American empire
Does not exist. The country is a Republic. It did briefly have what looked like Colonies but the 1934 Philippine Independence Act put an end to any such notion. The fact is Empires allow free immigration from Colonies. The Americans didn't want that. Later, around 1960, Britain too got tired of the other side of the Imperial coin- viz the colonized can freely settle in the metropolis.
has been stuck in a place where, to use Polybius’s words, “it can neither endure its condition, nor the means to overcome it.”
This is gibberish. America is fat and rich and strong. It is the most powerful nation in the world. China still has a long way to go to mount a challenge. Mehta, cretin that he is, is writing of America as though it were some starving shithole. Fuck is wrong with him?
In the context of Afghanistan,
What fucking context? Trump told the Afghans they could keep their shithole to themselves. He didn't care which bunch of ragheads ran the place. Biden is proving by actions, not words, that Americans don't give a shit about shitholes. More importantly, they want nice fat checks from the Treasury for themselves. This means cutting back on trillions spent in a corrupt pretense of defending democracy or human rights or the rights of bitches in shithole countries. Obviously, defending non-democracies who don't give a shit about human rights for bitches is fine- if the thing turns a profit.
learned strategic thinkers and broadsheets of imperial privilege like The New York Times,
the NYT is now a nightmare of wokeness- or so it would like us to believe. The sort of people who still read newspapers tend to like to have their blood pressure raised.
will fulminate over roads not taken.
But they were roads to nowhere. Afghanistan really does not matter.
But this exercise, as valuable as it might be,
is useless
misses the wood for the trees.
Afghanistan is a fucking desert.
These questions re-enact the presumption of imperial omniscience, innocence and power.
No they don't. Afghanistan was a theater of punishment. Sadly, money was spent like water which is why the thing dragged on for so long. India flushed about 3 billion dollars down that drain. Still, Afghanistan is close to India. There are cultural and historical ties. So far, the Afghan Taliban doesn't seem to have any particular itch to kill Hindus.
In Phil Klay’s masterpiece, Missionaries, Lisette, a journalist who has spent time in Afghanistan, asks the question: “Any wars right now we are not losing?” She promptly thinks the answer is Colombia.
Afghanistan has opium. Colombia has cocaine. Those aren't going to be peaceful places so long as drugs are illegal. But what has this to do with Imperialism? I suppose Mehta thinks that if people drink Coca-cola then that is American Imperialism. But, in that case, so is quoting Phil Klay or getting a PhD from Princeton.
But this answer turns on how one defines “not losing”.
Mehta considers resigning from Ashoka University to be 'not losing', coz he wasn't sacked after being gang raped by the Board.
The exorbitant privilege of empire is you even get to define what counts as loss and shrug off its costs.
Tell that to the Hapsburgs or the Ottomans or the Romanovs etc. The privilege of being the richest and most powerful nation is getting to ignore cunts who babble on about Imperialism. 'Exorbitant privilege' refers to seigniorage accruing to the country in whose currency world trade is denominated. Everybody can shrug off costs which don't materially affect their wealth.
There is a long litany of losses.
No there isn't. There is a list of what Obama called 'stupid shit'. But there was no blowback for America though there was some for Europe. The fact is America has a military industrial complex. Some people get rich from these wars. At one time, the top rate of tax went up when there was a war. This has not happened recently. Wars are 'deficit financed'.
The wars in Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon; the coups from Iran to Chile; the creation of secret instruments of violence in assorted places from Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Laos, Honduras, El Salvador; sanctuary to autocracies and exporters of violent fundamentalism from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, each of whom have subverted the US’s own aims.
So what? America adjusted its aims. It once had a proper rival in the shape of the Soviet Union. China has a long way to go to achieve a similar threat point.
True, America has way too many Mehta type assholes trying to get it to do stupid shit. Stupid shit does go down- when it makes a profit for vested interests. Mehta's ilk are 'useful idiots' in a rich country. They are a public fucking disaster in a poor country like India.
Ask the question: “Did intervention leave a place in a better condition or achieve an objective with least violence possible?”
Don't. Ask the question, does this make money for campaign contributors? Is there a 'pork barrel' element to it? James Buchanan got everybody to ask such questions around the time Mehta was born.
The answer often turns out to be “no”
Actually, the answer is 'don't be silly!'
. The tens of thousands of civilian casualties testify to that.
No. They testify to the fact that failed or failing states feature lead poisoning as a rising cause of mortality.
Often progress was set back.
Did Mehta set back the progress of his students by resigning? Was that his intention? Who knows?
The Middle East had many functioning states,
It still does. That's why so many Indians work there.
pockets of urbane modernity,
Like Beirut?
till the geopolitics set the stage for worse forms of fundamentalist reaction.
