Unless you really have been living under a rock, you won’t have escaped the extensive coverage of the US ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan. If ever there was a series of events that demonstrate in very clear terms how the international rules based system is breaking down then it is this one.
President Biden is a pitiful sight, he stumbles from one platitude to the next, the compliant interviewers never seem to try and clarify any of the inaccuracies or blunders he makes and are either ignorant of them or have been told not to push back.
As with many other complex issues, we only see the resultant real world effects, we are ignorant of the back room deals and machinations that spawn them. What can be said without doubt is that anyone who even has the most basic understanding of history will understand that the Taliban conquest was inevitable as soon as the US forces left. Like all US backed puppet governments the Afghan government was corrupt, packed with placemen and nepotism and only functioned with the vast resources of the US to pay for and secure their programme. Once the US troops left, the bagmen of the Afghan government simply stuffed all their embezzled dollars into bags and ran away.
Gone are the days when the USA was able to act with impunity in any area of the world, despite their massive defence spending they cannot mass or organise troops efficiently enough to make a difference, their systems of work and their hardware are needlessly complex and have a high maintenance burden. Only the defence procurement and contractors see the benefits of this and they are in no hurry to make their products cheaper or more reliable.
The concept of the USA as the single global hegemon is now collapsing. Their leadership has descended into partisan bickering and recrimination after the Trump era with point scoring and tribalism higher priorities than statecraft or producing meaningful outcomes for the country. Identity politics and Marxist agitators have sown social dysfunction and mistrust and the COVID debacle has crippled the economy and sparked money creation on an unprecedented scale the likes of which economics has never seen outside of the hyperinflationary destruction of nations like Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany.
Even if Joe Biden were the sharpest and most agile political operator in history he would have almost no chance of navigating the USA out of this dead end. How can any policy address the trillions of hypothecated dollars brought into existence by the tapping of a keyboard?
How can anyone heal the deep rifts that are now dividing the US society? How can you look blindly on as migrants walk into the country without any real control?
When the solution to every problem is to print more money and give it to big corporations to provide the outcomes you invite those corporations to find ways to justify more spending – not less. It is the fiduciary duty of all corporations to maximise their profits to the idea that there is some kind of inherent social conscience within these behemoth enterprises is simply specious.
All empires eventually collapse, to say otherwise is to refute the entire body of historical record and the mechanism is always the same. When an empire produces prosperity the people become too used to that prosperity and want more of it, then politicians use the promise of more wealth and more prosperity to buy votes creating a self sustaining cycle where handouts and easy living become the norm and genuine enterprise and self sacrifice are scorned.
The next time you hear that the government will spend however many millions on some project or other stop and ask yourself where that money came from. It is either the product of taxation where someone had to work or produce to make that capital or it is printed hypothecated money.
Eventually the people who are right now digging holes or harvesting vegetables will realise they are being exploited by an uncaring and insouciant government that is interested only in self preservation and at that point the system will implode.
We are not far from that point.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
