Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The U.S.-led coalition forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan has been an abject disaster, and most of Washington's allies have been hush on the matter precisely for this reason. However, Czech President Milos Zeman, a long-time critic of the coalition's planned withdrawal, on Tuesday called into question the legitimacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by saying his country should focus on national defense rather than "wasting money" on the alliance. 

"The distrust towards NATO from a number of member countries will grow after this experience, because they will say – if you failed in Afghanistan, where is a guarantee that you won't fail in any other critical situation?" Zeman said in an interview.

Before delving into this, I should first mention how significant it is that he, the president of a close American ally and former Warsaw Pact country that has an emphatically pro-NATO political establishment, has come out so publicly against the organization. 

Though I am personally critical of Zeman's more nuanced position on Afghanistan, he has a point here in this interview. And it's probably only the beginning of frays that will continue to appear with the NATO alliance because of distrust toward Washington, which is rooted in the fact that the U.S. simply cannot manage such situations. 

Of course, the Vietnam War is an obvious parallel to point to when confronting the question of whether the U.S. actually ever was able to manage these situations. I think the answer to that is clearly no, and it only highlights why the entire global security structure propped up by the U.S. needs serious contemplation. 

Now, to be clear, just as was the case with Vietnam, the United States and its allies needed to leave Afghanistan. Their presence in the country for the past two decades has brought nothing but misery and destruction, and Afghans are far worse now than they were before. Just because the withdrawal from the country has been so horrible is not a valid argument for the continuation of the forever-war in Afghanistan, as the U.S. media is suggesting. 

Instead, again, this really only highlights systemic problems within the U.S. security state and its security alliances, namely NATO. The organization itself was made after World War II to combat the Soviet Union and faced a serious identity crisis after the Cold War ended. It was believed from that point that NATO would shift instead to combatting international terrorism, but if anything there has only been an increase in such networks in the era of U.S. unilateral hegemony. 

Why have things turned out this way? Well, probably because at a systemic level, the U.S. security state and NATO are not actually designed to combat extremism – but actually engender it more than anything. NATO is certainly not a "crisis management" organization as it bills itself and instead actually creates these situations to begin with. 

In the decades that the alliance was bombing Afghanistan to smithereens, they contributed less than five percent of their total investments in the country to actually rebuilding infrastructure. The same is true of pretty much every example of NATO military intervention, including even in places like former Yugoslavia. This is obviously not how you create long-lasting prosperity, political stability or trust in the West.

At the same time, this is part of a trend seen domestically within the U.S. and its NATO allies. Especially in the case of the U.S. but also certainly elsewhere, extremism is increasing, political polarization is at an all-time high and the prospects of long-term political stability seem like a pipe dream. Though, to be fair, much of this destabilization has to do with U.S. influence manifested through things like social media. 

If for anything but their own self-interest, NATO members will undoubtedly begin to question, once again, the role, if any, that this alliance should have in global security at this point in time.

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