Beijing broods over its arc of anxiety

[FarCenter]

By Peter Lee http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KL04Ad01.html

Beijing will find little cause for joy in United States President Barack Obama's decision to dispatch 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, as outlined in a major policy speech on Tuesday.

Geopolitical logic (and China's interests) would dictate that the West disengage from Afghanistan and the Pashtun brief be placed in the eager if not particularly capable hands of Pakistan.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) would see to it that more tractable assets, such as the Haqqanis and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, would battle the unruly Taliban to a bloody stalemate in Afghanistan's Pashtun regions, decouple the Pakistan Taliban from their Afghan patrons, and restore a semblance of stability to Pakistan's west

Meanwhile, as they have always done, the Afghan Tajiks, Hazaris and Uzbeks would turn to outside aid from some combination of Russia, China, Iran and the United States to contain the Pashtuns and forestall the spread of fundamentalist and al-Qaeda extremist contagion.

China has tried to shape the US debate over Afghanistan, repeatedly making the case for letting nature and anti-Western Pashtun militancy take their course and moving beyond counter-insurgency to reconciliation. As M K Bhadrakumar commented on a think piece by a Chinese defense policy authority, Li Qinggong:

The China Daily article makes several important points. First, it bluntly calls on Washington to forthwith bring the US military operations in Afghanistan to an end. There are no caveats here while making this demand, no alibis. (China maps an end to the Afghan war Asia Times Online, October 2, 2009.)

Clearly, China has lost the debate, perhaps not on the merits of its arguments and despite the heaven-sent justification for the Obama administration to depart Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai's rigging of the presidential election and the subsequent absence of a legitimate, capable and honest government supposedly essential to successful counter-insurgency.

In addition to qualms over abandoning Afghanistan's people to the savage mercies of Taliban theocrats and creating a haven for anti-US extremists, the Obama administration probably calculates that adding a messy collapse in Afghanistan on top of 10%-plus unemployment in the US and the hangover of a brutal recession would spell disaster for the Democrats in the 2010 US congressional elections.

Instead, the United States is hunkering down in Afghanistan and relying on China's rival, India - the only nation, it can be safely said, that views continuation of the Afghan adventure with any enthusiasm - to help keep the lid on things in Afghanistan.

<SNIP> Much more on Afghanistan and regional politics at the link.

[snagglepuss]

1. Interesting. thanks for posting nt