AUKUS - welcome news indeed

Back in June I wrote here [OK, Cold War It Is]:

Joe, you and your new posse gotta rescue already-suborned New Zealand, and make Australia feel a lot more comfortable with its situation.  Fast.  Otherwise it'll be clear that your reach is only to those lazy countries that are a comfortable distance away from the coming action in the Far East.   And even they will still be defending their precious Sino-exports and graduate-student fee income, hoping nobody will notice or mind too much.

He was listening!  And now we have AUKUS, replete with new nuclear subs for Oz.  (Gotta love the choice of name: not sure AUSUK would have worked at all ...  At least someone was giving half a thought to the matter.)

A bit of context.  What has recently become common parlance as "the Five-Eyes (intelligence) community" is officially AUSCANUKUS, with the 'Aus' being Australasia.  (You will sometimes find people, e.g. Wiki, inserting an 'NZ' but that's technically spurious.)  Sadly, NZ has been so thoroughly suborned by China, they've effectively self-selected themselves out of the inner circle; and we have to guess Canada had no particular reason to be in on this latest one.  Pity, but there it is.

Now to the reactions.  China very hostile, natch: say no more.  France, hahah!  Crocodile tears all around.  They were screwing up their own Oz-deal, and had it coming.  What are they going to say to us - if you don't back-track, we'll let all those refugees sail across the Channel?  (Oh, wait a minute ...)   In fact, what we'll be saying to them is: pipe down, Johnny Frog, or we'll leave those troops of yours in Central Africa with no helicopter support or aerial reconnaissance.

And everyone else on the world stage?  Well, by Heaven, after the Afghan debacle, something had to be done, or else the Taiwanese and many others besides would have been starting to make their accommodations.  Let's hope there are several other good ideas where this one came from rolling out over the weeks and months - most especially including something significant and soon for New Zealand, please.  As often noted here before: the lines of logistics in politics - particularly in foreign policy - can be very short.  Imagination is everything.

Which brings us to the Labour Party - which rushed to applaud the whole thing!  With a speed that must leave plenty of domestic lefties just reeling.  Even the Graun is more or less onside, even if leaving themselves a bit of equivocal wriggle-room.  (Gad, these people are so easily blindsided!)  We can expect some pushback to this amusingly tame position, I expect, in the run-up to Party Conference.  (Perhaps Starmer's Lotto crowd plans to make it yet another dividing line for advancing their really quite ruthless purge.)

Anyhow: credit where it's due - hats off to Biden this time.  

(I reserve the right to call him senile again if he drops the ball next time, though.)

ND

Afghanistan: why history is really important

 

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains

And the women come out to cut up what remains

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains ...

 

When we last briefly looked at this, Don Cox BTL offered a link to a piece that suggested the Afghans would surprise us all in combatting the Taliban effectively  (Taliban on the Way to Kabul? Not so Fast…)  Hmmm.  Looks more like a re-run of Vietnam on fast-forward; quicker even than the major ISIS surge in Iraq before external parties intervened.

There's an excellent book, Afghantsy, on the Russian's decade of direct intervention in that benighted land 1979-89 by Rodric Braithwaite, a former UK ambassador to Moscow who (though not a military expert) seriously knows his stuff.   Even the Russians - a bordering nation, prepared to commit a large number of boots on the ground and be quite brutal themselves - couldn't achieve anything, as Braithwaite recounts.   Obviously, we couldn't either - in the 19th century or the 21st.

The book's early chapters cover two centuries of relevant history very well: history that anyone proposing to get involved should have acquainted themselves with before making any decisions at all.  The uncompromising facts about this brutal land and its endlessly turbulent, factional and belligerent people make one wonder if anyone thus historically equipped, Russian or in turn American, would ever have committed their infantry to the place.  Blair?  Just tagging along, as ever.  Which brings us back to the Americans ...

Biden's irresponsible closing contribution on this has been extraordinary - the TV clip being shown yesterday surely confirms him as utterly senile.  He seems capable of dropping any ball and the world once again depends desperately upon the 'checks and balances' of the American system - much under strain during the Trump regime, and to be sorely tested now, it seems.  With its more-or-less unilateral command of US foreign policy (where political 'lines of logistics' are shortest), I ask again: what other half-baked nonsense will the White House perpetrate?

ND

Afghanistan and an important political principle

A principle in public affairs offered here several times before is that lines of logistics in politics can be very short  (Drew's Fourth Law of Politics).  Deals of enormous importance can be struck in a trice and sometimes delivered almost as quickly: think the Tory-DUP pact after May's disastrous GE 2017.  This is especially true of foreign affairs.  Unlike many domestic spheres when delivery on a policy can take years, a treaty can be signed and often executed in a flash: think Treaty of Paris 1763, which re-drew the map of the world.

So when the Americans and *ahem* their allies slunk away from Afghanistan last week, what did anybody expect?  That people would sit back and watch the Taliban slowly roll up the map, like the North Vietnamese in 1975?  The Afghans are - of course - in discussions with a range of possible "new friends" and something quite radical is likely to happen in that geography very soon.  Stroke of a pen.  Overnight.  Only limitation is the imagination of those concerned.

The USA, though often more inclined to rely upon overall might than ingenious diplomacy, was nonetheless once quite adept at this stuff in its own way.  What a senile prat Biden is.  How much more of the world is he going to allow to be carved up over the dinner table - by other people?

ND

Iran: poorly timed gamble could be oil market bottom?

S
o President Obama, keen to look to his legacy, has agreed to the deal with Iran that sees it freed of nearly all sanctions and able to trade again.

That Obama's Foreign policy strategic ineptness is the biggest legacy of his Presidency, perhaps we should be worried...

Certainly timing wise this is a very bad moment for what has been years of negotiations to suddenly bear fruit.

From the perspective of Saudi Arabia, rapidly moving from key Western Ally to pariah state, it is a disaster. Saudi is spending lots of money fighting proxy wars with Iran across the region. The $100 billion stimulus to Iran is not welcome. Saudi and America are no longer friends and the tension between Saudi and Iran could get worse.

Furthermore, the oil price is under the worst pressure this century already. Iran is happy to pile in given it has been selling oil illicitly at huge discounts, not it can sell it openly with lesser discounts - so what about the price will be their feeling. Iran can add another 500,000 BOE per day easily in the next twelve months.

This last point has pushed the price of oil down to $28 today, marking a spectacular fall for 2016 already and we are only 2 weeks in. However, this downward pressure could be the last push to really crater the oil price. From here on in US Shale explorers are going to start going under, the Banks will have to foreclose on assets across the world and future investments will be stopped dead. All the while global demand for oil is still growing, even China imported 6% more oil last year.

At some point the market will call a bottom to the price, not that there will be an instant snap back, but always a  good time to buy. This bottom is now likely to be in Q1 2016 I think.

Another wider issue for the world, is how come it will be sensible for the rest of the world to close down production and leave the only production centre in the dangerous Middle East, how will renewables ever survive and finally, how does cheap oil fight the 'climate change' war. All these 3 points will be covered at Davos and all lead to a world where somewhat higher oil prices will be welcome.

Also, I would not rule out a Saudi/Iranian contretemps in the Gulf, even if it is limited, it will handily but a firm end to the ever falling price of the commodity both economies survive on.