Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[renton]

9 hours ago, Lex said:

As Biden said recently, the Afghan army was one of the best equipped in the world. He was right, they were armed to the teeth with cutting edge American hardware.
First sign of the Taliban they’ve flown the white flag of course. Now the Taliban has all those weapons and it is now one of the best equipped armies in the world.
The question now is what they’re going to do with all that firepower. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be pretty.

Not a lot to be honest. They don't have access to the maintenance facilities, spare parts or expertise to keep anything above small arms working for very long.

Humvees run something like 10 miles to the gallon and fall apart without regular maintenance. Better with a Toyota Hilux anyway.

[Fullerene]

4 hours ago, Arabdownunder said:

This is how the first Anglo-Afghan war (1839-1842) was described:

"a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated" 

 

When the British retreated from Kabul in 1842, they were led out by the son of the Afghan leader that they had themselves deposed.  Despite his best efforts to lead them to safety, they just ran into one ambush after another.

Who'd have thought it.

Almost everyone was massacred apart from one doctor on a horse who made it back to the fort.

[coprolite]

This was never a strategic war for America in the traditional sense of occupying territory for logical reasons.

It was all about PR and showing who had the biggest bombs. 

It's easy to forget how childlike and stupid the Neocon worldview was. 

Someone was bad to US so US had to kick ass in public. 

[LongTimeLurker]

11 hours ago, TheBruce said:

The Taliban wont be going outside any borders. No more wars. Now that the US has gone, the regional powers will do wtf they want with Afghanistan if the Taliban go out with. The Chinese and the Russians give not one f**k for the Taliban. This is now all about commercial opportunities and the west will NOT be at the table.

Think the big winners in all of this are Pakistan and that still potentially provides a way in for Western multinationals down the road. The Sunni vs Shia thing makes relations with Iran awkward to say the least for the Taliban. All three neighbouring stans are still in secular post-Soviet mode and will not be keen on having co-ethnics across a porous border very much in Islamist mode at this point. That's not a recipe for borders wide open to trade. Russia will be aligned with the stans to a significant extent rather than Kabul and still has a significant military presence in Tajikistan to help defend its borders. China's border has no direct transport links so is basically irrelevant.

[DiegoDiego]

Someone was bad to US so US had to kick ass in public. 

It wasn't the stupidest logic though, was it?

The US marketed themselves as defenders of global trade and diddy nations in exchange for overseas military bases and favourable terms.

Now if someone shites in your porch, runs away and says "that was me, haha" then you have to retaliate. If you don't your business partners will start to question your ability and/or willingness to defend them.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, coprolite said:

This was never a strategic war for America in the traditional sense of occupying territory for logical reasons.

It was all about PR and showing who had the biggest bombs. 

It's easy to forget how childlike and stupid the Neocon worldview was. 

Someone was bad to US so US had to kick ass in public. 

The Neocon fallacy was that everyone is embryonic midwestern Americans, all they need is some shiny toys and a few bombs to nudge them into line. They were missionary zealots no different to the CofE ministers who brought cricket along with empire for the good of the natives.

Edited August 17, 2021 by welshbairn

[LongTimeLurker]

12 minutes ago, TheBruce said:

The Stans align with Russia, not the other way round...

Russia has significant Muslim populations in parts of Siberia and especially along parts of the Volga. Taliban style theology slowly spreading northwards towards their soft underbelly is their nightmare scenario after the Chechen war experience when one of the former ASSRs suddenly went full Sharia law on them. Also bear in mind that the Soviet occupation is still very much in living memory for the leadership generations in both Kabul and Moscow. Not saying that Russia won't try to get a slice of the action but think a lot of people still have a cultural bias that prevents them from taking Pakistan seriously as the major player from here on.

[coprolite]

1 hour ago, DiegoDiego said:

It wasn't the stupidest logic though, was it?

The US marketed themselves as defenders of global trade and diddy nations in exchange for overseas military bases and favourable terms.

Now if someone shites in your porch, runs away and says "that was me, haha" then you have to retaliate. If you don't your business partners will start to question your ability and/or willingness to defend them.

To extend your analogy here, the person who shat in the porch was a teenage lodger in the house of a family they disliked, so they  burned the house down. 

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

a lot of people still have a cultural bias that prevents them from taking Pakistan seriously as the major player from here on.

A danger is a successful Talban government boosting the prospects of Islamicists in nuclear armed Pakistan.

[DiegoDiego]

Russia and China don't do extremists, they crush them without a by your leave. There are no soft underbelly to Russia or China.

You obviously didn't read ICTChris' earlier posts about Chechnya then.

What was your previous username on here?

[welshbairn]

Does the black hand refer to warning points?

[LongTimeLurker]

5 hours ago, TheBruce said:

....US Empire is dead. We lost. Get over it. We can only but hope that the Afghan people get some peace and stability and prosperous times after the western shit show that seen countless innocents butchered....

The Taliban haven't taken the Panjshir valley yet and the vice president of the now deposed western backed regime has fled there claiming to be the legitimate caretaker president. Probably best filed under good luck with that but it remains to be seen if the Taliban can secure and maintain control over all of Afghanistan and who the former Soviet states to the north would support if many of their co-ethnics were in ongoing open rebellion against a Pashtun dominated and Pakistan aligned Kabul regime in the years ahead. Everything isn't automatically hunkydory once NATO leaves.

