There was a nice piece in the Atlantic a while back describing how Joe Biden's success is due to his not being a raving visionary ideologue - someone whose strength is to be persuadable but rational, not that of rigid inflexibility and constancy of purpose. He is able to exercise his own good judgement according to the arguments presented : having ideals and a moral compass yes, but not having a unalterable goal before which all contrary facts must give way.
For some time I've had in mind a certain notorious historical figure who I think fits this description rather well. Or at least, a certain historian's interpretation of said figure. Current events have only deepened this analogy of a skilled but deeply imperfect ruler. The historian John Man writes (lightly edited to remove names of people and places) :
He had inherited astonishing managerial skills. He was no intellectual genius, but he had talents that made him one of the greatest CEOs of all time : he was a superb judge of character, entirely without personal prejudice, and had the knack of hiring people who were smarter than he was. He was happy to employ anyone with talent. He could spot organizational problems - totally unprecedented ones caused by the novelty of unfolding events - and then, out of the blue, devise solutions that actually worked.
In some ways, he was the ideal patron of the arts. He had no pretentions of being an expert himself, but knew art was tremendously important, and since he wished to appeal to all his subjects, he encouraged artists without distinction of race or creed. He was thus, almost by default, a force for change.
Leaving aside the superlatives (for no-one at all would claim Biden as anything near so extreme as my chosen figure), and generalising "art" to a more broad-ranging "specialist knowledge", the overall sentiment of this seems fair. Some more direct analogies perhaps also stand up :
Stability depended on more than the raw exercise of power. He was the most powerful man of his day, one of the most powerful of all time; yet, as his actions showed, he knew that his power depended only in part on a flow of authority from the top downwards. It also depended on support flowing from the bottom upwards. Ordinary people had to feel happy and secure, or unrest would fester and spread from below. The foundation of stability was the vast mass of peasant farmers, on whom all depended for food. To look after their interests, he set up a new Office for the Simulation of Agriculture, with eight officials and a team of experts who organised aid, built 58 granaries that could store almost 9,000 tonnes of grain, arranged tax remissions...
At home, he was a rock. Having seen that his country was the key to imperial rule, he needed it to be stable and prosperous, for that would be his foundation for the world rule ordained by Heaven.From this astonishing ambition came something remarkable : not a grim dictatorship, but a revival of much that had vanished from society during the turmoil of the previous century. For a brief moment, about two decades, the whole country underwent something of a renaissance. As a foreigner he would never truly be accepted, but he was indisputably the boss, and it is arguable that the changes he brought about improved the lot of his new subjects. Certainly, there were those who were ready to admit that unity was better than disunity with civil war. His epitaph might say : he tried to be good.
The ruler of the world's most powerful military force attempting to restore normality and dignity after a protracted period of instability, investing heavily in infrastructure projects for the common people and trying to avoid civil strife... there are definite parallels here. As there are with the implication of "he tried to be good". This particular ruler was, like any human being, seriously flawed. He might often exercise good judgement, yet still make profound mistakes.
Traditionally, officials got off (high crimes) lightly. Not under him... then there came the scandal of the grasping and unpopular minister, bringing with it the sudden proof of his poor judgement.
And what really makes the comparison apt is military disaster. For Kublai Khan this came in the utter failure of his invasions of Japan; for Joe Biden it appears to be unfolding in the catastrophe of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Both rulers command unrivalled military might, and both face disasters of their own making. There was no need whatever for Kublai to invade Japan, and, perhaps, there is no need for the allied withdrawal from Afghanistan. The question of how much this should undermine confidence in the rulers is a difficult one. Kublai did mainly exercise good judgement as a ruler (judging him by the standards of his own time and people); military disaster does not undermine that. Will people eventually say the same of Biden ?
For that we await the judgement of history. When Man's quotations on stability and renaissance are applied not to Biden's own country but Afghanistan, the irony becomes razor sharp. After twenty years of relative success, any achievements won appear to be have been absolutely and reprehensibly surrendered.
On Afghanistan itself I do not feel adequate to saying other than that the humanitarian consequences will be dire indeed. On the choices of Western rulers, however, more can be said immediately. We all of us treat foreign affairs as optional extras; this is the fault of us the public but also the media. If the rapid fall was foreseen by anyone (as it surely was) then this was not widely communicated. As usual, foreign events are glossed over on the news so that only the most pro-actively interested know anything much about them. I am vaguely aware that we have some involvement there still, but as to how successful any efforts at statecraft have been, still less the strategic military situation, I know hardly anything - because no-one has told me anything.
Yet I should have some right to this stupid ignorance. I should have the right to expect some base level of competence from the rulers : to assume that a worst-case scenario for withdrawal would mean we have to re-enter some level of military involvement some time in the future. That it should lead to a total collapse of government and an instant takeover by a barbarous regime, that Afghanistan should descend into Gilead should not be something I, let alone the Afghan people, should ever dare to contemplate.
At least Kublai's failure, though due to his vainglorious hubris, affected only his own military and left the Japanese practically unscathed. The same - almost certainly - will not be said of Biden's decision, which, plausibly, will have profound effects on Afghanistan and the world for years to come. Whatever other virtues Biden might have, on this particular issue he seems to me to have made exactly the wrong choice.
