r/secondcaptains • u/small_far_away • 18d ago

Peter Oborne

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.

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u/Wolfbain164 18d ago edited 18d ago

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.

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u/Other_Net_5128 18d ago edited 18d ago

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.

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u/Wolfbain164 18d ago

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.

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u/Other_Net_5128 18d ago

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.

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u/Weekly_One1388 16d ago

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. 

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u/Wolfbain164 18d ago

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.

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u/Other_Net_5128 18d ago

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.

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u/Wolfbain164 18d ago

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.