Plus it’s pretty clear that the Afghan Government didn’t have the military capacity to do what the US wanted. After all, it took the combined might of the west ten years to ferret out Osama.

People keep saying that, but I I don’t think it’s obvious at all.

Keep in mind we’re not talking about some two bit South American country reliant on imports - we’re talking about a country with excellent STEM educational infrastructure, an enormous manufacturing base and a rock solid services sector that isn’t constrained by a lack of FDI.

In fact, there’s a case to be made that western sanctions are a medium and long term benefit to Russia because they’ve given local manufacturers a chance to occupy the ecological niches left by the dominant (and default) western brands. Not only that, Russian businesses get to take over local factories sold for cents on the dollar by the retreating western brands, and the surplus generated by their output is now staying in Russia rather than being repatriated westward. Then there’s China for everything else.

There’s a scary unspoken doubt lurking in the back of every economic policy maker in the west: what if it turns out that the western system is no longer essential to the world? How does that change global economic behaviour??

I think the consensus now is that the sanctions have failed. Turns out that Russia is self-sufficient in all the daily needs of its citizens, its businesses import/export via China and India for everything else, its banking system has proven to be bullet proof and its RBL credit markets look to be sufficiently liquid to finance the requirements of domestic commerce. As for wartime production causing inflation, turns out that having a state controlled MIC and mothballed soviet era production lines is a really good way to procure cheap weapons.