Afghan government collapse.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah, as long as Pakistan was providing aid and support to the Taliban the 2% chance of things working out was cut in half.

Once we evacuate everyone we should evacuate - as many Afghans as we can - and leave entirely, can we at least cut off all aid to those treacherous Pakistani snakes?

Pakistan's position is more or less delicate management of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations (a good offense is the best defense) through any means it feels are necessary, even if that means getting one's hands messy and doing things that might look hard to justify to an outward observer.
Not that I expected anything besides misinformed views from most Americans on this issue.
Reality tends to be nuanced. Pakistan is in a tough neighborhood. I suggest you read up on the history of the Durand Line and consider the difficulties Pakistan's geography presents.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah, as long as Pakistan was providing aid and support to the Taliban the 2% chance of things working out was cut in half.

Once we evacuate everyone we should evacuate - as many Afghans as we can - and leave entirely, can we at least cut off all aid to those treacherous Pakistani snakes?

Pakistan's position is more or less delicate management of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations (a good offense is the best defense) through any means it feels are necessary, even if that means getting one's hands messy and doing things that might look hard to justify to an outward observer.
Not that I expected anything besides misinformed views from most Americans on this issue.
Reality tends to be nuanced. Pakistan is in a tough neighborhood. I suggest you read up on the history of the Durand Line and consider the difficulties Pakistan's geography presents.

Hold on there, are you justifying the actions of the Pakistani government as a whole and the ISI in particular in Afghanistan? Because they have indirectly and directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and many, many more Afghanis of all stripes. Those are the actions of a hostile power, not one the U.S. should be giving aid to.
I know damn well about Pakistani geography issues. There were plenty of articles about Pakistani needs for strategic depth versus India as well as the artificial nature of the border with Afghanistan. I can see their desire for a friendly power in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan didn’t have to choose to support the most brutal and extreme Afghani factions, now did they? They chose to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and then the Taliban. They chose to give aid and refuge to both the Taliban and Al-Qaida. They chose to send their own military against Ahmad Shah Massoud, the one Afghani leader who actually wanted something better for the Afghani people.
As long as the U.S. was dependent on the logistical supply chain through Pakistan little could be done about any of this. But that’s coming to an end.
So why in the hell should the U.S. give a penny to Pakistan after they leave the region? They’re not even our ally, but China’s!
A lot of people on this forum want the U.S. to cut ties with Saudi Arabia. There’s at least as good of a case to do so with Pakistan.

I didn't say Pakistan's doings are wholly justified or even necessarily smart (their track record of doing good things for Afghanistan is no better than that of the British). But to treat Pakistan as if it is a hostile actor is oversimplifying things to an insulting degree, given the fact that either way they would have an Afghanistan that would be a uncertain place for them. Additionally, it is an utter oversimplification to say they chose to do X and Y. What's new under the sun? A lot of decisions - choices - are made by states in the belief, correct or otherwise, that it will help their strategic interests. The US has a right to make those kinds of decisions, the Russians do, the Indians and Pakistanis do, etc. And those choices need to be understood in context, in the moment. Far from all these decisions are justified but they are both a normal part of statecraft and not in and of themselves justification for such outrage.

The ISI's decisions are comparable in rationale and context to the actions taken by Chinese states over the centuries to involve themselves in the affairs of so-called barbarians. Afghanistan is a wild, untamed land, a black hole of sorts where money comes in and seems to disappear. It is among the most militarily weak corners of the globe yet among the hardest to govern. Pakistan doesn't have a choice - the Taliban and related groups will always be knocking, just as there always would be nomads menacing or harming China somehow. So they feel that trying to pick winners (so that those winners will have something to owe them hopefully) is a worthy enterprise. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. ISI has no real obligation to put the interests of the people of Afghanistan above the interests of Pakistan or even consider it a strong factor in their decisionmaking. ISI works first and foremost for its interests and secondly for the welfare of Pakistan. The same goes for Indian intelligence agencies and Afghan ones, which probably are all involved in much the same kinds of clandestine activities. The game is innately "dirty". But what's new?

Deaths from terror attacks in Pakistan are declining and have been doing so for years, and it is clear there is some success on that front. Pakistan, much like the US, has been trying to pay down a bill it incurred for the way it saw off the Soviet threat (the greatest triumph in the history of the American-Pakistani relationship thus far). In this context Pakistan is a vital working partner that we need to cultivate, and Pakistan is an important player close to sea lanes (vital for US strategic interests) and Central Asia (an area where we need to try to counter Russian influence). We should wish Pakistan success in reducing, over time, the number of their citizenry whose lives are claimed by terrorism; they would do the same for us if asked.

