archived https://archive.ph/0lnCy
I agree with your assessment of the Russian position. I disagree with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I doubt it was a political will situation, nor a cost thing. It seems more likely that it was a useful base of operations for black ops and asymmetrical covert war and influence campaigns against China. US contractors were making a lot of profit. And 20 years in Afghanistan hadn’t managed to get the US to anything resembling Vietnam levels of unrest.
To me, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was either mission accomplished in establishing and embedding asymmetrical capabilities in the guerilla networks and/or a need to remove a weak holding in advance of a war with China to avoid it being a distracting front and/or a need to pull back materiel for redeployment. I am not convinced it was money loss nor political will.
Afghanistan campaign was basically the same playbook US used against USSR, where they hoped that they could spread extremism into Soviet republics. With China they tried to do the same in Xinjiang using Afghanistan as the base for that. China managed to deal with the issue decisively, and US ended up mired in a costly war that ultimately failed to achieve any geopolitical objectives. Afghanistan is now on good relations with China and Russia which is basically the worst possible outcome for the US.
I think the loss of money and political will has to be taken in the context of US ambitions against China. A lot of US hawks started saying that Afghanistan was a waste of money when what they really need to be doing is preparing to take on China directly. Hence the political will to keep pouring money into that adventure evaporated.
Pretty much the same thing is happening with Ukraine right now where there are increasing concerns that this proxy war is depleting US military and they won’t be in a position to fight China. Meanwhile, there’s also a faction that’s deeply politically invested in Ukraine which makes a pull out difficult.
My personal impression is that US is deeply dysfunctional right now, and there’s no cohesive strategy. The whole two years have been US reacting to move China and Russia have been making, and fumbling along the way. Geopolitical outcomes have been even more profound than the actual hot war in my opinion. BRICS has become far stronger, there’s now active dedollarization happening, Russia showed that it’s possible to be cut off from the west and thrive. All of that peels apart global perception of US power and influence. This becomes a self reinforcing cycle where the more countries end up decoupling from the west the easier it becomes for other countries to do so.
Ultimately, the hot war will end on Russian terms because if Russia ever did find itself in trouble, then China would be forced to step in. The worse possible outcome for China would be either destabilized balkanized Russia under western control. This would be an existential threat to China. Therefore, China will do whatever is necessary to ensure Russia continues to have a stable and friendly government. US has absolutely no hope of outproducing China, hence why this can only end one way.
