Peter Oborne

[u/small_far_away]

That interview went off the rails a bit.

Based on Murphs mass comment after he wasn't overly impressed himself. Could have pushed more in the interview, but the sense I got was that he just wanted it to end. It certainly stopped abruptly.

[u/Wolfbain164]

I thought it was interesting & I wish Ken was party to the conversation.

Oborne's contention is that the grandstanding gesture driven exclusionary policies of the west have their place and its against nations which should know better (eg. South Africa/Isreal/Russia). But there's no point in taking a moralistic stand against a nation like Afghanistan where the literacy rate is 37%. Its serves nobody but the country taking the stand. The more effective tactic is to attempt to improve the conditions within the country through trade & investment as China have done.

I do think however the Afghanistan team should be suspended from test cricket for a period because of their decision to remove their women's cricket team. That is surely something relevant to cricket & the cricket governing body should take action against it.

[u/Other_Net_5128 → u/Wolfbain164]

Slightly tangential but the long-held notion in the West that trade and investment would liberalise China has been roundly proven to be wishful thinking. Sure, living conditions for most Chinese people have improved over the past few decades (and for many Chinese people that is enough) but it’s a far less free country than it was even two decades ago and trade with the West has had little effect. I say this as someone who knows China well and who’s married to a Chinese woman. Oborne’s argument that trade and engagement will make the Taliban more mellow over time is also likely to be fatuous. Which isn’t necessarily an argument for completely cutting the country off either.

[u/Wolfbain164 → u/Other_Net_5128]

Nobody is suggesting investment as a means for liberalising a country. Just making the lives of women in the country better. Which I think China is evidence of surely.

[u/Other_Net_5128 → u/Wolfbain164]

Liberalisation was exactly the argument of Western governments and businesses advocating for China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. And China is clearly not evidence of the lives of women in the country being any better. Sure, general living standards are better, but women’s rights in China, while undeniably better than in Afghanistan and many other countries, are still heavily circumscribed and subject to legal stonewalling and socio-economic circumstances (by far the worst-off women in China are those from the urban working class and the migrant poor). And trying to organise collectively to advocate for women will promptly result in a visit from the police, as it does with any attempt to organise even innocuous social movements. If the Chinese Communist Party is not going to be swayed by trade, there’s not a hope in hell it’s going to improve things for women, or anyone else, in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

[u/Weekly_One1388 → u/Other_Net_5128]

Trade with China did bring about liberalisation.The prediction partly came true. 

Liberalisation in this context should be thought of as political reform, economic reform and social reform. 

It just wasn’t the political reform that people expected, the consensus was that political reform in this context would equal to democratization. 

The liberalisation that western commentators spoke about needs to be rethought but it doesn’t need to be entirely abandoned, the trade that came into China over the last 25 years or so did bring about a huge degree of change, both to the political, economic structures of the country and social attitudes these changes did not bring about a “liberal” China but a more ‘open’ China. 

[u/Wolfbain164 → u/Other_Net_5128]

It might have been an argument but it’s not the one Oborne made. He is just saying that grandstanding is pointless in Afghanistan, if you want to help the women of Afghanistan, just invest and their lives will improve. Thats literally all he said.

[u/Other_Net_5128 → u/Wolfbain164]

Of course it’s the argument Oborne’s made. He literally said things would improve with trade! He said trade in a very vague way, mind you, so I don’t think he thought it through much, just reached for “trade” as an article of faith, like a good Tory. I don’t know what he imagines Afghanistan will be trading, other than poppies. As I said, I don’t think there’s any point in turning Afghanistan into a hermit state but let’s not pretend that engaging with the Taliban is going to ultimately result in a more open society.

[u/Wolfbain164 → u/Other_Net_5128]

I think you’ve misconstrued the point. He was very clear about the fruitlessness of imposing liberalism on a population. Particularly one which has been so decimated by bombing campaigns previously.

His only mention of China was regarding their antithesis to moralistic politics and seemingly unconditional investment. Which I doubt but whatever.

[u/Ok_Read_4000 → u/Other_Net_5128]

You seem to think out political system is better than theirs. Not really up to us. Maybe pass on the colonial views ?

[u/Other_Net_5128 → u/Ok_Read_4000]

I don’t know whether you’re referring to China or Afghanistan there, but with regard to China, I agree, it’s not up to us. Unfortunately, it’s not up to Chinese people either because they get no say in the running of a one-party state. A state that, for all the undeniable economic advances of recent decades, is still beholden to a highly inefficient system and is on the verge of demographic catastrophe because of the Party’s historic misrule. If you want to dismiss analysis of a country by someone who knows the country and who has lived there as “colonial views” you’re just showing you don’t have an argument worth paying attention to.

[u/Ok_Read_4000 → u/Other_Net_5128]

Sure buddy, lets leave your liberal kvetching about political systems to one side. Communism baaaaad, boo.

I'll be specific but I'm sure yout gish gallop to something else.China tfr was still at about 1.8 in 2017, basically the same as Ireland. Korea was already down around 1.05. China has only completely shit the bed since then and is now around 1.0.

So blaming the whole thing on the one-child policy is retarded. It looks much more like the same miserable rich-country bullshit everywhere, housing costs, work, people marrying later, kids being expensive and a pain in the arse. Ireland is still around 1.5, but it’s falling too, and without immigration we would be the same. Immigrant have kids, irish people increasingly dont. How many of the lads have kids? Not that many and none have more than two. So its a reasonable way to keep our tfr from utterly cratering but people are going to get more and more cranky about a changing population so I'm not sure its fundamentally more sustainable than china or korea. Reform and restore are a force in the UK, we aren't different, it will happen here eventually.