Former President Ronald Reagan’s successful Peace Through Strength foreign policy has been replaced by President Joe Biden’s failed policy of surrender and ineptitude. Protecting American interests around the world ties directly to projecting American strength both to foreign enemies who pursue our demise and to allies who seek our support. Failures abroad sap the domestic American spirit and buoy the bravado of adversaries.

Biden’s humiliating surrender to the Taliban and their barbaric brethren Al Qaeda will have significant tragic and dangerous consequences for decades to come.

The Biden Administration has now ensured an Islamic state in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s newly formed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already is forging its jihadist and terrorist path. Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban deputy leader and terrorist who maintains close ties with al-Qaida, is on the FBI’s Most Wanted List with a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Wanted in connection with killing American citizens, Haqqani is joined in the Taliban leadership cesspool by Khairullah Khairkhwa, an enemy combatant released from Guantanamo by the Obama-Biden administration as part of the duplicitous Bergdahl swap. Others include Mullah Khairkwha, reported by The New York Post as having overseen enforcement of brutal Islamist punishments, including beheadings and stonings, and accused by the Pentagon of closely associating with Osama bin Laden. The Post additionally reports that this known terrorist actually sat across the table in Moscow from Zalmay Khalilzard, Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan who helped negotiate the Biden surrender terms.

Adding classic progressive foreign policy naivete to the humiliating retreat, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week, “The Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their own role to be in the international community.” And despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s delusional praise of the Biden surrender — she told KPIX in San Francisco on Wednesday that the president has demonstrated “strong and decisive” action in Afghanistan — the country’s women, our local allies, and our own citizens are under siege. While the Taliban drag the women of Afghanistan back to the Dark Ages and murder our Afghan allies, the Biden Administration informs the 15,000 Americans still in the country that it “cannot ensure safe passage to the Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

Now on their own, American citizens are left to face Taliban harassment, threats and possible harm as Biden and team beg the barbarians for cooperation. Pathetic.

The Biden-Harris-Blinken squad’s botched handling of the evacuation has been one of the worst American foreign policy blunders of the last 50 years. Reminiscent of former President Jimmy Carter’s feeble response to the 1979 Islamist takeover of our U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the subsequent aborted helicopter rescue mission, the imagery of the Biden blunder will remain vivid in the public and global conscience for decades to come.

Sadly, this ineptitude could have been predicted by any serious review of Biden’s foreign policy decisions over 40 years of serving in the “Swamp.” Robert Gates, former defense secretary for the Obama administration, shared in his memoirs that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Even former President Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan felt obliged to speak up: “I’m left with some grave questions in my mind about [Mr.Biden’s] ability to lead our nation as commander in chief. To have read this so wrong — or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care?”

The Afghanistan debacle was completely unnecessary. The U.S. has had a small but impactful force of about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan since January. There have been no American casualties of war caused by hostilities in the country for over a year. While nation-building is always a bad idea for American foreign policy, our interests are protected by keeping a lid on flammable situations and neutralizing terrorists. Every single death of an American soldier is tragic, but we also should consider the commitments bravely undertaken by each fallen hero ─ defense of our homeland from terrorist attacks and neutralization of global enemies.

The Biden surrender has the very imminent potential to spur additional attacks and embolden our enemies. Al-Qaida is now rebuilding and solidifying its organizational prowess in Afghanistan. Expect al-Qaida 3.0 to quickly and viciously emerge. Jihadists globally are celebrating and plotting as the Taliban proclaim defeat of America.

Just as Obama emboldened ISIS, Biden has paved the way for al-Qaida resurgence.

The Jihadists are not alone in their renewed bravado. China has quickly pounced, preparing to exploit Afghanistan’s $3 trillion lithium, neodymium, silver, gold, mercury, and other crucial rare earth reserves, and using the surrender to intimidate our allies. The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, immediately warned Taiwan it could face the same fate as Afghanistan if it continued to depend on the United States as an ally. The communist mouthpiece proclaimed, “Taiwan is the region that relies on the protection of the U.S. the most in Asia, and the island’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities have made Taiwan go further and further down this abnormal path.” The situation spiraled quickly out of control “after the country was abandoned by the U.S.”

Russia also stymies the Administration. The Wall Street Journal reports that according to senior U.S. and Russian officials, President Vladimir Putin objected to any role for American forces in Central Asian countries. This Putin-issued diktat greatly reduces our ability to base drones and counterterrorism operations in nations such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan for Afghan strategic operations and reconnaissance.

Not only has the Biden team been humiliated by the Taliban, now it also has been strategically outmaneuvered by the Russians and Chinese.

It was not supposed to be this way. The media and the cognoscenti had assured us of the vast foreign policy experience and knowledge of Biden and his team. The media sycophants praised the team’s “America is back” reassurance to our allies. Renewed cooperation and success were forecast for NATO and our European allies. But apparently Biden is seeing little gain with those alliances.

“The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is the greatest debacle that NATO has experienced since its foundation,” asserted Armin Laschat, the likely next Prime Minister of Germany. United Kingdom leaders, including Nigel Farage, have legitimately questioned whether America even remains a world superpower.

When asked on Tuesday if Biden had spoken to his foreign counterparts since the Taliban took over the capital of Kabul, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan responded, “He has not yet spoken with any other world leaders.”

Is there a problem with the phone service at Camp David?

Acts of weakness and ineptitude on the global stage do tremendous damage to our great nation. And this fiasco has immediate and long-term human consequences for the Afghans, and possibly the American people. Biden’s humiliating and bungling surrender has pummeled our country’s patriotic pride, made Americans less safe, and placed our global allies in peril.

The debacle has sadly taken our nation a further step away from Reagan’s vision of America as a “Beacon of Hope” for the world.

Greg Rusovich, CEO Transoceanic Development