March 14, 2009 ... AfPakistan.

Much has been made of the impressive growth of the Chinese economy, including forecasts that it will be economy number one, in not too short a time. This is hardly unlikely, given that China has been able to simply leapfrog its way to a high level of already developed technology, and has a population more than half as big again as the US and EU combined. It is also the case that the US is two-and-a-half times the land area of the EU, yet has two-thirds the population of the EU.

As is more than well documented, the US developed out of an influx of immigration, which had chosen to relocate from lands all over the world, in order to enjoy a quality of life otherwise impossible. Contemporary policy is that the US must export development and trade in consort with the prevailing ideological doctrine. As of today, this is the control of Eurasia, via significant regional actors and their immediate satellite-states for the purposes of geopolitical outcomes favourable to the US and to maintain control of natural resources.

However, this is economically, legally and morally unsustainable for the US. Therefore, the US would be much better engaged in disengaging from trying to create a 'Central Asian Valhalla' in AfPakistan and divert its attention towards carefully selecting the smartest and most western-centric AfPaks, and offering them the choice to relocate to the US, where there is a no shortage of land of a similar quality to that from where they exited, and would be a direct benefit to the US economy.

As for AfPakistan and the entire Eurasian project, that should be left for China to take charge of. Which is a sound policy, given that China is very much a workshop to the region and west, and it makes little sense for the US to be in conflict with China over the resources best acquired directly by China, with US investment as a way to more fully capitalize on such resources.

This would also require the US to stop bailing out redundant lines of production, such as General Motors, so as to be able to more properly capitalize new lines of productive activity, be able to retrain and employ the skilled labour released, and the new immigrants from AfPakistan, and have output of production which will expand trading opportunities.

It would also be helpful to press on with the NAFTA project to make better use of the pool of labour in Mexico and the natural resources of Canada, so as to generate a greater, combined economy.