Lebanon's problem was that it adopted a shit constitution back in 1926. Power sharing doesn't work if Muslims are a majority even if they are split between different sects.
The exact shape of the Taliban, ISIS, al Qaeda is
solely determined by their ability to recruit which in turn is a function of likelihood of being killed. This has nothing to do with 'Great Powers' or 'primordial' shite.
no more over-determined by the interventions of great powers, than it is by some more primordial essence of a culture.
Overdetermination means there is more than one 'sufficient cause'. What Mehta has written is illiterate. A sufficient cause can't be more sufficient than another sufficient cause.
But it is impossible to deny that they are products of modern imperial politics:
But there are no modern Empires! Sure, there may be wars and insurgencies and so forth but wars and insurgencies existed before there were Empires.
The end of Empires meant there were more national and sub-national and ethnic and sectarian conflict. But, by telling Mehta type cretins to go fuck themselves, and killing bad guys, this doesn't really pose a massive problem.
Its unsettling of local societies,
Coz Coca-cola unsettles local societies- right?
its encouragement to violence,
Watching Disney will turn you into a school shooter
its support of fundamentalism,
Bush & Obama were constantly preaching Jihad
its breaking up of state structures.
Which one's? The Soviet Union's? Them guys did that on their own.
At the heart of empire is
an Emperor who rules over lots of Kingdoms and Principalities.
the debasement of moral identity.
Coz the Emperor would send a guy to piss into its mouth and debase it sexually.
Empire has seven deadly sins.
Mehta has found religion- sadly it is the religion of a lunatic.
The first is corruption.
Which exists in any type of social formation. Fathers have cheated their kids out of their trust funds and I, when sent to buy groceries, would keep a little money back to buy myself whiskey.
Internally, empire always empowers corrupt practices, the legions of lobbyists, arms dealers, hucksters, who begin to constitute the secret sinews of the state and channel its war booties.
Right! Bleeding hearts who demanded interventions under 'Right to Protect' were empowering a corrupt coterie.
Externally, the reliance on mercenaries,
Ashoka University relied on mercenaries- i.e. people paid to teach- like Mehta
the sordid deals with all kinds of unsavoury groups,
i.e. the sort of thing Mehta says caused him to resign
the casual saturation with arms,
Mehta has two arms. At least one of them should be equitably distributed up his rectum.
the implication in illicit trade,
Like pretending to know about 'political science' in order to get paid a little money.
make empire
or any Liberal Arts College
resemble a gangster operation that has blowback on the state it represents.
Unless the State suppresses both.
Corruption ensured both that the US Treasury was drained
The US Treasury has not been drained. The Financial Markets would have noticed.
and no state was built in Afghanistan.
That's what happens when an academic who specializes in studying failed states is put in charge of a failing state.
The second sin is self-deception.
Self-deception is not a sin. It may arise for some neurological or psychological reason. Evolution may well have given us a way to disguise our intentions from ourselves for strategic reasons.
From Vietnam to Afghanistan, America knew exactly what is going on.
Because America has clairvoyance? Or is Mehta simply shit at English grammar?
But the stakes in keeping the myth of imperial virtue and imperial power produce self-deceptions of the most extraordinary sort.
We can keep myths of all sorts without self-deception. I suppose the cretin means 'But the stakes in the game of affirming myths of imperial virtue and power militate for self-deceptions & c.' What Mehta has written is not just bad English it represents sloppy thinking. 'Stakes' arise in a game. Self-deception could be strategic in a game- e.g. believing you are holding a weak hand in a game of poker so as to mislead your opponent who is able to read your unconscious 'tells'. In this case, neither is involved. Why? Because America's 'stakes' are too low to make the thing worthwhile. Who gives a fuck about Afghanistan? Let the place cause trouble for China and Pakistan the way it did for the Soviets and then NATO.
The third is a morality that, to use Tagore’s phrase, “is split down the middle,”
which is an English idiom, not a Bengali one. Why not claim 'you scratch my back' is a phrase of Gangubai Hangal?
committed to the very things it disavows.
So, this cretin thinks immorality is 'a morality'.
What does the rule of law mean when empire itself enacts a regular lawlessness?
The rule of law, in America, means that everybody in America- but not elsewhere- is entitled to due process of law. Anyone who wages war against America, save for citizens of that Republic, has no due process based protection from American Courts. But the same could be said for any sovereign country.
What does a “humanitarian mission” mean, when it licenses an outsourcing of torture or disregard for civilian life?
It means there is a trade off between some collateral harm against a much larger humanitarian good.
The fourth sin is its continual expansionism.
