Part of the problem was delusional thinking. Afghan politicians persuaded themselves that the United States would never leave, ignoring repeated signals from the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and the Biden administration that Washington wanted out of Afghanistan. Beguiled by their own narratives of Afghanistan as the fulcrum of a presumed new Great Game between the United States, China, and Russia, Afghan leaders believed they could entangle the United States in Afghanistan in an open-ended commitment. They saw little reason to reform the ANDSF or respond to the needs of everyday Afghans. The United States and the rest of the international community, meanwhile, never fully prioritized inducing Kabul to do either. Nor could they get Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban so strongly and in so many different ways. And so the insurgents steadily gained power.
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