You appear to have lost your attitude a bit, so I'll take the...

You appear to have lost your attitude a bit, so I'll take the time to reply.

You're right, Xi will have a crack at deploying BRI to get a foot in the door in Afghanistan, no doubt.

But everyone from Genghis Khan to the British, Russia and now America has tried to turn this fractious lot of warlords into a nation. And my water tells me he'll be just as successful.

This idea of Sovereign Risk is a bit intangible and is the product of a myriad of variables. In our case, principally, we're a good bet because we've become lazy, increasingly under-educated and self absorbed. So long as we get a new flat screen every few years, you can have anything. From Xis' perspective you can call us anything, make threats, hurt some of us however you like; and we'll just order another shipload of Havals. But being weak prostitutes makes us a safe place to do business.

But the dust bowl which is Afghanistan isn't like that, not at all. There'll be hugs and kisses and promises galore - the Taliban (aka Mujaheddin) will act as if they are the head of a coherent, one-voiced nation. But eventually someone will have a hankering for another massacre in Kabuls' soccer stadium. Or maybe a warlord will get the shits with Xi giving another kicking to their downtrodden Rohingyan brothers and lob a few missiles into a newly commissioned copper mine. It's their inherently fractious nature which makes the place the epitome of Sovereign Risk.

Eventually we, that's everyone outside Afghanistan, will just give up and leave them to it.

Look at when we divided up everything after WWII. Putting a pencil line around the Kurds, Turkmens, Sunnis and Shiites and calling it Iraq. The only way we glued it together was by installing a vicious dictator. Take him away and the glue disintegrates. The same with Tito in the Balkans.

But in Afghanistan there IS NO GLUE, everyone's tried to either be the glue or make then be it. Eternal failure.

Xi is in a very vexed position actually, because he shares a border with these idiots. Up until now, he's been able to lend the US money to be the policeman, sitting on his hands in the corner looking insipid. Well not any more, it's largely his problem now and he's welcome to have a crack - but he's a keen student of history apparently and he'll be fully aware that in all likelihood he'll just be adding his name to the list of failures.

So for all those reasons cuprum, even though you're a non-holder, I'm still of the view that even if Afghanistan is the Saudi lithium or the Chinese RE or whatever - that's an aeon from anyone getting ANYTHING out of the ground.

Personally, I'm looking forward with bated breath for Xi to get a bloody nose.