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Samizdata quote of the day We let the WHO be taken over by the Chinese, but still treated it as neutral on Covid. We let UN human rights bodies be dominated by human rights violators… We deserted our friends in Afghanistan. No wonder Putin thought he could try it on.
– Lord Frost
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I don’t think two or three trillion dollars and 20 years of military protection is accurately described as “deserting” our friends/collaborators/parasites.
Speaking for the USA, I don’t know that we “desert” people, but we do have the annoying habit of entering into and maintaining every foreign fight with just enough effort and commitment to not win. “Go big or go home” ought to have a larger emphasis in our policy.
Frost seems to be one of the few voices of reason in the so called ‘Conservative’ Party.
@bobby b
And we in the UK are “right behind you” most of the time.
I think Putin and his actions are execrable, but the fact that his regime takes a different approach is a large part of the reason for his fan club.
I think Lord Frost hits the nail pretty well on the head. If commenters above would prefer “demonstrated grotesque incompetence” to “deserted our friends”, fair enough. When Biden gave up Bagram, and then planes fled Kabul with people dropping from their wings, one aspect was that those people were friendlier to us than to the Taliban (and were dying because of it), but it told us much more about Biden than just that he would betray America’s friends (including Britain). Lord Frost, like the rest of the UK military and government, was most immediately aware of how Britain, one of America’s friends, was being dumped on, but that was just one of many Putin-encouraging things demonstrated by the debacle.
That can apply elsewhere but it’s not my diagnosis of the Afghan debacle. I compare Putin not invading under Trump to the Taliban being quiet under Trump.
At the end of 2020, things in Afghanistan looked stable and (especially as regards US casualties) quiet. As we will never know how Iraq would have developed after 2008 if Obama had not rejected the idea of leaving 3000 US troops to act as deal-brokers between the factions, so we will never know how Trump’s idea of a deal with the Taliban would have worked out. But I suggest the Taliban’s decision to go for broke in 2021 is like Putin’s decision to go for Ukraine. Both they and the Afghanis collaborating with the US could see the abrupt change clearly. Every US action and reaction in 2021 told the Taliban it was now safe to do what it would have been madness to do the year before – and told increasing numbers of ordinary Afghanis who would would have bet on the US a year before that those who did not switch sides in time would end up dropping from airplanes.
In Vietnam, there was an element of “falling between two stools”, but in both Afghanistan and the Ukraine, I think the abrupt and gross switch from the message projected by Trump to the message projected by Biden has more to do with it.
Just my 0.02p.
Lord Frost is a good example of how the system no longer works – at least does not work for pro liberty people.
Lord Frost worked hard and got to a position, a government minister, where (according to all the books on government) one is supposed to make POLICY – but he found he could not.
He could not influence policy on Covid (where he found insane policies just arriving from somewhere – and “somewhere” most certainly does NOT mean Prime Minister Johnson), he could not on Northern Ireland (where the European Union, and BRITISH officials, cooperate to do as much harm as they can), he could not on regulations – where “Net Zero” and so on continue to impose ever more costs on both enterprises and individuals who can no longer heat their homes or afford to move about. Everywhere he turned Lord Frost found policy just “arriving” from somewhere – without either ministers or the Prime Minister making it.
“If you are not influencing policy then resign!” – well Lord Frost did resign, but that made no difference at all.
We live in a world where even the banks and payment processors (Mastercard and Visa) make decisions on POLITICAL grounds – it does not matter if we happen to agree with a certain political decision, it is the fact that it is POLITICS that drives the decisions of Big Business – today it is (yes – and rightly so) the invasion of the Ukraine (and I AGREE that this is a horrific crime by Mr Putin), but tomorrow it could be “you used the term “Gypsy Moth” so your bank account no longer exists and you are dismissed from your job, and Blackrock are kicking you out of your home – welcome to life begging for food on the streets”.
And, no, I am not joking.
Why can “Finance Capital” essentially ignore ordinary business considerations?
Because their money comes from the Federal Reserve and other Central Bank (and dependent commercial bank) activity – this is no longer a “Cantillon Effect”, this is a Cantillon Economy. It is money-from-nothing – no one can compete with that (no wonder they are buying up homes and following other goals of UN Agenda 2030, their money is unlimited).
The big financial entities are openly joined at the hip with governments now – openly, there is no “conspiracy” there is no need for hidden conspiracy when you have this level of power.
They do not hide their conferences – they publicise them (Davos and all the rest).
It is very much “in your face”.
