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Today marks exactly one year since the U.S. completed the withdrawal from Afghanistan, capping off 20 years of war with a chaotic and bloody exit that brought the country right back to where it was when the U.S. had first invaded in 2001: in the hands of the Taliban. It’s worth noting here because, as much as the Biden administration fought the press over how the pull-out was portrayed—blaming us for the images we were conveying—the media was really just capturing the reality that the administration’s policy had created on the ground.

I mention it here because it is hard to argue with the fact that the way the withdrawal unfolded—the way NATO allies were caught off-guard, the way the U.S. military seemed to totally lose control of a country it had spent two decades fighting for—set the stage for what happened six months later, when Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale war in Ukraine, based in part on the incorrect assumption that, after Afghanistan, NATO was in terminal disarray and that the Biden administration’s national security capabilities were as good as dead. In fact, as I write in today’s column, NATO-supplied weaponry has not only helped Ukraine to hold off the Russian advance, beyond what anyone predicted. It has also put Ukraine in a position of strength to mount a significant counteroffensive—one that could change the calculus for how this terrible war comes to an end...

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If the offensive were to be successful—and that is still a big if—it would be a massive victory, both militarily and symbolically. It would also be a vital psychological salve for a country shattered by war. Geopolitically, it would prove to Ukraine’s Western backers that Kyiv’s forces can do more than repel an invader and hold them at bay indefinitely. It would show that Ukraine’s army can push them back and actually win, rather than simply maintaining a stalemate with all that expensive Western military equipment...