美國敗退阿富汗對港人的啟示

隨著美國總統拜登宣佈美軍全面撤退出阿富汗，美軍在阿富汗20年的軍事佔領落幕。阿富汗進一步鞏固了其“帝國墳場”的鋼鐵稱號。

近代的阿富汗一直飽受戰亂之苦，不是經歷帝國主義入侵便是連綿不斷的內戰。在2001年美國入侵阿富汗之前，阿富汗蓋達組織和塔利班剛剛在阿富汗穩固了政權，國家也進入長期戰後發展的時期。可惜，2001年美國決定入侵阿富汗，以反恐為名，實際則是準備以佔領阿富汗作為牽制伊朗和中國的跳板。阿富汗又再一次陷入戰爭陰霾，成為美國的炮灰。可惜20年過去了，美國成功入侵後在阿富汗不但未能建立一個穩定且強勢的政權，在阿富汗與伊朗和中國接壤的偏遠地區還牢牢的控制在塔利班的手中，阿富汗既不能成為美國進一步入侵伊朗的棋子，更做不到為其扶持的恐怖組織力量東突厥斯坦培養有生力量來分裂中國的新疆。

眼見阿富汗已成雞肋，美國看著白花花的銀子撒進去連個水花也濺不起，還不如直接把錢砸到中國的跟前，直接攤牌更威風。在這種時代背景下，美國認慫了，撤退了。

美國在敗退阿富汗這件事上也是直言不諱，當時入侵阿富汗是為了報仇，既然仇也報了。也用了20年時間證明美國利用阿富汗這個國家一直都搞不出事情來，就是入侵伊朗和把中國新疆分裂出去，那麼阿富汗也就無利用的價值。至於阿富汗的民主與國家建設，美國可沒有責任，純粹就是因為沒有利益就不會有投入。美國對於一個佔領了20年的國家及其人民尚無任何責任和感情，如垃圾般用完則棄。作為在生活在香港的中國人，你為何這麼有自信會認為美國會為了你們的自由民主投入大量的金錢和人力資源在香港搞顏色革命來推翻中國政府支持的港人政權。這是因為他們想扶持建立一個由拿著美國，英國，加拿大，歐洲甚至澳洲護照的僞港人政權與中國中央政府對抗。而作為隱藏在香港的歐美各國的公民，在香港奪權後可以勾結其母國，利用香港與中國越趨緊密的金貿政治關係來衝擊中國的金融體系和政治制度。其實美國還是為了在中國搞事情，讓中國無暇去動搖美國全球霸權的地位。美國作為有利益才有動力的國家，怎麼可能會花白花花的銀兩來幫助別人，要幫的也應該是拿著美國護照的自己人。而那群參與美國一起在香港搞事情的香港居民就恰恰也持有美國護照。人家是有退路的，家在美國，就算事情敗了坐幾年牢，出獄了就可以回母國繼續生活了，沒準還能拿國家榮譽勛章，坐牢也是為了母國奉獻，這是典型的美式為國家榮譽而戰，你看懂了嗎？

如果你是想搞事情的外籍港人，奉勸你盡快走人，香港不是阿富汗可以任美宰割，這裡不適合你們，你們也搞不起事情，《港區國安法》就是把你們送進監獄的法律基礎。如果你是中國香港人，請你看清那幫搞事情香港人的背景和其嘴臉，不要再被他們蒙蔽了，更不要被他們矇騙利用參加違法的恐怖活動只要和筆者一樣踏踏實實的香港這片土地上奮鬥，你會有豐厚回報的。而我們中國可不是阿富汗，可以讓美國隨便欺負。

薛良文 旅遊公司董事總經理
香港建設專業聯會理事

香港建設專業聯會

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

We don’t need the G7

Jeffrey D. Sachs, June 17, 2021

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General. His article is enlightening as follows.

The latest G7 summit was a waste of resources. If it had to be held at all, it should have been conducted online, saving time, logistical costs, and airplane emissions. But, more fundamentally, G7 summits are an anachronism. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.

There was absolutely nothing at the G7 summit that could not have been accomplished much more cheaply, easily, and routinely by Zoom. The most useful diplomatic meeting this year was President Joe Biden’s online meeting with 40 world leaders in April to discuss climate change. Routine online international meetings by politicians, parliamentarians, scientists, and activists are important. They normalize international discussions.

But why should those discussions occur within the G7, which has been superseded by the G20? When the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) began their annual summit meetings in the 1970s, they still dominated the world economy. In 1980, they constituted 51% of world GDP (measured at international prices), whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8%. In 2021, the G7 countries produce a mere 31% of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9%.

The G20, by including China, India, Indonesia, and other large developing countries, represents around 81% of world output, and balances the interests of its high-income and developing economies. It is not perfect, as it leaves out smaller and poorer countries and should add the African Union (AU) as a member, but at least the G20 offers a fruitful format for discussing global topics covering most of the world economy. The annual EU-US Summit can accomplish much that the G7 originally aimed to cover.

The G7 is particularly irrelevant because its leaders don’t deliver on their promises. They like making symbolic statements, not solving problems. Worse, they give the appearance of solving global problems, while really leaving them to fester. This year’s summit was no different.

Consider COVID-19 vaccines. The G7 leaders set the goal of vaccinating at least 60% of the global population. They also pledged to share 870 million doses directly over the next year, presumably meaning enough for 435 million fully immunized individuals (with two doses per person). But 60% of the global population comes to 4.7 billion people, or roughly ten times that number.

The G7 leaders offered no plan for achieving their stated aim of global coverage, and in fact, have not developed one, even though it would not be hard to do. Estimating the monthly production of every COVID-19 vaccine is straightforward, and allocating those doses fairly and efficiently to all countries is entirely feasible.

One reason such a plan has not yet been developed is that the US government so far refuses to sit down with Russian and Chinese leaders to devise such a global allocation. Another reason is that the G7 governments let the vaccine manufacturers negotiate privately and secretly, rather than as part of a global plan. Perhaps a third reason is that the G7 looked at global targets without thinking hard enough about the needs of each recipient country.

Yet another example of the G7’s false promises is climate change. At the latest summit, G7 leaders rightly embraced the goal of global decarbonization by 2050, and called on developing countries to do so as well. Yet, rather than laying out a financing plan to enable developing countries to achieve that target, they reiterated a financial pledge first made in 2009 and never fulfilled. “We reaffirm the collective developed country goal,” they averred, “to jointly mobilize $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.”

It is hard to overstate the cynicism of this oft-repeated pledge. The rich countries missed their own deadline of 2020 for providing the long-promised $100 billion per year – a mere 0.2% of rich countries’ annual GDP. And the promised $100 billion is itself a small fraction of what developing countries need for decarbonization and climate adaptation.

The disconnect between the G7’s soaring aims and meager means is apparent on education as well. Hundreds of millions of children in poor countries lack access to primary and secondary education because their governments don’t have the financial means to provide teachers, classrooms, and supplies. In 2020, UNESCO estimated that the low- and lower-middle-income countries need around $504 billion per year up to 2030 to ensure that all kids complete a secondary education, but have only around $356 billion of their own domestic resources, leaving a financing gap of around $148 billion per year.

So, what does the G7 propose in this year’s communiqué? The leaders propose “a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2.75 billion for the Global Partnership for Education.” These are not serious numbers. They are pulled out of thin air and would leave hundreds of millions of children out of school, despite the world’s firm commitment (enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 4) to universal secondary education. Large-scale solutions are available – such as mobilizing low-interest financing from multilateral development banks – but the G7 leaders didn’t propose such solutions.

The world’s problems are far too urgent to leave to empty posturing and to measures that are a mere token of what is needed to achieve stated ends. If politics were a mere spectator sport, to be judged by which politicians mugged best the cameras, the G7 summit would perhaps have a role to play. Yet we have urgent global needs to meet: ending a pandemic, decarbonizing the energy system, getting kids in school, and achieving the SDGs.

My recommendations: fewer face-to-face meetings, more serious homework to link means and ends, more routine Zoom meetings to discuss what really needs to be done, and greater reliance on the G20 (plus the AU) as the group that can actually follow through. We need Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the table for any true global problem solving.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

There is a paragraph in Chinese:"對於這一經常重複的承諾之蔑視和懷疑，是難以用言語去表達的。富裕國家錯過了它們自己定下的2020年的最後期限，未能提供承諾已久的每年1000億美元，這僅佔富裕國家年GDP的0.2%。而且，這承諾的1000億美元本身，只是發展中國家脫碳和適應氣候變化所需資金的一小部分。七國集團的眼高手低在教育方面也盡顯無遺。.... " The Professor listed exactly the crucial facts  showing clearly that we don't need the G7.

S. L. LI  Engineer
HKFDP