Because they know that no one can stop such totalitarian projects as the “Environment and Social Governance” (ESG – the Western version of the Chinese Social Credit system) now. The boot is stamping down on the human face – and, they believe, it will be for ever.
However, for all their power (which that wicked fool Mr Putin is starting to feel) – the finance elite are, I believe, not as powerful as the People’s Republic of China.
They believe that they control the PRC – that it is just a nice place to manufacture everything for them (whilst the ordinary populations of Western countries are undermined and destroyed).
I believe they are mistaken – that they (the “Woke” Western financial elite) are not really the Puppet Masters they believe themselves to be, that they are actually (without knowing it) Puppets themselves.
“I don’t think two or three trillion dollars and 20 years of military protection is accurately described as ‘deserting’ our friends/collaborators/parasites.”
Three trillion dollars and 20 years of military protection is entirely moot if you decide to get up one morning and just abandon Afghanistan.
Staghounds: I don’t think two or three trillion dollars and 20 years of military protection is accurately described as “deserting” our friends/collaborators/parasites.
Agreed. The manner of departure was badly handled – lots of material abandoned, translators left to the menaces of the Taliban, but the US/West has poured huge sums of money, and a lot of people, into that part of the world. Twenty years of it.
But that’s sort of my point. If we’re going to take the staggering step of sending our military might into a small, poor, rather hostile country, we ought not be looking to merely stabilize the situation. If we’re not looking to actually kill off the bad people, then we should be sending aid, or police force trainers, or maybe even just weapons to the right people. Once we commit our kids to going over there and fighting a war, we ought to do it.
I think we go too quickly to war now because we’ve redefined what war is. We’ve made it routine and nearly painless. If we’re really going to invade, we ought to actually go to war. Failing that, stay home.
What we’re doing now is maintaining bubbles all over the world. When we pull out, the bubbles pop. We might have gained a respite for a country during our stay, but we’ve brought them no closer to real stability, and we can’t stay everywhere forever.
I’m a Vietnam kid. My opinions are highly colored by our failings there. We’re still failing the same way.
That is the Powell Doctrine, bobby… Do not go to war unless you really intend to go to war. Much of my support for US military ventures was based on the assumption this was understood. Clearly it was not.
Yeah, I was a Colin fanboi until later in his career. Sadly, even he ended up ignoring his own doctrine. So now I think we should call it The bobby b Doctrine.
As things stand, we will charge with full-throated roars into any fight, so long as it does not imperil one vote. If it does, all bets are off.
Maybe that’s a feature and not a bug of democracy. But the demos can be short-sighted.
Perry,
The USA could never afford the Powell doctrine for the number of conflicts it wished to influence.
Unfortunately its rulers over extended the empire. It is a tragedy.
I sometimes think that the real democracies should get together, call themselves the Allied Nations, and trade mainly amongst themselves. Countries that wanted to join would need to prove that they were functioning multi-party democracies, and if a member nation became autocratic, it should be automatically expelled. I think, over time, the advantages of being in the AN would cause the UN to decline.
bobby b, PdH,
I thought you meant Enoch Powell, speaking about Vietnam.
Unfortunately, Nicholas Gray, this has already been tried and is called the EU. Given that at least half of the countries in it have fallen to Covid tyranny, do they expel all of them?
We (the UK) should aim for self sufficiency in all things, and also arm ourselves to the teeth. We could trade for certain things with like minded nations (Japan comes to mind).
On occupying countries abroad; in some cases, like Afghanistan, leading with soft power just doesn’t work very well. It can, however, be surprising how effective a small but brutal contingent can be at keeping order. See the small US presence prior to the evacuation. Also, see the Taliban. There are of course also counter examples. Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Ukraine(?)
Utterly impossible for a great many things. Energy perhaps if the Great Green Delusion is flushed down the toilet, but food & a very wide range of goods? Dream on. UK is a global trading nation and need to continue to be, even if our supply chains will have to stop originating in China.
bobby b (March 7, 2022 at 8:16 pm), the British empire has a long history of invading Afghanistan (and leaving it again), yet Afghanistan still produced fresh crops of bad guys – fresh reasons to invade it – from time to time. The empire’s first invasion was Bidenesque in its ineptitude – just one Briton and a few sepoys escaped to bring news of the disaster. Being saner than Biden, the empire sent an ‘Army of Retrbution’ to Kabul to efface the Afghani memory of their victory – as far as it could; it did its job and left. After that, the empire generally put off invading Afhganistan as long as it could, periodically re-invading (and thus being reminded why it preferred to postpone doing so). If the empire did a decent job, they could usually postpone the next invasion for a long time – and if not, not.