I don't favor the zeroing out of aid to nations on this basis, aid is a basic thing to give to solidify a working relationship on a given issue, and nations work with each other on various things both military and civilian. Anger and high-and-mighty feelings of superiority makes for ruin in the long term and wastes resources. It reeks of the arrogance that costed us an easy win in Afghanistan, and can only harm the nation in the long run. Pakistan has its own interests, so do we, many of those overlap, but also many do not. And their intelligence agencies do try to help those interests, doing an imperfect but not completely terrible job. So do ours as well. And maintenance of those interests are key for national prosperity and thus the lot of every citizen. Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

The "zero out aid for X and Y and Z" crowd either doesn't know foreign policy well, or is  careless on foreign policy, or both. Thankfully the people actually in charge are not often from their ranks.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah, as long as Pakistan was providing aid and support to the Taliban the 2% chance of things working out was cut in half.

Once we evacuate everyone we should evacuate - as many Afghans as we can - and leave entirely, can we at least cut off all aid to those treacherous Pakistani snakes?

Pakistan's position is more or less delicate management of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations (a good offense is the best defense) through any means it feels are necessary, even if that means getting one's hands messy and doing things that might look hard to justify to an outward observer.
Not that I expected anything besides misinformed views from most Americans on this issue.
Reality tends to be nuanced. Pakistan is in a tough neighborhood. I suggest you read up on the history of the Durand Line and consider the difficulties Pakistan's geography presents.

Hold on there, are you justifying the actions of the Pakistani government as a whole and the ISI in particular in Afghanistan? Because they have indirectly and directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and many, many more Afghanis of all stripes. Those are the actions of a hostile power, not one the U.S. should be giving aid to.
I know damn well about Pakistani geography issues. There were plenty of articles about Pakistani needs for strategic depth versus India as well as the artificial nature of the border with Afghanistan. I can see their desire for a friendly power in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan didn’t have to choose to support the most brutal and extreme Afghani factions, now did they? They chose to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and then the Taliban. They chose to give aid and refuge to both the Taliban and Al-Qaida. They chose to send their own military against Ahmad Shah Massoud, the one Afghani leader who actually wanted something better for the Afghani people.
As long as the U.S. was dependent on the logistical supply chain through Pakistan little could be done about any of this. But that’s coming to an end.
So why in the hell should the U.S. give a penny to Pakistan after they leave the region? They’re not even our ally, but China’s!
A lot of people on this forum want the U.S. to cut ties with Saudi Arabia. There’s at least as good of a case to do so with Pakistan.

I didn't say Pakistan's doings are wholly justified or even necessarily smart (their track record of doing good things for Afghanistan is no better than that of the British). But to treat Pakistan as if it is a hostile actor is oversimplifying things to an insulting degree, given the fact that either way they would have an Afghanistan that would be a uncertain place for them. Additionally, it is an utter oversimplification to say they chose to do X and Y. What's new under the sun? A lot of decisions - choices - are made by states in the belief, correct or otherwise, that it will help their strategic interests. The US has a right to make those kinds of decisions, the Russians do, the Indians and Pakistanis do, etc. And those choices need to be understood in context, in the moment. Far from all these decisions are justified but they are both a normal part of statecraft and not in and of themselves justification for such outrage.

The ISI's decisions are comparable in rationale and context to the actions taken by Chinese states over the centuries to involve themselves in the affairs of so-called barbarians. Afghanistan is a wild, untamed land, a black hole of sorts where money comes in and seems to disappear. It is among the most militarily weak corners of the globe yet among the hardest to govern. Pakistan doesn't have a choice - the Taliban and related groups will always be knocking, just as there always would be nomads menacing or harming China somehow. So they feel that trying to pick winners (so that those winners will have something to owe them hopefully) is a worthy enterprise. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. ISI has no real obligation to put the interests of the people of Afghanistan above the interests of Pakistan or even consider it a strong factor in their decisionmaking. ISI works first and foremost for its interests and secondly for the welfare of Pakistan. The same goes for Indian intelligence agencies and Afghan ones, which probably are all involved in much the same kinds of clandestine activities. The game is innately "dirty". But what's new?

Deaths from terror attacks in Pakistan are declining and have been doing so for years, and it is clear there is some success on that front. Pakistan, much like the US, has been trying to pay down a bill it incurred for the way it saw off the Soviet threat (the greatest triumph in the history of the American-Pakistani relationship thus far). In this context Pakistan is a vital working partner that we need to cultivate, and Pakistan is an important player close to sea lanes (vital for US strategic interests) and Central Asia (an area where we need to try to counter Russian influence). We should wish Pakistan success in reducing, over time, the number of their citizenry whose lives are claimed by terrorism; they would do the same for us if asked.

I don't favor the zeroing out of aid to nations on this basis, aid is a basic thing to give to solidify a working relationship on a given issue, and nations work with each other on various things both military and civilian. Anger and high-and-mighty feelings of superiority makes for ruin in the long term and wastes resources. It reeks of the arrogance that costed us an easy win in Afghanistan, and can only harm the nation in the long run. Pakistan has its own interests, so do we, many of those overlap, but also many do not. And their intelligence agencies do try to help those interests, doing an imperfect but not completely terrible job. So do ours as well. And maintenance of those interests are key for national prosperity and thus the lot of every citizen. Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

The "zero out aid for X and Y and Z" crowd either doesn't know foreign policy well, or is  careless on foreign policy, or both. Thankfully the people actually in charge are not often from their ranks.

In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. has just suffered a major international defeat. A monumental humanitarian crisis is unfolding. And the foreign power most responsible for this is Pakistan. And you want to explain that away as just a normal day in statecraft that the U.S. shouldn’t get too upset about.

I am treating Pakistan as a hostile actor because that is exactly how they have acted. This isn’t some minor kerfluffle about some border post being moved ten feet. This isn’t some case of diplomats dueling with briefcases at dawn over the exact wording of Subparagraph 57-L in Section 66 of the Fourth Appendix of a Mohair Agreement. This is actively assisting in a U.S. strategic defeat.

You keep on talking about how Pakistani interests in Afghanistan explain their actions there. I am not disagreeing with that. I am disagreeing with the idea that the U.S. should continue to treat Pakistan the same way as if nothing has happened.

Gee, “major non-NATO allies” should, perhaps, act as allies? Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

Once the U.S. is fully out of Afghanistan what interests do we have in Pakistan? What interests do we have there that justify continuing to fund a government, military, and intelligence service that hates the U.S. and acts against U.S. interests whenever possible? What is so goddamned important that the very idea of the U.S. doing anything to Pakistan is so opposed by you? That’s what countries do to each other in geopolitics in pursuit of their interests as you have gone on and on about. Why is it okay for Pakistan to act against the United States and not okay for the United States to act against Pakistan? What is driving this double standard of yours?

I am pleased to hear you seem to share my geopolitical philosophy.

That being said I fundamentally disagree with your framing of what has happened and Pakistan's role in what has happened. What has happened is no doubt a humiliation but it's also one that 1) is not really most succinctly described as a defeat and 2) not really most heavily caused by Pakistan. We have the Bush administration most to blame, if we're going to blame any single government, because of the high-and-mighty style in which they handled the Taliban (for example, refusing Mullah Omar's surrender offer) and because they used a playbook that dates back to the British Raj and has failed probably almost every time it has been tried. They also had the bad idea of imposing ultra-centralized government in a place where it was not feasible (due to the central government lacking the reach and resources) and the structure of society (actual governing authority in Afghanistan is in practice highly disparate). Afghanistan has historically been a federal state.

They also distracted themselves with an invasion and occupation in Iraq (allowing the Taliban to recover). Other distractions appeared on the horizon, making it completely impossible to have a politically uncontroversial exit as our hand grew weaker and weaker and the Taliban knew they could simply play the waiting game as the pot boiled. Sure enough, the decaying "national" "government" lost its legitimacy and became the equivalent of a wood-framed house terminally infested with termites. Once the US withdrew, all the Taliban had to do was kick it really hard once, and the whole thing collapsed in on itself, leaving them to fill the power vacuum.

Make no mistake - this was a failed nation-building experiment in a land where it was hard to do that, with bad decisions made from the very start, where maintenance was delayed and partially done by a disinterested quasi-landlord, all resulting to a very predictable failure. This isn't a defeat as much as it is the end of a d**k-waving contest the US decided to stop participating in because it had duties to do elsewhere. There were only 10k troops at the very end anyway. And this defeat is not to be blamed on Pakistan to any major extent. A lot of the blame simply goes to the fact it's Afghanistan we decided to try this nation building thing, and most of the rest falls to poor decisions from American leaders acting on basis of misguided theory. It's not productive to just blame Pakistan for something it really didn't cause anyway. If we refuse to acknowledge our mistakes, even if merely to ourselves, we are likelier to repeat them. We ought to treat what happened here as a learning experience - how NOT to nation-build. If we go back into Afghanistan (and we may need to at some time in the future) and come with the goal of nation-building again, we need to do things differently. But it's not like anyone else who has involved themselves in Afghanistan has learned much from failure, so if we don't change our ways, then we're just joining the "I wasted money and time in Afghanistan" club.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't think there's any reason yet to take Saleh and lil' Massoud (what are we going to call the son of the Lion of Panjshir? The Cub of Panjshir?) all that seriously, let alone as a new Northern Alliance.

Let's see if they survive a few weeks first before we announce that the Northern Alliance has risen from its grave once again.

Even if they do survive a few weeks, that doesn't mean they necessarily will be able to stage an effective insurgency in a sizably large section of the North, and if they can't, then they aren't really deserving of the label "Northern Alliance".
At this point in time the Taliban's decisions will be very important in shaping the course of what happens over the next few months and years. They seem to be handling things more competently than in 1996-2001, that much looks likely. (granted that's a low bar)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

4.) Data is extremely lacking and what little we have from the NRF outlets generally tends to be the same BS and propaganda, which was much less accurate tbh than Pro-TB sources.

Things don't look good for the NRF if they have to basically lie to keep morale up.