EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The American decision to leave Afghanistan to lessen the burden on the domestic economy, protect US troops, boost the nation’s security, and put an end to the “Forever War” in the Middle East has delivered the opposite of all those objectives and made the world a more dangerous place.

The beginnings of Afghanistan’s miseries, which led to the disastrous rise of the extremist Taliban and which are turning the failed state into a major threat to the democratic world, can be traced back to the 1970s, when an explosive mix of Soviet Communism and native Islamism started to blow back against Western liberal ideals in Afghanistan.

Now, thanks to the ill-conceived pullout of US troops, the corrupt, dysfunctional, yet quasi-democratic, peaceful, and Western-friendly government of Afghanistan has collapsed, and the country has been reconquered by the extremist Taliban. The pullout has claimed the lives of 13 American servicemen and many more Afghan civilians so far, and the War on Terror remains largely unresolved. Many observers fear that Afghanistan will descend into darkness once more and turn into a hub of apocalyptic militant cults such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which are bent on terrorizing the world and setting up a global Islamic caliphate.

Even worse, hostile regimes such as those of Iran, Russia, and China have wasted no time in exploiting the failed state left behind by the US. Their common objective is to pull Afghanistan into their respective spheres of influence and turn it into a forward base of operations for global domination. Now that they have observed America’s failure to stand up for its values and defend its citizens and friends in Afghanistan, those enemies will be more aggressive in their own specific ways.

The Iranian regime in particular is already taking advantage of the Western confusion over Afghanistan to speed its rush toward a nuclear bomb, which would threaten the whole world. At the same time, it is intensifying and expanding its regional mayhem, which will be directed primarily against Israel, the US, and the allies of the US in the Middle East.