Small Wars (Colonel, eventually Major General Charles Edward Callwell, 1899, 1906) covers tasks all over the empire but it can certainly be read as a “How to invade Afghanistan (and how to leave again)” manual.
Quite a few British soldiers had the good luck to reach military age in 1939/40, begin their training – and then be rushed to the north-west frontier while the experience troops there were rushed to Britain to defend against invasion. The empire having done a passable job in the latest prior Afghan war and subsequent politicking, patrolling the Afghan frontier was one of the safest places to be in WWII.
I think you have to put the 9/11 incident and the refusal of the Taliban to hand over the perpetrators in historical context. While America remains a world-power (under Biden, that duration can be debated), I think you may need to get used to at least having to consider invading Afghanistan from time to time, as the British empire did. There’s a case for saying the empire should have considered more carefully at times – but then, so should the Afghans and I see no sign they will.
I’m very much in favour of your idea of either not fighting wars or else fighting for decisive victory in almost all cases, but I’m also in favour of learning from Afghanistan’s particular history. I see it as absurd to imagine the US not invading after 9/11, and any outcome would have been better than the one Biden served up – which may in addition mean that the US is not done with Afghanistan.
In the 1980s Britain produced close to 80pc of its own food, now its closer to 60pc. Of course some things will always have to be imported (bananas for example) but it seems a no-brainer to try to aim for 80-90pc again, especially as we’ve got a point where we’re subsidising farmers NOT to grow stuff in places. If we are subsidising them, would make sense to get them producing food again pronto.
It probably is absurd to imagine, however given what happened at the end of the twenty year American intervention in Afghanistan, one does wonder if more effort should have been done to bribe the Taliban to handing Bin Laden and co over back in 2001. The Taliban ended up running the country again anyway. Maybe they’d never have handed him over willingly, but one wonders if they’d had a price they’d have been willing to take. Probably would have been cheaper than what happened.
Given that intervention was effectively inevitable, I was always sympathetic to those who said the coalition forces should get out ASAP and recognise whichever locals as rulers who’d be willing to run the place on the stipulation they didn’t support or allow terror groups to use the country as a base, even throw a few billion dollars a year in aid as a sweetener (again would have been much cheaper than what happened, and not that different to the stipends given by the US to Israel and Egypt annually). This wouldn’t have precluded further intervention in Afghanistan in the future but would have made the whole thing much less costly, bitter and sapping of both military and public morale.
The 2500 Americans left at the time of the evacuation were covered by a truce made with the Taliban that was conditional on the former withdrawing. Had the decision been made to keep the troops there, the Taliban would have most likely gone back to trying to fight them. We can only speculate what would have happened and if that would have been enough to have stopped an eventual Taliban takeover.
I understand what you’re saying, but isn’t that all premised on the idea that we cannot actually and decisively win in Afghanistan? That we will never be cold-blooded enough to do what would solve the problem long-term? I think we could win, if we had the will. We certainly have the power.
I’m not saying that we should move the point of acceptability all the way over to “make it all asphalt.” But if so many great powers have gone in and come back out only to see the same problems quickly arise again, we’ve clearly calibrated that acceptability point too humanely, and we’ve valued a safer world too cheaply.
If, in fact, the presence of a rogue killer Afghanistan doesn’t really hurt us in a major way – if it’s an inconvenience more than a danger – then periodic forays to chasten the mullahs is probably a good choice. But I think we need to examine that very question first – I don’t think we’ve done that in any meaningful way yet – and then act on those conclusions.
Any country which fails to make a huge effort for food security now is being very short-sighted. I don’t know that “we’ve always traded for our foodstuffs” is going to work soon.
Have you seen what’s been happening in the commodity markets? Take a look at the Chicago wheat futures prices on this graph.
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/zw
In the last twenty days, the price has almost doubled.
Fertilizer for the spring planting in the US is unobtainable. Not just expensive – farmers can’t find any. Don’t look here for wheat to make up for what’s not going to come from Russia or Ukraine.
Time to repurpose those empty British lands back to ag.
Which is in no small part why food in relative terms has become cheaper since the 1980s.
Do we embrace state imposed autarky to protect against transient outliers like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and accept permanently high prices, or just pay more during a crisis and then return to more affordable food by importing it? Comparative advantage is real.
mickc – there is no “American Empire” unless one counts the areas taken in 1898 (some of which got their independence long ago). The term “American Empire” has become almost universal now – but it is still false.
