Having initially warmly embraced the Biden administration, the media is now raking the president over the coals in the wake of America’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan. Britain, America’s erstwhile ally in the “war on terror,” has experienced much the same: as evidenced by rapturous elite reception of the recent intervention of Tony Blair, who called Joe Biden’s decision “imbecilic.”

In an interview with Jacobin’s Luke Savage, writer and author Richard Seymour discusses the British establishment’s crack-up over Afghanistan, its inability to quit Tony Blair, the storied history of liberal justifications for war and empire, and other issues raised in his recent essay “Disaster Liberalism.”