The rumpus over the remarks in Davos by US President Donald Trump, in which he belittled the contribution of America’s Nato allies to the war effort in Afghanistan, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, if only to season the hard facts. According to Google/AI, as a proportion of their national populations, the UK forces in Afghanistan lost as many lives as the Americans. Expressed as a percentage of the population of each country there is hardly any difference: 0.00066% vs 0.00071%.
This suggests the allied forces were standing shoulder to shoulder and were all pulling their weight in fighting the war, contrary to what was asserted by Trump in Davos, who clearly had not done the maths. Expressed as a percentage of armed forces deployed, the loss of life in combat was not indicative of work shyness on either side of the pond, with Brits edging Yanks by a miniscule percentage of troops deployed in casualties suffered: 0.305% vs 0.302%. That Trump has rowed back from his Davos remarks indicates that his advisers have belatedly done the calculations summarised above.
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