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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Feb-2020
16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan

Web Log - February, 2020

16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan

The year of laughable peace agreements

by John J. Xenakis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan
The year of laughable peace agreements
Why the Afghan peace agreement must fail

US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan

American Marines in Afghanistan (Getty)

American Marines in Afghanistan (Getty)

This could be a Saturday Night Live skit. And maybe it will be.

The United States, led by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, announced an agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan whose final objective would be to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

According to Esper on Thursday:

"The best, if not only solution forward is a political agreement. We have the basis for one on the table, and we are taking a hard look at it. We are consulting with our allies. We are consulting with Congress and others. And I think peace deserves a chance."

It's not exactly a "peace treaty," since no one pretends that it will bring peace. And it's not a truce, since no one pretends that the US and the Taliban will stop killing each other. And it's not a ceasefire, since no one pretends that anyone will cease firing. It's being called a "reduction in violence" which, I assume, means that the number of schoolchildren that the Taliban will kill with bombs every week will be reduced by, say, 25%. That's progress, isn't it?

And it's not a permanent "reduction in violence" agreement. It's a 7-day "reduction in violence" agreement. If the Taliban uphold their commitments during the 7 days, then negotiations would begin within 10 days for a permanent U.S.-Taliban peace agreement. Where the negotiations will take place was not announced, but Germany and Norway have offered to host the talks. The Afghan government is not party to the agreement.

And then if the negotiations go well, the United States will begin to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. There are about 12,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and about 4,000 troops from other Nato countries.

It takes my breath away.

By the way, the US and the Taliban announced an agreement in September, and the Taliban were coming to Camp David to sign it. But them a terrorist set off a car bomb in Kabul, killing 12 people including an American soldier, so Trump called off the signing ceremony. Something like that could happen again during the 7-dy reduction in violence.

The year of laughable peace agreements

Whenever any politician says anything like:

"There is no military solution. The only possible solution is a political solution."

then he's nothing but a babbling idiot. The same is true when a politician, like Esper, says "And I think peace deserves a chance."

There is NEVER a political solution to a war. (Well, just to protect myself, let's just change that to "almost never.")

If it's a generational crisis war, then it end will with an explosive genocidal climax and victory. WW II in Europe did not end because Churchill and Hitler got together and signed a peace agreement. WW II in Asia did not end because FDR and Emperor Hirohito agreed to a political solution mediated by Charles de Gaulle.

If it's a non-crisis war, then it might end with victory and surrender, or it might end with a "peace agreement." But in the latter case, the peace agreement will never last. Typically, in these situations, the combatants alternate between periods of war that end in ceasefires, and periods of "peace" that end when the peace agreement collapses. The Jews and the Arabs have signed multiple "peace agreements," but they don't last. The conflict between Jews and Palestinians will not end except through a massive bloody war, where one side or the other achieves victory, and the other side surrenders. That's the way the world works.

As the old saying goes:

"Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading."

So let's take a look at three "peace agreements" that are in the news these days.

Idlib Syria Astana/Sochi De-escalation agreement
Agreement between Russia and Turkey. Syrian regime is not a party.
There is a massive disaster unfolding in Idlib. There are three possible paths: (1) Sociopathic monster Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, will slaughter millions of innocent men, women and children. (2) Turkey will open its border and let millions of refugees flood into Turkey and Europe. (3) Turkey and al-Assad will go to war. ( "9-Feb-20 World View -- Turkey sends tanks across border into Syria to confront al-Assad regime in Idlib")
For sleazebag Vladimir Putin, the whole Astana de-escalation thing was a big joke. The only objective was to provide political cover for genocide and ethnic cleansing by Putin and al-Assad, and also by Iran's sleazebag, Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

Mideast "Peace to Properity" agreement
Agreement between US and Israel. The Arabs are not a party.
This turns out to be a pragmatic Rube Goldberg agreement for a two-state solution, with a promise of $60 billion to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt to spend on Palestinians to implement the agreement. ( "6-Feb-20 World View -- Israeli diplomat reveals Israel's startling new 'pragmatic' foreign policy")
It's assumed that the Israelis and Palestinians would continue to hate each other, but they would stop fighting because of the money.

Afghanistan "reduction in violence" agreement
Agreement between US and Taliban. The Afghan government is not a party.
This is the one we're talking about today. As I've written many times, Generational Dynamics proves that no "peace" in Afghanistan is possible. I'll summarize the reasons again below. ( "16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan")
Why does the US want of the current US-Taliban agreement? It's to provide a political path for the withdrawal of American forces with dignity. Why do the Taliban want it? It's because they want the withdrawal of American forces, and so American and Taliban objectives coincide to that extent. However, the Taliban want to inflict as much humiliation as possible on the US forces as they're withdrawal, and then to move on to Kabul and overthrow the government, to prove that America's 18 year involvement in Afghanistan was a waste of time, blood and money.

It's interesting how similar these three laughable "peace agreements" are:

They're all politically meaningless.
They all exclude the most important party.
The party they exclude is always the side that wants to continue the war.

As I say, politicians are babbling idiots.

If you look at the world today, American and the Western countries generally feel obligated to honor their commitments. But three major countries -- Russia, Iran and China -- see commitments and peace agreements as a way of controlling the West, since they can violate the agreements with impunity, but the Western countries remain bound to them. In fact, this has been an actual strategy of Russia and Vladimir Putin since 2010 -- use Russia's veto power in the UN Security Council to cripple the foreign policy of America and the West, while Russia does whatever the hell it wants, such as annexing Crimea. ( "22-Apr-11 News -- Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics")

Why the Afghan peace agreement must fail

Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.

Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings, dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill each other.

The above is a brief summary of stuff that I've written about in great detail in the past about why peace will fail in Afghanistan. It's not rocket science for the so-called "Washington experts," but it does require studying history and trying to understand what's actually going on in the world. But we live in a society where SAT scores have been plummetting for decades, ever since the Boomers graduated, and where all college courses are being taught by incredibly stupid Marxist idiots. People in the mainstream media know nothing about the world except Marxist sociology and women's studies. In Congress you have total idiots like AOC who says something every day to prove how stupid she is. And in the Administration, you have "experts" who have also graduated from colleges teaching Marxist sociology and women's studies.

So there's really no hope. The above summary is not rocket science, but it's far beyond the mental capabilities of the analysts, journalists and "experts" in Washington, almost all of whom are way too steeped in metoo and socialist garbage to have any clue what's really going on in the world. The same is true about many of the other hundreds of countries and societies that I've studied, analyzed and written about in the last 15 years. All the people in Washington can do is stumble in the dark, until they stumble into World War III. Then they finally learn what's going on. That's the way the world works.

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Attributed to American satirist Ambrose Bierce, early 1900s.

Sources:

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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (16-Feb-2020) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Feb-2020 16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan

US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan

The year of laughable peace agreements

Why the Afghan peace agreement must fail

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 16-Feb-2020
16-Feb-20 World View -- US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan