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Archive for December, 2015
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Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015Trouble In Helmand
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015Once again we arrive at the predicted point. The government we left behind in Afghanistan is weak, divided and losing authority. Its forces are low in morale and ready to switch sides. An assertive Taliban grows in confidence and piles on pressure with its own distinctive and deadly brand of moped warfare. A weary population is often willing to accept the medieval order of Taliban rule in preference to the corrupt incompetence of the Kabul authorities.
The response to this in the West is to call for some kind of military intervention. It will not work, it will cost many lives, it will make the lives of Afghans a misery and the project would be supremely futile. The Russians tried for years and lost. The West mobilised almost all of NATO for thirteen long years and have achieved next to nothing. Political authorities in the West are deaf and blind to reason and their military do their bidding for fear of budget cutbacks if they don’t.
There is no solution to the tides of tribal traditions and loyalties in Afghanistan and has never been since the Ripping yarns of the North West Frontier. Fundamental Islam actually fits the piece better than most other visions of life. To ensure it is more progressive and less bloodthirsty requires a settlement of rivalries in which Pakistan is the regional power, and must be in the driving seat of any brokered deal both in Afghanistan and its own tribal territories. Everybody else can help by supporting Pakistan and providing aid to establish economic reform so that an economy based on more than poppies can emerge and lift living standards into the twenty-first century. That will be the most effective engine of social and every other kind of reform. Anybody who asserts that more military intervention from the West will somehow speed the process is being little short of idiotic.
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Saturday, December 19th, 2015Syria: Cautious Progress
Saturday, December 19th, 2015This blog has been saying for years, as regular readers will confirm, that there will be no settlement in Syria without the help of Russia and Iran. The blinkered and often naive attitude of the West and its fixation with Assad has undoubtedly not only prolonged the war but caused immense suffering. The flight of millions now engulfing Europe is a direct consequence. So the UN resolution and the determination on all sides to work towards a political settlement is a great moment of hope. It is of course still true that the view of what that settlement should look like has many variations, not one of which will be fully met. There will have to be compromise, but all sides are now reconciled to that. As I have said so many times before, the unsophisticated antipathy of Western diplomacy towards Russia is both costly and inhibiting. Perhaps that lesson has now been learned. Let us hope so.
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Friday, December 18th, 2015
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Friday, December 18th, 2015GB and the Euro.
Friday, December 18th, 2015It is very unfashionable in Britain to say we should have joined the Euro at the beginning. Indeed the kindest would fail to take the observation seriously and the nasties would tell one to seek some help. So it is with some enthusiasm that this blog, which likes be be out on a limb, will now make the point.
Had GB joined with the project the Euro would have been properly structured and properly managed from the very beginning, not from Frankfurt but from London. It would have a governance system that worked and a much more robust approach to dealing with errant members, with a much more realistic one for those about to go over a cliff. Most important of all the UK would have enjoyed a structural devaluation of sterling’s competitive position on the lines of Germany, which would have powered up our manufacturing base and produced a much more industrialised economy than our current model driven by shopping and house price inflation. The tax base would have been larger and with it the revenue, so that the cost of delivering good quality public services would have been more in balance with income.
There are a multitude of other advantages but in the current context it is necessary to mention only one. The government constantly asserts that EU migrants flood in (perhaps many more than official figures show according to leaks today) because of benefit generosity. Yet statistics show we make more in revenue than we lose in payments so that is an emotional rather than a fiscal argument. The real reason migrants come is to profit. The pound is valued higher than the Euro, although each currency unit buys roughly the same in its own zone. So if you are, say, Polish and you come here to work whilst leaving your family at home, and you earn £100 and send it home to Poland, your dependants get E137. See?
Add to that the fact that GB has a trading deficit with Euroland of £50 billion annually and it does not look a opting out was quite as clever as we thought.
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Friday, December 18th, 2015Cameron Negotiates: For What?
Friday, December 18th, 2015There is before the United Kingdom a self inflicted problem, which is bedevilling any constructive and useful influence Britain has in Europe. It echoes the tense zone of a couple drifting apart and willing to do so, yet trying to find an excuse to stay together.
The issue now facing this country is not whether Cameron can negotiate some fig leaf deal sufficient to hide the rampant right wing of his party, so that he is able to recommend that the UK stays in. It is whether fundamentally the UK wishes to remain part of Europe. Messing around with the detail makes no real difference. The concessions demanded, if granted, are actually neither here nor there. You are either for it, or agin it. This blog is for it, always has been and always will be. This is because I see it not through the prism of benefit tourism, but through the tears of close on 100 million dead from two great wars.
The fact that everybody is peacefully now arguing about benefits entitlement is one of the greatest successes of history and this blog can see no valid reason to walk away. All those legions of mostly young men and all those cowering civilians either died for nothing or they died so that we might get to where we are today. These silly conflated issues which could so easily be resolved, and which if conceded will make only a marginal difference anyway, are just not reason enough to let their memories down. We owe them more than a poppy and a silence.