As for “overextended” – how many American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in the year before the pull out order? None – as far as I know none were killed. That does not sound like “over extended” and I was NOT fan of the campaign. Yes NOT a fan – as it ignored the basic beliefs of most Afghans (not “Afghanis” please).
The Pew Research Centre, and other research outfits, showed that most Afghans had the same basic Islamic Law beliefs as the Taliban – NOT Perry’s beliefs.
When the local population believe in the basic doctrines of the other side – then you are not in a good position (even if you are NOT losing any men in combat).
The REVERSE is the case in the Ukraine – even Russian speaking Ukrainians are mostly AGAINST Mr Putin.
The United States government IS overextended – but it is nothing to do with a fictional “Empire”. The United States military have been a FALLING proportion of the budget for 60 years – SIXTY YEARS.
It is domestic Entitlement Spending that is out of control.
Imagine that the Romans had said that they would not just hand out free stuff to the mob in the city of Rome – they would hand out free stuff to all the citizens everywhere….
You do not have to imagine it – because that is what the United States, and other Western nations, have done. And it is UTTERLY INSANE.
And then there is the “little” matter of a monetary and financial system that is a vast-mad-bubble.
“You keep banging on about this Paul” – I keep banging on about it, because people do not seem to grasp that this system is bound to collapse.
You can not base an entire economic system on fictional magic pixie dust, and castles in the air held up by Moonbeams.
A system where, for example, ten TRILLION Dollars ends up under the control of the nonentities at “Black Rock” is not a Cantillon Effect – it is a Cantillon Economy.
It is going to go.
Nothing to do with “Empires” or “military over reach” – it is the economic system that does not make any sense.
There is nothing wrong with so called “usury” – but a money lender (a “Shylock”) lends out money that actually EXISTS, he lends out REAL SAVINGS (his savings – or savings entrusted to him). That is why a “Shylock” has your legs broken if you do pay him back. The money matters, its REAL – someone SAVED (actually sacrificed consumption) to lend you that money – that is why you have to pay it back (if you want to stay breathing). Otherwise the person or persons who did-without for years – do not get their savings back.
That is a long way from creating endless “money” from NOTHING – and handing it out to the connected.
A system like that does not deserve to survive – and it will not survive.
Money must be something that people value before-and-apart-from its use as money (not the whims of governments and their friends) and lending must be Real Savings for productive investment – not Credit Bubbles lent out for consumption.
The last bit is what “Shylocks” often forget. They tend to lend money for consumption – rather than productive investment.
Short version.
Roger Sherman is about to be vindicated – very dramatically so (indeed I do not believe I will survive the vindication – the collapse of the Credit Bubble economic system).
And it is nothing much to do with “Imperial Overreach” or excessive military spending.
Adam Smith may not have been perfect (indeed he made many mistakes).
But the idea that Adam Smith supported an economy where endless money is created from nothing and used to “pay for” imports is indeed “bollocks”.
I wish these people stopped pretending to support the free market – they do not even know what it is.
The economy of the United Kingdom is not a limited government, free market – it is nothing to do with Adam Smith.
The economy of the United States is also not a limited government, free market – it also is nothing to do with Adam Smith.
Get that into your heads.
By the way – I am often denounced for my attacks on David Hume, attacks that I STAND BY.
However, David Hume was largely correct (not totally correct – but more right than wrong) about money, banks and corporations.
Almost needless to say – on the subjects where David Hume said sensible things (rather than rubbish such as “you can not get an ought from an is” or “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions” – his attacks on common sense where ordinary people say to themselves every day “that is wrong, so I ought not to do it” and use their moral reason to RESIST their passions) he is totally ignored by his modern admirers.
They admire the poison that Mr Hume spat – but when he said sensible things, they ignore him.
Re the “bobby b Doctrine”, I heard this from a very experienced US national security person (worker bee, not pol): it takes three generations to change things. If we had in mind changing the situation on the ground in Afghanistan (strategic) or any other “stan”, versus just taking out some bad guys (tactical), we should have figured it would take three generations. The folks there now, when we move in, will teach their children whatever but it won’t be from us. The next generation might be influenced a bit by us. But until that first generation dies, the old memories are there and unstoppable.
The US has never had the stomach for such a determined stay. Not sure anyone else has either.
The British did, in India. Spaniards in South America and the Philippines. French in Algeria.
With varying levels of thing changing success.
