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President Biden, frustrated in his efforts to end America’s “Forever War” a decade ago, will announce on Wednesday a Sept. 11 deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after 20 years, a move that immediately triggered similar action among the country’s NATO allies.

While a complete withdrawal has long been seen as inevitable, it is likely to lead to an expansion of the Taliban that could overwhelm the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, despite assurances by intelligence agencies that the withdrawal can be done without precipitating the kind of violent, entropic instability that led to the 2001 attacks on America.

In the hours leading up to Mr. Biden’s afternoon announcement at the White House, foreign and defense ministers met at NATO headquarters in Brussels to discuss “a safe, deliberate and coordinated withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan,” as the American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, told them on Wednesday.

The ministers, many of them attending the Wednesday meeting virtually, are expected to formally back the American withdrawal date in keeping with the alliance’s mantra “in together and out together.”

Of the 9,600 NATO troops officially in Afghanistan, about 2,500 of them are American, though that number can be as many as 1,000 higher. The second-largest contingent is from Germany, with some 1,300 troops.

In brief remarks Wednesday, Mr. Blinken limited those goals narrowly to antiterrorism, not mentioning the larger NATO efforts to liberate women, help girls to attend school and shift agriculture away from growing heroin poppies.

The German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, referring to NATO, told the German television station ARD on Wednesday: “I am for an orderly withdrawal, and that is why I assume that we will agree to that today.”

Mr. Biden’s move, arguably the boldest foreign policy announcement of his early presidency, is rooted in his belief that there is no room for continuing 20 years of failed efforts to remake Afghanistan, as Mr. Biden pivots to pressing domestic issues.

In this regard, Mr. Biden is not drastically different than his predecessor former President Donald J. Trump. Time and again during the Obama administration, Mr. Biden lost arguments to reduce the American presence to a minimal counterterrorism force.

Mr. Biden’s approach carries clear risks. The annual worldwide threat assessment published by his intelligence chiefs on Tuesday morning, as word of his decision leaked, explicitly warned that “the Afghan government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay” if the American-led coalition withdraws. Administration officials said that raised the specter of something akin to the 1975 fall of Saigon, after the United States gave up on another ill-considered war.

But Mr. Biden’s decision makes clear his belief that contending with a rising China takes precedence over the idea that with just a few more years in Afghanistan, and a few more billions of dollars, the United States could achieve with a few thousand troops what it could not achieve with hundreds of thousands and the more than $2 trillion already poured into two decades of warfighting and nation building.

“We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago,” Mr. Biden planned to say in his afternoon remarks, according to prepared excerpts. “That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.”

When historians look back at this moment, they may conclude Mr. Biden’s decision was predestined.

The place is not called the Graveyard of Empires for nothing: The British pulled out in 1842, after an expedition their textbooks call the “disaster in Afghanistan,” and the Soviets in 1989, after a decade of death and frustration. What Soviet leaders learned in a decade, four American presidents learned over the span of two.