge has dipped, and you’re closing bases. They’ve heard from other elders that you make a lot of promises but don’t always keep them.”

His response stopped me dead cold. How was I supposed to reply to that?

“Fair enough, brother,” was all I could say. “Fair enough.”

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NINE YEARS LATER, I WAS SUITED UP as a military diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Kabul for my final year in country. I routinely met with some of the most senior Afghan government officials.

After President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw in April 2021, the mood among my contacts grew dark. I tried my best to reassure them. Many asked for visas to get their families out. They were willing to stay and fight—but they wanted their families protected. I assured them they wouldn’t need it.

Then an Afghan pilot, whose family had been in hiding because of a ruthless Taliban assassination campaign, looked at me with tears in his eyes and pleaded, “Don’t forget about me, brother. I don’t want to be left behind like all of those South Vietnamese.”

That pilot made it to America and is thriving. Most were not so lucky.

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WE AMERICANS LIKE TO THINK OF OURSELVES as reliable allies. The World War II narrative remains our dominant story. We freed Europe and punished the Japanese for their sneak attack. But that’s not the story our allies remember about us.

Ask the South Vietnamese how they feel about our reliability. Or ask the Kurds: Despite our strong alliance, I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about the failed uprising in 1991. Many Kurdish officials mentioned it to me when I was working with them in 2010.

American untrustworthiness has been a bipartisan affair. Ask the Afghans what they think about former President Donald Trump’s Doha Agreement—the surrender we signed behind their backs after forcing them to release 5,000 Taliban fighters who immediately re-armed and slaughtered our allies. There are plenty of voices strongly supportive of Ukraine today who waved away our retreat from Afghanistan because it “was always going to be messy.”

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Our record isn’t great. Our diplomats advocating for our interests and values around the world, and our servicemembers training our allies so they can fight our shared enemies without us directly intervening have to contend with this record daily.

But despite all the past missteps, as Tamar Jacoby recently wrote, the United States has a fleeting chance to resume its leadership and restore its reputation. Ukraine is infinitely more strategically important than those previous alliances.

We abandoned the South Vietnamese, the Iraqis, and the Afghans because we decided they were peripheral to our core interests. Europe is not. The post-World War II liberal international order started with the aim of keeping Europe whole, free, and at peace. For an indication of how important European stability is for global security, just look at how seriously Pacific countries like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia are taking Russia’s war against Ukraine.

We also abandoned South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan after Americans had shed significant blood in each place. But if we abandon Ukraine, we would be signaling that it doesn’t even take the shedding of American blood for us to retreat and betray our allies. Sure, Ukraine wouldn’t vanish overnight, and NATO would survive in the short term. But it would embolden Putin to try his luck in other areas, like he is in Georgia and the Baltic States.

An American betrayal of Ukraine would also embolden China. And not just against Taiwan. The Chinese would use this narrative to press their interests in Africa, the Middle East, and South America. Like those Pashtun elders, other countries would think twice about allying with us.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, put it succinctly: We hold the future of Ukraine in our hands. We can renew our support, arming the Ukrainians and help them to defeat a geopolitical rival without the loss of a single American soldier’s life. Or we can cede the battleground.

We can reassure the world that America can be trusted. Or we can confirm for the world that we can’t.