Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Meaning of Sangin

It makes perfect military sense, we are told, and it is not a withdrawal but a handing over. Whatever it is if it takes our troops to a less dangerous part of the country it is welcome news. Our troops have shown valour and courage in full measure, in sharp contrast to the misplaced optimism of the top brass who give the orders and the naive rationalisation of politicians who set the policy.

Afghanistan, like Iraq, is the product of the knee jerk reaction to 9/11 and the hallucinatory fiasco of the Bush/Blair foreign policy agenda. One of the useful features of the Chilcot Inquiry is the parade of former top officials now willing to come forward and expose the muddled, shallow, ill informed and arrogant nature of those two leaders’ understanding of the realities of the challenge ahead of them. It is a pity the officials did not  all offer their candour before the event. It is difficult to calculate the number of lives which could have been saved across the piece, but it is considerable.

Without those two sanctemoneous zealots in charge at that critical time, the world would also now be a good deal less exposed to the terrorist threat.

China’s Financial Power

America and markets generally were relieved when China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe) announced that it would not be dumping U.S. assets in a programme to diversify its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world. It said such a move was unnecessary. However it called upon the U.S to ‘genuinely take measures to protect investors’  interests and confidence as a responsible large nation’. In other words get a grip of its budget deficit and burgeoning debt. This is not quite the tune the Obama administration officials were playing at the G8 and 20.

What is truly remarkable, in the historic context, is that China said it and notice has to be taken. Even if the U.S. government knows that economic power has shifted irrevocably to Asia, the American people do not. Yet.

What is even more astonishing is the spectacle of the world’s leading capitalist power being lectured on financial good housekeeping by the world’s leading communist power, which seems to be able to operate a better model of capitalism. As a great trading nation we need to wake up. Definitely the sun now rises in the east.