As for whether the US Empire is dead bear in mind that if a certain Saudi lunatic hadn't orchestrated 9/11 they would never have been in there in the first place and ultimately they decided to withdraw rather than being forced out. US influence reached a high water mark after the Cold War that was never going to be maintained long term. They are still the top global superpower but things are back to how they were in the 60s and 70s in terms of them not always getting everything their own way. The Taliban are playing nice over the evacuation and are saying all the right things to the western media right now because they understand that reality.

Edited August 17, 2021 by LongTimeLurker

[ICTChris]

You can't take lessons from one conflict and apply it to others uniformly.  The Chechen wars were not like the situation in Afghanistan.  When the Chechens declared independence and during the initial wars they were secular, fighting for independence.  The influence of religion grew from 1996 onwards and some of the powerful jihadist groups threatened the power of the semi-recognised state, contributing to the general anarchy following the war.  Islamic extremists invaded Dagestan in 1999 and were eventually beaten back by Russian troops and this, along with a series of terrorist bombings of apartment buildings in Russia, were the catalyst for the second Chechen War. 

The second war contributed in a number of ways to the radicalisation of the Chechen rebel movement.  One was that many of the jihadist groups received foreign volunteers and became the best fighting units of the rebels.  There's a suggestion that money was also funnelled to them by Gulf states or wealthy individuals.  Secondly, the secular leadership were targeted for assasination by the Russians - I think every single Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was killed by Russian forces between 1996 and 2006.  It suits the Russians for the Chechens to become Islamic extremists, that cuts them off from any diplomatic aid, not that much of that was forthcoming anyway.  Thirdly, the brutality of the war lead to radicalisation, I think a war that intense, that violent and that unforgiving is going to naturally turn people towards the most extreme intrepretation of their beliefs.  Dokku Umarov, who was the final effective PM of Ichkeria and who definitively allied the Chechen rebels with jihadism (he delcared an emirate which eventually became part of ISIS, effectively), said that when the war started he didn't even know how to pray correctly - these were Soviets and religion was not a huge part of their lives. 

This is different to what has happened in Afghanistan and different to what is happening in China with the Uighers.  Lessons learned in one place aren't directly transferable to others - I think this sort of thinking is one reason why so many Western political and military leaders make such disasterous decisions.  

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

You can't take lessons from one conflict and apply it to others uniformly.  The Chechen wars were not like the situation in Afghanistan.  When the Chechens declared independence and during the initial wars they were secular, fighting for independence.  The influence of religion grew from 1996 onwards and some of the powerful jihadist groups threatened the power of the semi-recognised state, contributing to the general anarchy following the war.  Islamic extremists invaded Dagestan in 1999 and were eventually beaten back by Russian troops and this, along with a series of terrorist bombings of apartment buildings in Russia, were the catalyst for the second Chechen War. 

The second war contributed in a number of ways to the radicalisation of the Chechen rebel movement.  One was that many of the jihadist groups received foreign volunteers and became the best fighting units of the rebels.  There's a suggestion that money was also funnelled to them by Gulf states or wealthy individuals.  Secondly, the secular leadership were targeted for assasination by the Russians - I think every single Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was killed by Russian forces between 1996 and 2006.  It suits the Russians for the Chechens to become Islamic extremists, that cuts them off from any diplomatic aid, not that much of that was forthcoming anyway.  Thirdly, the brutality of the war lead to radicalisation, I think a war that intense, that violent and that unforgiving is going to naturally turn people towards the most extreme intrepretation of their beliefs.  Dokku Umarov, who was the final effective PM of Ichkeria and who definitively allied the Chechen rebels with jihadism (he delcared an emirate which eventually became part of ISIS, effectively), said that when the war started he didn't even know how to pray correctly - these were Soviets and religion was not a huge part of their lives. 

This is different to what has happened in Afghanistan and different to what is happening in China with the Uighers.  Lessons learned in one place aren't directly transferable to others - I think this sort of thinking is one reason why so many Western political and military leaders make such disasterous decisions.  

My memory of this was the first leader of Chechnya in the post Soviet era trying for independence, getting blown up by missiles honing in on his mobile phone signal. Dzhokhar Dudayev, ex Soviet Airforce General, and a man the Russians could have done business with, like other parts of the Soviet Empire. Instead the crazies were let loose, including the current ruler of Chechnya. 

[ICTChris]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

My memory of this was the first leader of Chechnya in the post Soviet era trying for independence, getting blown up by missiles honing in on his mobile phone signal. Dzhokhar Dudayev, ex Soviet Airforce General, and a man the Russians could have done business with, like other parts of the Soviet Empire. Instead the crazies were let loose, including the current ruler of Chechnya. 

He was allegedly on the phone to Boris Bereskovsky at the time.  

[Baxter Parp]

On 16/08/2021 at 12:44, Lex said:

Yeah he went there after the Taliban were removed.

Except the Taliban offered to hand him over to a third party country if evidence emerged of his guilt.

[Arabdownunder]

On 16/08/2021 at 21:44, Lex said:

 

Yeah he went there after the Taliban were removed.

 

Tell us more about the Taliban being removed. Who removed them, where to and how did that work out?

[Detournement]

Never forget Corbyn being shredded by the BBC for coming out against the fascist coup during the last GE.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

There has been a military coup in Guinea. Colonel Doumbuya does not look like a man to be messed with.

 

[Wee-Bey]

Without a single shot fired you would think, after they seen him. He definitely has the look down though, it's like a cliche from a movie or TV show.