Opinion | How we left Afghanistan was wrong. But leaving was right.

Washington could have continued to prop up the unstable and corrupt Afghan government had it chosen to make that commitment. But it’s worth looking at what that would mean in today’s world, given everything that has transpired since.

A glance at the map shows that U.S. troops were essentially surrounded by hostile forces. To the west lies Iran, a bitter enemy. To the north are three Russian allies: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. To the east, a short border with China. All supplies to the beleaguered American troops flowed through Pakistan to the south.

This arrangement would have become increasingly difficult in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pakistan has refused to condemn the attack, abstaining from U.N. resolutions calling for Russia’s withdrawal and proclaiming that the invasion violates the U.N. charter. Pakistan also buys Russian oil at a discounted price, despite Western sanctions. The United States clearly would not want to rely on this nation’s goodwill while leading the global effort to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army.

Heightened tensions with China also reinforce the decision to leave. Washington does not have endless amounts of ships and planes. If China does invade Taiwan, and if the United States moves to defend the island, as many expect, it will need every available piece of equipment. Washington would probably be unable to spare airlift capacity to keep Afghanistan fully supplied.

That’s assuming that the United States would still have access to Pakistani airspace. Pakistan has long-standing ties to China, which helped Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons in the 1990s and has been a major arms supplier to the country for years. China recently upped its support, selling frigates, submarines and advanced fighter jets to Pakistan in 2022. Pakistan is also heavily indebted to Beijing because of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, through which China hopes to gain land access to a Pakistani deep-water Indian Ocean port. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Pakistan would tacitly side with China in a conflict and would deny the overflight rights of the United States to resupply troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. withdrawal mooted that threat. U.S. and NATO troops are no longer deployed far from home and dependent on adversaries or temporizing regimes for their survival. An American president will not face the terrible choice between using scarce military resources to help save Americans in Afghanistan or using them to save Taiwan.

Ending U.S. support for Afghanistan also freed up resources for the support of Ukraine. The $45 billion a year Washington was spending on Afghan operations is roughly equivalent to the nearly $47 billion in military aid it sent Kyiv through May. Skyrocketing federal spending would be even higher but for the Afghan pullout.

None of this means that the loss of Afghanistan was a good thing. Islamist terrorists have recovered a base, and Afghans are living under a theocratic dictatorship. Tens of thousands of Afghans who fought for freedom under our command were left behind. Many Americans are rightly ashamed that we allowed this to happen.

But great powers can’t afford sentiment. They must assess risks and opportunities and make decisions based on the overall impact on national security. The growth of China and its tacit alliance with Russia and Iran over the decade before withdrawal meant that the risks of continuing the Afghan war were higher, and the benefits much lower, than they had been when the war began in 2001. In this emergent world, spending tens of billions a year to support thousands of U.S. soldiers fighting in an isolated location was simply a bad idea.

No one should be proud of how we left Afghanistan. But leaving it, the better to resist the challenges from our most dangerous foes, was the right call.