PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Afghanistan 2021 Onwards
View Single Post
Old 20th Aug 2021, 22:51
  #380 (permalink)  
Easy Street
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Wherever it is this month
Posts: 1,779
Received 75 Likes on 34 Posts
Biden's comments on what's going on in Afghanistan have indeed been bizarre. However on the credibility issue there's only two measures which count, and they're the national security strategies and budgets of US allies and partners. Until either of those are seen to change, emotive rhetoric in Parliament and elsewhere is just that, probably for domestic consumption.

It was mostly historically illiterate rhetoric, too: as if the UK hadn't already been constrained by US strategies for 65 years, as if alliances and treaties hadn't already survived US withdrawal in disgrace from a failed nation-building project, and as if the US had never acted unilaterally on anything. Very surprising for a former PM and the chair of our Foreign Affairs committee to speak as if any of this were new. And when the Kabul shambles is over, Europe will still be reliant on the US for much of its homeland deterrence. Our politicians need to calm down on this.

Last edited by Easy Street; 20th Aug 2021 at 23:03.
Easy Street is offline