From the article:

The difference between 1975 and 2021 is that the Soviet Union was a one-dimensional threat with a sclerotic leadership, unable to contest the United States on the economic and political front. That is not the case today. We had time to recover from Vietnam—even time to recover from former President Jimmy Carter. We may not be that lucky this time around.

Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are watching. China has already warned Taiwan that it can’t count on the United States to rescue it from the People’s Liberation Army and Navy. Our allies in London, Canberra, and Paris are bewildered.

Afghanistan is the crowning glory for an administration that believes its only mission is to manage American decline.

Retreat also applies to the Middle East where Arab states in 2020 buried age-old animosities toward Israel to stand together against the mullahs in Tehran. Throwing away the years of progress encapsulated by the Abraham Accords, the Biden White House has returned to the Obama-era appeasement of Iran and its proxies.

Even in Europe, the message is one that America is falling back. The Trump administration provided advanced anti-tank weapons to Ukraine after former President Barack Obama refused to do so for years. The Biden administration unilaterally choked off the flow of military supplies to Ukraine, in the hope that Moscow would reciprocate. Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved tens of thousands of troops to the border opposite Ukraine and continues to wage war on the cyber commons vital to American security.

All of this, and we are not a year into this presidency. America has suffered an incalculable humiliation. The humbling of a great power is worse than a defeat on the battlefield.

At least Carter was honest enough to reverse course when he realized he was wrong. Don’t count on a similar epiphany from the current occupant of the White House.