American forces have stepped up a bombing campaign, but the White House and the Pentagon insist these are the final days of combat support.

By Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt

WASHINGTON — The White House authorization of one more bombing campaign in Afghanistan, just weeks before the U.S. military mission is set to end, has a modest stated goal — to buy time for Afghan security forces to marshal some kind of defense around the major cities that are under siege by a surging Taliban.

But the dozens of airstrikes, which began two weeks ago as the Taliban pushed their front lines deep into urban areas, also laid bare the big question now facing President Biden and the Pentagon as the United States seeks to wind down its longest war. Will the American air campaign continue after Aug. 31, the date the president has said would be the end of combat involvement in Afghanistan?

The White House and the Pentagon insist these are truly the final days of American combat support, after the withdrawal of most troops this summer after 20 years of war. Beginning next month, the president has said, the United States will engage militarily in Afghanistan only for counterterrorism reasons, to prevent the country from becoming a launchpad for attacks against the West. That would give Afghan security forces mere weeks to fix years of poor leadership and institutional failures, and rally their forces to defend what territory they still control.

Pentagon and White House officials say the current air campaign can blunt the Taliban’s momentum by destroying some of their artillery and other equipment, and lift the sagging morale of Afghan security forces.

But administration officials say the Pentagon will most likely request authorization from the president for another air campaign in the next months, should Kandahar or Kabul, the capital, appear on the verge of falling. Mr. Biden appeared to hold out that possibility last month when he said that the United States had “worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that can be value added” if Kabul came under serious threat, phrasing the military often uses to suggest possible airstrikes.

Such a move would foreshadow the inching toward a longer campaign that could give Mr. Biden space between his decision to withdraw American troops and an eventual fall of Kabul, and the possible specter of evacuations of the U.S. and other Western embassies, like the scene that preceded the fall of Saigon in 1975, when Americans were evacuated from a rooftop by helicopter.

Mr. Biden’s aides say that he is aware of the risks, but that he remains skeptical of any effort by the Pentagon that looks as though it is prolonging the American military engagement. Still, officials say that they expect Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to approach Mr. Biden at the end of August about the possibility of continuing airstrikes into September if the Taliban look as if they are about to overrun key population centers.

Already, the Taliban have been making advances, sweeping through the Afghan countryside and closing in on the center of Kandahar. Taliban fighters launched rockets over the weekend at the airport in Kandahar, and fierce fighting near Herat shut down the airport there.

At the moment, the official line from the White House and the Pentagon is that these are truly the final days of American combat support.

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