Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Erik Prince about the Afghanistan debacle and what it portends for the United States. His answers were very interesting. I've transcribed a few of his more important comments, and embedded the video interview below that.
This will destroy what's left of NATO, because the US has been so unilateral, and so clueless ... we have shattered the confidence of our European allies, and every other ally around the world ... it will definitely figure into people's thinking how quickly America abandoned its friends in Afghanistan and left in such a horribly chaotic and clumsy manner, and so there are going to be permutations in so many sides that we haven't even thought of yet, that come from this.
The dollar is the world's reserve currency. Why? Because it's underpinned by the notion of US military strength. And what we're seeing unfold in Afghanistan over the last twenty years, and over the last few weeks and the next two weeks, really does not show well.
. . .
As the Pax Americana goes away, and [other nations] don't have the confidence in the dollar, that has massive trickle-down implications to our economy and to our way of life ... So now we have to live within our means ... The abolition of the welfare state ... massive, massive changes. Far greater convulsions than the Great Depression or any other civil unrest we've had in America.
. . .
I don't care how much surveillance you have. What does it do to the reality of the people on the ground?
. . .
I find it amazing how worried everyone in America is about COVID, that the Taliban managed to conquer the entire country without wearing masks, and COVID didn't seem to slow them down too much ... Let's worry about the big threats.
The video excerpt below is less than five minutes long, and expands on the excerpts above. I highly recommend watching it in full, if you have the time. If the embedded version won't play, you'll find it here.
Thought-provoking and incisive.
Peter
6 comments:
A falling camel attracts many knives.
The welfare state will never go away as long as the government can rob Peter to pay Paul. And Peter remains a sucker.
When I think of the U.S. and its relations with the outside world, why is the image that keeps coming to mind that of a beached whale being hacked into by seagulls?
NATO is toast, especially after the US went off and made (yet) another treaty with Australia and the UK. We have managed to offend our allies and convince our enemies we are effective toothless and useless, all in one blow.
Thanks, Current Occupant. America really is back on your watch - in the sense of 1979 back.
NATO has been a shambling corpse since it's raison d'etre died with the end of the Cold War, serving as defense welfare for much of Europe. An alliance where most of the members don't live up to their treaty obligations is no alliance at all, especially since various members of the alliance are starting to find that, in the absence of a USSR to concentrate everyone's minds, they have incompatible security concerns and national objectives from their purported allies (Greece and Turkey being perhaps the most notable example of this). Biden's actions cannot kill that which is already dead, at worst his incompetence will expose NATO for the farce that it has become.
There is more to the dollar being the world reserve currency than just US Military might... one of the big factors there is that there is no suitable replacement.
Regardless though, I've come to the conclusion that 2021 is to us what 1177BC was to the Late Bronze Age, even if my reasoning for coming to a catastrophic conclusion is rather different.
If its a gradual drawdown of American power, the slow rate of change will mask the causes of domestic effects and in some ways make preparing more difficult.
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