GregWA: That sounds like the old theory of societal prejudices. Racism, homophobia, whatever. You never change minds about such things – you can only wait for the oldest generation and its affected progeny in the next generation to die out, and then you try to catch the third gen with clean minds and inculcate them better before they absorb it.
Sounds like the same psychological root thinking.
GregWA, staghounds and bobby b.
To change the believe system of an another population – you must first really believe in your own principles.
I tries to explain this to Perry, so very many times. But I never found the right words to get the point over.
The West is based on certain principles (a belief system) which the West NO LONGER BELIEVES IN – such things as Freedom of Speech, or private property rights, or LIMITED government, none of these things are believed in by the Western elite any more.
Even things such as the nature of a human being is no longer accepted by the Western elite – back in the 1700s David Hume was considered a freak (or was considered to be joking), now (as far as the establishment is concerned) he is the MAINSTREAM – with his denial of human personhood.
An establishment elite brought up on Thomas Hobbes, David Hume (and so on) have nothing good to offer the world – they can not counter Islam, or anything else.
Perry says that the problem was the lack of total war (the limited war doctrine) – but that was not the real problem in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The real problem was that the West, in terms of core beliefs, was offering NOTHING. A VOID.
And all the weapons and money in the universe will not avail you – if your philosophical core is NOTHING, is a VOID.
Hobbes, Hume, Bentham and-so-on have nothing of value to say on the “nature of man”.
Imagine if the people who created the United States had been filled with the ideas of Hobbes (no rights against government), Hume (human persons do not really exist), Bentham (13 departments of state covering everything – and, like Hobbes and Hume, human persons do not really exist).
Could they have created the United States if their beliefs were these? No they could NOT have created the United States.
Could the people who made the United Kingdom a great power have done so if their beliefs were these? No they could NOT have done so.
It does not matter how powerful and rich a civilisation is – if the establishment elite no longer believe in its foundational principles, that civilisation will fall.
And this even hits people on our side….
For example, F.A. Hayek basically said, in the “Constitution of Liberty” and other works, that we should keep the POLITICS of the Old Whigs – but, of course, reject their philosophical principles.
Sorry Hayek – it does not work that way. The philosophical principles (such as human personhood – moral agency, free will the “nature of man”) are FOUNDATIONAL – reject them, and everything else comes crashing down.
“But we have lots of fancy weapons” – in the end, that is NOT going to help.
Fashionable, indeed dominant, philosophy – is a dagger at the throat of Western Civilisation. It is destroying the West from within – from the establishment elite down (“a fish rots from the head”), and leaving the West open to its enemies from without.
Paul,
This:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10595897/Tory-police-chief-reprimanded-sharing-JK-Rowling-trans-tweet-three-men-complained.html
That needs to shouted from the highest towers.
That story shocked me because this sort of thing no longer surprises me. I have a grade A in A-level biology. I am being ordered to believe, despite all I learned about chromosomes and hormones and such and such, it is not true because some tosser with a desmond in sociology tells me so.
But I’m more optimistic than you. Because Pioneer 10 and 11 have achieved solar escape velocity and their ain’t any gender studies graduates bringing ’em back.
They each have this plaque…
That certainly looks like a man and a woman to me. The Pioneers are rather over 10 billion kilometres away so that’s a Hell of a job for the Wokesters to “put right”.
Nope. My view of what should have happened in Afghanistan (& I have said it many times in the past) is they should have (more or less) emulated the Second British-Afghan War (obviously not the disastrous first). Yes, it was characterised by a lack of military restraint, but also importantly, it had attainable realistic objectives. The government was changed (Abdur Rahman Khan installed, a real charmer for sure), but there was no attempt to rule Afghanistan, it was left to its own ways and the presence of a British ‘resident’ was not imposed.
The US, having taken Kabul via backing the Northern Alliance and filling the sky with thunder, should have then declared victory and got the hell out within at most a year, having made its displeasure at 9/11 very clear. But no, it stayed on with vague open ended objectives.
Hmm… was catching Osama a vague open-ended objective?
CIA should have been after him for sure, but that did not require a long land war in Afghanistan with the aim of… what exactly?
With the benefit of hindsight:
* CIA or smarter people should have been after Osama, but it helps (a lot) to have bases in Afghanistan from which to launch a raid.
* While Bush was at it, he might as well have figured out an exit strategy.
Not to mention a way to “process” prisoners at Guantanamo.
* And meanwhile, Bush could have taken his time to build a consensus about Saddam, AND figured out an exit strategy for Iraq BEFORE invading.