Editor's note: John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing and a research fellow at UIBE's Academy of China Open Economy Studies. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

It looks like U.S. President Joe Biden's wish to wrap up America's 20-year war in Afghanistan as soon as possible is now heading in the exact opposite direction. His August 31 deadline to leave Afghanistan for good is almost certainly not going to be met as, according to Fox News, there are at least 10,000 people holding U.S. passports or green cards, and passports of other ally countries, behind the "enemy line" around Kabul airport, let alone tens of thousands more Afghans who used to work for America.

Washington has a moral obligation to take these people to safety, if it still wishes to save the little bit of credibility left with its allies in this entire travesty. But it is not clear whether the Taliban will let all these people leave for free without striking a hard bargain for something valuable, for example, the $9 billion foreign exchange reserve left behind by the Ghani administration but now frozen by the U.S. Treasury, or maybe even diplomatic recognition. Or maybe the Taliban are after something even bolder.

Some analysts in the U.S. are already comparing the current situation in Kabul to the "Tehran moment," a prolonged standoff between the U.S. and Iran in 1979, when some 50 American diplomats were held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries. Amid a humiliating botched rescue effort in the desert that cost the life of eight marines, the Iran hostage crisis lasted altogether 444 days and largely destroyed Jimmy Carter's reelection hopes.

The worst nightmare for Biden right now is to see the "airport stronghold" manned by American GIs slowly morphing into another West Berlin, which only survived a 1948 Soviet Union blockade by relying on hundreds and thousands of airlift operations. To have 6,000 troops stationed at Kabul airport for weeks, months, maybe even over a year, is a horrible scenario for the Biden national security team.

How are they going to get stranded Americans to the airport, if Taliban check points are not cooperative? Are they going to send in small rescue squads to get people out, family by family? Reportedly, British special forces are doing so. What if shots are fired? Are they going to call in Black Hawks for air support? Will it then turn into street battles like the horrendous Mogadishu battle in Somalia in 1993? These are all nightmarish questions which State Department and the Pentagon spokespersons haven't answered, and are trying hard to dodge.

Back home, Biden's Republican rivals are behaving nastily. Fox News is running negative coverage 24/7. On Sean Hannity's show on Friday, someone called for Biden's resignation, even raising the prospect of invoking the 25th Amendment. Some GOP senators and representatives are planning to organize hearings to investigate the debacle. The political cost so far is so high that it has already cut deeply into Biden's popularity.

Ultimately, Washington does not have much choice but to negotiate with the Taliban. It doesn't have many cards in the bag, facing stabs front and back, at home and abroad. God knows how much of America's national interest is going to be negotiated away by Biden's foreign policy team in Doha. That is why hawkish interventionist politicians in Washington are so angry at Biden.

But this is also a good lesson. On the surface, the Afghan fiasco is primarily because of an ill-planned, terribly executed military withdrawal operation due to intelligence failures and bureaucratic ineptitude at the Pentagon. But deep down, it raises fundamental questions as to how much of a hegemonic role the United States can still play in today's world, and how much of that role the Washington foreign policy establishment can still sell to the American public. These are particularly important questions when it comes to America's policy debate regarding the Taiwan issue. 

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