Expansion is not by itself a sin. If the provision of education or health care expands, that is a good thing. Arguably, a World Government or Planetary Federation would be a good thing. In India we view Mauryan Imperialism as a good thing. Muslims may view the Mughal or Sultanate expansionism as a good thing. Many Europeans see Roman expansionism as a good thing. Christians still support missionary activity because they view the expansion of their Religion as a good thing.
The omniscience of empire is apt to give every local conflict global significance.
No. Omniscience means knowing every thing. This is not a property of any political entity. Perhaps Mehta means 'ubiquity'. If a great power has a finger in every pie then sometimes it fingers will be burned. But one could consider that a discovery process. A fully diversified portfolio would have this feature.
If an Empire is fragile then there is a Thucididean trap in that 'over-reach' represents a tipping point such that the tide turns against the Empire. When Tzarist Russia ceased expanding and started contracting, the thing was a run-away process.
However, America is not an Empire. Vietnam did not mark a high water mark of it is power and influence. Instead, 15 years after the fall of Saigon, the Soviet Union fell. Afghanistan could be said to have been a tipping point for the Soviets. It can be nothing of the sort for the Americans who announced their withdrawal in 2011 with 2014 as their target date. Biden should have stepped up withdrawal instead of stretching it to the end of August.
But it also has the need to remind the world of its resolve to remain preeminent. That needs war.
No. Armies need to fight so as to check that they can fight. Again, this is a discovery process.
The fifth is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is a venial not a deadly sin. Where did Mehta go to school? Christian institutions. Why is he so ignorant?
The more power tries to stretch, the more it deploys double standards.
Fuck off! Genghis Khan wasn't deploying any double standards at all.
Some hypocrisy is inevitable in politics. But it becomes the defining feature through which the world understands imperial power.
This has never been the case. The King Emperor never made any pretense that the Rajah of Kuch Nahin or the High Chief of the Oooga Boooga tribe was his equal. By contrast, President Truman personally welcomed Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan at the airport.
The sixth is a cult of violence.
Very true. Biden knifed Obama to become President.
There is an abiding paradox in US strategy.
No there isn't. Mehta is an abiding cretin.
The creation of stable states and societies requires the pacification of violence.
No. It requires the elimination of all countervailing coercive power such that there is a monopoly of legitimate violence save such as is by law established (e.g the right to exercise proportionate violence in self-defense)
But there is something bizarre about modern imperial counterinsurgency strategies.
There are no 'imperial counter-insurgencies'. Either a Great Power puts boots on the ground and bears the brunt- in which case we may metaphorically speak of hegemon and vassal- or it may defeat a particular regime and help another regime before abandoning it as useless. However, no 'Imperialism' is necessarily entailed. Consider Rajiv Gandhi's disastrous misadventure in Sri Lanka. Rajiv wasn't trying to turn that country into a colony or a puppet. He was just being a stupid cunt. Then he got blown to pieces. Sad for his family but good news for India.
From Iraq to Afghanistan to western Pakistan to the drug wars, the abiding legacy of this empire is saturation of societies with arms and militias; as if creating armed factions in society and militarising, running it awash with cash, will ever get you a stable state.
What is this crazy shit? Afghanistan and NWFP was awash with guns and tribal militias long before the US took any interest in the region. I was a kid in Iraq. We often attended weddings where guns were fired. Why? One explanation was that this was a tribal custom. Both the groom's and the bride's side wanted to show they had plenty of firepower. Another was that firing guns is cool.
The seventh sin is racism.
Mehta is racist. He accuses a Republic of being an Empire just because its people are White.
Even the most liberal-minded empire will create a hierarchy of those whose lives matter;
But so will any type of polity.
even in its emancipatory mission it cannot get away from reinforcing claims of superiority that generate resentment.
So what? Britain welcomed and still welcomes US soldiers. De Gaulle did tell the Americans to fuck off- which is why he felt so insecure in 1968 that he fled to a French base in Germany. After all, as a valorous French soldier, his first instinct was to run away while eating plenty of stinky cheese.
There are no easy solutions in Afghanistan.
There is an easy solution to Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Keep telling him he is a fucking cretin till he resigns and fucks off.
Starting with Obama, American Presidents have understood that the easy solution to Afghanistan is not giving a fuck about it.
The corruptions of empire made withdrawal long overdue.
What is Mehta saying? Corruption was the reason the tapering off took so much time? The Taliban knew it would lose revenue if the US left precipitately? That's an argument which could be made- but Mehta can't make it. He is too stupid.
But the tragedy of the American withdrawal is that even in trying to extricate itself, America ended up enacting the sins of empire, not overcoming them.
In the opinion of a cretin. BTW we all enact the 'sins of empire'- as Mehta defines them- every time we fart. This is true even if we are withdrawing from the room where, we piously hope, our colleagues will remain to savor its stench.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an end of the corrupt political economy of violence.
That should be 'will not put an end to'. Why can't Mehta right proper English? Is it coz of some sin of Empire?
The great powers will be new proxies
No. Great powers have proxies. If they are proxies, then they are not great.
who produce the same cycle of violence and civil war. Withdrawal does not signal a commitment to greater multilateralism or the rule of law.
Leaving a party does not signal a commitment to greater partying and getting high or laid. It just means you are tired and wanna go home coz u have an early class tomorrow.
Withdrawal will not produce an honest reckoning with the self-deceptions of empire.
Yes it will. Once there are no 'boots on the ground', an audit can be conducted. Professional Armies are good at that sort of thing. There is already a plentiful literature by officers who served in Afghanistan.
Will the Taliban reinvent itself?
It has done so. The question is which faction will prevail. The current head is more of a religious figure. That may change. At one time it was thought Khomeini was just a figure head.
There is reason to be deeply sceptical that it will.
There is greater reason not to give a fuck. Sanction Pakistan if its neighbor plays up.
Will it become like a poor Saudi Arabia in the Eighties — a power the West had no problems with, even when it was internally repressive or exporting jihad?
That was jihad against the Soviets.
Or will anarchy follow? Or will now the internal fissures of Afghan society produce a new political dynamic? No one truly knows.
No one truly cares- at least if they live far enough away.
But the modality of US withdrawal exuded the fundamental sin of empire: Its reinforcement of race and hierarchy.
The US refused to become an Empire precisely because it was too fucking racist. Getting shot of the Philippines meant restricting legal migration to 50 a year.
The tropes used to justify the mess of this withdrawal all underscore this. It is the Afghan president, their army, that is to blame, as if after 20 years of intervening in a society, the US had no responsibility.
The Taliban has absolved them of responsibility. All it is saying is 'get out by the date you stipulated.'
Suddenly, the pretext of common humanity, and universal liberation, which was the pretext of empire,
This cretin thinks the Brits came to India out of a sense of 'common humanity' and 'universal liberation'. No doubt, he thinks Genghis Khan was an Immanuel Kant avant la lettre.
turned into the worst kind of cultural essentialism.
There is nothing wrong with 'cultural essentialism'. An essence is what is true in all possible worlds. We may say 'let us make our culture reflect what would obtain in the best of possible worlds and make progress on that basis.'
Indeed Mehta is appealing to an essentialist political doctrine. But he is doing so in a stupid manner.
It is their culture, these medieval tribalists who are incapable of liberty.
Fuck liberty. Incessant internecine strife is what got Afghanistan into its present mess. Foreign fighters turned up but they had their own agendas.
We veiled the fact that they are entirely the creation of modern war.
This simply isn't true. The first American soldier to fight in Afghanistan ended up as the King of the Hazaras. Will Hazaras be fighting Pakhtuns? Tajiks appear to be doing so in Panjshir? What will Dostum do? What happened to Sami Sadat? This is an interminable Game of Thrones till the Dragon- i.e. China- appears. Maybe, what the Khalqis started, the PLA will complete- i.e. 're-education camps' for tribe after tribe, district after district.
And finally, this shocking sense of, “Frankly dear, we could not care a damn,” about the Afghans who reposed trust and risked their lives.
How is it shocking? The smart ones banked their money and got out while the going was good- some through India, others through Doha or wherever.
Fundamentalism has drawn its motivating energy, not from God,
Mehta is speaking of his own fundamental stupidity here
but from cultivating grievance against imperial hierarchies.
Yet, Religious fundamentalism before there were any imperial hierarchies. Zarathustra denounced 'devas' before there was any Iranian or Indian Empire.
The Taliban’s victory is not just a morale booster for fundamentalists everywhere.
But ISIS's failure- including its failure in Afghanistan- has dampened morale.
The US management of the withdrawal will give fillip
'give a fillip'. Why can't this Oxford Graduate write proper English? What is wrong with him?
to fundamentalism’s deepest psychological impulses.
Deep psychological impulses can't be given a fillip by any new, merely contingent, fact about the world. What this cretin means to say is 'the shambolic US withdrawal will boost the Taliban's self-confidence.' But that has nothing to do with psychology. It is simply a political truth.
It is an anarchic world, each for their own.
No. It is an orderly world where the Taliban won because it was better run and better financed than a regime presided over by an academic almost as stupid as Mehta. But Ghani was less ignorant. Mehta's increasingly hysterical and imperious pronouncements incarnate the one true sin of Imperium- incorrigible, egregious, ignorance. Compare what Prashant Kishore has achieved in Politics in the last decade and what this 'political scientist' has done. The conclusion is inescapable. The British Raj saddled us with a class of academic cretins who should be rapped over the knuckles if they mangle the English language too much but who should otherwise be left to baste in their own bile.
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