Allies embraced Biden. Did Kabul lay bare "great illusion"?

When U.S. President Joe Biden took office early this year, Western allies were falling over themselves to welcome and praise him, and hail a new era in trans-Atlantic cooperation

BRUSSELS -- Well before U.S. President Joe Biden took office early this year, the European Union's foreign policy chief sang his praises and hailed a new era in cooperation. So did almost all of Washington's Western allies. The EU's Josep Borrell was glad to see the end of the Trump era, with its America First, and sometimes America Only policy, enthralled by Biden's assertion that he would “lead, not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” Sunday's collapse of Kabul, triggered by Biden's decision to get out of Afghanistan and a U.S. military unable to contain the chaos since, certainly put a stop to that. Even some of his biggest fans are now churning out criticism. Borrell was among them, this time aghast at Biden's contention that “our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building,” coming in the wake of Western efforts over much of the past two decades to sow the seeds of the rule of law and assure protection for women and minorities.