The most dangerous of all delusions are those that arise from the adulteration of history in the imagined interests of national and military morale. Although this lesson of experience has been the hardest earned, it remains the hardest to learn. Those who have suffered most show their eagerness to suffer more.
This camouflaged history not only conceals faults and deficiencies that could otherwise be remedied, but engenders false confidence, and false confidence underlies most of the failures that military history records.
- Why Don't We Learn from History? by B.H Liddell Hart (1944)
Unnecessary and unwarranted blunder of US withdrawing troops from Afghan is now well known; needless to say, my respect Joe Biden dropped drastically. But the roots of it started a long long time ago from two major flaws of human nature, sapiens refusing to learn from history and being plain arrogant with no rudimentary understandings of complex systems.
1. Watch the movie Charlie Wilson's War (or read the book). Nothing has changed in Washington on understanding other countries especially 20 plus years after being in Afghan. This is not a problem of politics but a problem of human nature. These parochial views of the world are omnipresent at big corporations, academia, voters and in our families. Good luck establishing a "Mars colony".
2. In last few centuries, this has been a purely a western issue. Powerful countries pick elitist's (usually the ones educated in western universities and speak flawless english) as their pseudo representatives in countries they conquer. Neither these powerful countries nor the local elitist have any knowledge of the region nor the needs of the local people. India was lucky to have Gandhi or else Brit's would have picked Nehru. Read the book, Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly.
Peter Turchin's brilliant inference on the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani using his own words from Ghani's book to unveil his elitist nature:
Back in 2008 I reviewed, for Nature, the book written by Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Fixing Failed States. My review was not gentle. One of my comments was that the authors
review four examples — post-war Europe, Singapore, the southern United States and Ireland — that, in their opinion, prove that countries confronted with devastation, chaos and entrenched poverty can transform themselves into prosperous and stable members of the global community. Apart from Singapore, however, these are not examples of state collapse. Europe in 1945 was devastated by interstate war; Ireland was poor before its economic miracle but not a collapsed state; and few would consider the United States to be weak.
I also slammed them for not being aware of the current literature on state collapse. Notably, they apparently never heard of structural-demographic theory (among other important theoretical developments). They should have read and paid attention to Ibn Khaldun (more on this below).
And I found their specific proposals lacking, well, specifics:
Ghani and Lockhart propose an agenda for state building, but their weak analysis undermines its credibility. They suggest a ‘sovereignty strategy’ that involves formulating a strategy, then setting the goals and rules of the game, mobilizing resources, allocating critical tasks and, finally, monitoring implementation of the strategy. This generic approach does not suggest concrete policies. For example, the book describes how a strategy formulated in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh “forced a sobering reading of conditions: corruption, inefficient use of state resources, short-term planning and poor infrastructure. This reading of context enabled participants to embrace change and leaders to set a clear sense of direction.” Given such an easy buy-in, one wonders why this approach has not enabled more sides, such as the Maronite Christians and the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon, to make peace given the many opportunities they have had to ‘embrace change’.
My review concluded that Fixing Failed States failed as an academic book. Now Ghani failed as the head of the state, together with the state he was the head of.
Ashraf Ghani's actions reminds me of Taleb's wise words in the book The Bed of Procrustes
It is easier to macrobullshit than to microbullshit.
This has been a sad week for humanity. If you are wondering why I am realist (not pessimist) on human nature then remember this week.
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