Elliot Ackerman: ‘Incredible Display of Weakness’ in Afghanistan ‘Certainly’ Impacted Putin’s Decision to Invade

During an interview with Hugh Hewitt released on Thursday, Writer for The Atlantic and author Elliot Ackerman said that the “incredible display of weakness” in the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan “certainly” weighed into Vladimir Putin’s choice “about whether to act in Ukraine and the type of response he thinks he’s going to get from NATO.” And that Putin likely thought he’d get a mild response.

Ackerman stated, “[W]e talk about Ukraine, I mean, the collapse in Afghanistan is the greatest — or I would say the darkest — one of the darkest hours in NATO’s history. And I assure you that Putin was watching that incredible display of weakness at HKIA (Hamid Karzai International Airport) and that certainly weighs into his decision about whether to act in Ukraine and the type of response he thinks he’s going to get from NATO. Which, I would say, watching Afghanistan is, he probably thought he would get a very tepid and dysfunctional response from NATO. … But can you imagine a universe where NATO stood strong in Afghanistan…and you didn’t wind up with the type of incursion you had or invasion you had in Ukraine and we weren’t now dealing with all these Ukrainian refugees?”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett