Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was excited to hear about it.
I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling.
Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me.
I don't think it's fair to say that "everybody else" ignored Afghanistan until 2001. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was one of the more important events of the Cold War and was widely watched by the world.
Some of us became interested in Afghanistan back in '79, when the Soviets invaded, and President Carter (remember him?) re-instated draft registration. Seemed pretty important at the time, but seems to be forgotten now...
> To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me.
How about educating the population, improving the infrastructure and so on? Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine.
> Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine
Really? Who? Japan that's who ... and everybody marvels about how the heck they managed it. Who else? Not fair saying any country that had colonies once, even if they no longer do, as they got their "jump start" from the resources of their colonies.
What country has actually succeeded without natural resources? Keep in mind that natural resources aren't just minerals. They may be geographic circumstance, such as "the only land route between X and Y", or ocean access, or "the shortest route between A and P", etc.
It's very fashionable to say that you can get by on brains alone, but it turns out that more is generally required.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Luxembourg, Mallorca, and so on.
The colonies thing is sort of dodging the question. How did England end up with India as a colony, or Belgium with the Congo? They had great military strength, grounded in their technological edge, despite being poorer in natural resources than India and the Congo. But that same technological edge can be used today to trade for resources instead of taking them by brute force — or, as Germany showed during WWI and South Africa showed during the sanctions, to get by with less natural resources.
They had great military strength, grounded in their technological edge, despite being poorer in natural resources than India and the Congo.
India and the Congo weren't really countries when the Europeans showed up: what we now think of as those countries had vast collections of tribes more than anything else. They hadn't (and to some extent still haven't) undergone the unification that many European countries were undergoing or had undergone when colonization started.
Even England had problems with Scotland and Wales up until relatively recently, and problems with Ireland up until about ten years ago.
Are you extrapolating that the key was not the technological edge, but strong central government? I'm not persuaded.
(a) Some of the colonial powers were small tribes or collections of tribes themselves. England is one example, as you say, but Belgium and Portugal are surely the poster children for this. Spain is still a vast collection of tribes more than anything else.
(b) Some of the colonized regions had strong central government, notably the Inka empire Tawantinsuyu.
(c) Forms of strong central government have existed in many times and places in the past (Carthage, the Roman Empire, arguably the Roman Catholic Church before Westphalia, ancient Egypt, Axum, China at some periods, Tawantinsuyu, the Maya empire) without kicking off an industrial revolution. Indeed, the argument has often been made that it was precisely Europe's lack of strong central government, together with the current state of philosophy, that permitted the Industrial Revolution to begin.
Korea as a whole was a nation for over two thousand years; 99% of the population on the peninsula is of Korean ethnicity.
After the war, citizens of South Korea volunteered, for no pay, to rebuild infrastructure (roads, factories).
From the 60s through the 80s, there was one singular goal, namely, building the nation and becoming a prosperous society.
I think that kind of scenario is a little harder to reproduce in the more heterogenous parts of the world. How do you propose getting opposing ethnicities in other countries to pull together like that?
I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling.
Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me.