This seems like a dangerous opportunity for a China-U.S. confrontation.
Chinese mining companies have been quietly performing exploratory studies in the north for the past few years. It was the Chinese activity that actually tipped us off that there could be significant copper and lithium deposits.
The Afghan people have repelled every major imperial power including Alexander the Great, the Persian Saffavids, Ghengis Khan, the Moghul Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, and the United Soviet Socialist Republics. As a result, Afghanistan is one of the last remaining pieces of land on the planet that has never been properly surveyed, mapped, or mined.
The ground is untouched. The nation borders China, which has an almost insatiable appetite for minerals. The United States has over one hundred thousand troops present. It is a recipe for a disaster of the highest order.
It is a member of the WTO and is the world's second
largest trading power behind the US with a total
international trade of US$2.21 trillion – US$1.20
trillion in exports (#1) and US$1.01 trillion in imports (#2).
There's just way too much to lose over a trillion bucks (especially since they have 1.6 trillion in US Securities)
From the minerals described, it would actually give Afghanistan the potential to be a haven for technology manufacture, which can easily be stepped into full out tech-based economy.
However non-traditional warfare like the Cold War is similarly completely out of the question. The Cold War dragged on for so long because the USA and USSR were economically independent of each other, they both had mega-quantities of resources and production in their respective regions of control. They couldn't fight outright, but they had enough resources to supply everyone else to do the fighting.
Yet the US-Chinese economies are so intrinsically connected that a war would cause immediate trade embargoes between the countries and would cause an all-out collapse of the respective economies. US desperately relies on Chinese manufacturing for everything from what we wipe our arses with to our knives, computers and even a large part of our ship production (civilian and military production both reside squarely within China's region of control). Similarly China relies wholly on US and European dollars to even have a sustainable economy.
We're not talking $1 trillion in cold hard cash likes some uber-lottery, we're talking a likely payout over the next 50-100+ years. It would be more advantageous for China and the US to team up to extract the resources than to even think about arguing over them.
Review the precedent. The argument that economic linkage would prevent warfare was first raised prior to World War I. Global and Continental trade failed to prevent proxy conflict in Africa, the Baltics, and all out conflict across all of Europe. Britain and Germany had a level of trade and codependent exchange far greater that of modern day China and the United States.
Not to mention that the United States and China have fought and are continuing to fight proxy conflict today in the Sudan, northern India, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, and North Korea.
Your theory has been tested. It is false.
To assume that the United States and China simply cannot engage in warfare is a dangerous delusion. And I assure you, it is not a delusion shared by the Chinese government.
The U.S. deployment wasn’t intended to protect the Chinese investment - the largest in Afghanistan’s history - but to strangle Taliban infiltration into the capital of Kabul. But if the mission provides the security that a project to revive Afghanistan’s economy needs, the synergy will be welcome.
http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/03/08/chinas-thirst-...
We are looking at a repeat of the US-Soviet conflict, replayed in Central Asia, with stakes unimaginably high.
The mineral deposits are significant in that they are a major catalyst, forcing events to happen over years rather than decades. The minerals will pull in corporations controlled directly by the Chinese state, and our own psuedo-public conglomerates such as Betchel and Halliburton. As a rule, soldiers follow merchants. It is a potentially dangerous situation that is strongly foreshadowed by historical precedent.
There is a reason nearly all Eurasian empires of the past two millennia have found themselves fighting in the Afghan hills.
Afghanistan is not some simple backwater. It sits astride the only viable land passes between Europe, China, and India. It is the natural crossroads of the world, the only unsecured military path into the Punjab, and a major potential trade route between three billion consumers.
Afghanistan is unique because it could be phenomenally wealthy, but as a result, it is simply too dangerous for any one power to allow a rival to control it. The Brits invaded to keep it away from the Russians. The United States sponsered insurgents to keep it away from the Soviets.
The most stable outcome is for no one to possess it, and for the country to remain in ruin. But from time to time, a Great Power tries to seize the area, drawing a response from the other powers. That time may be again be approaching.
That struck me as the most important comment regarding this article.
The Taliban seem to have the organizational resources to rule a country. Wouldn't a Taliban ascendancy in Afghanistan also be a "stable" outcome in the short term? (There would be concern that their ideology would prevent stability in the long term, given the existence of Israel and secular western industrial powers.)
I wonder how much of the U.S.'s war expenses are going to more or less clear the way for Chinese commercial (/state) interests. But I'm not privy to the inside information needed for an informed analysis.
And from another perspective, the war's been fought with money borrowed from China (directly or indirectly), so maybe in a way they're just getting what they paid for (except, the U.S. is still on the hook for repayment).
1. The most dangerous threat to the United States is not the continued rise of China.
2 .The most dangerous threats to American security are non-state actors, particularly terrorist and insurgent networks.
3. It is only a matter of time before these non-state actors develop or steal a nuclear device.
4. The most powerful and organized non-state actors are terrorist networks in Islamic regions.
5.These networks currently target the United States, our dependent nations in Europe, and our outpost in Israel.
6. These networks cannot be destroyed using existing United States and allied intelligence assets.
7. Therefore, the logical alternative is to retarget Islamic anger against a rival nation.
8. Islamic anger is stoked primarily by the United States military presence in the Near East and Central Asia.
9. The United States military positions in this region are overextended and unsustainable.
10. Military actors tend to follow commercial interests.
11. Therefor, the proper strategy is for the United States to execute a controlled retreat to fallback positions within these regions, while simultaneously encouraging Chinese investment.
As we stand down, the Chinese will rush to fill the breach. We can continue to hold the non-negotiable assets in the Near East, while allowing China to take Central Asia.
Simultaneously, the United States launches a concerted psyops campaign across the Muslim world portraying Chinese atrocities against their Islamic subjects in Xinjiang.
The end result is that Muslim anger is partially redirected against China, thus lessening the danger to United States interests, and giving the People's Republic a strong incentive to join us as equal partners in the fight against global terrorism.
They figure, let the US quell the beast, then go in and make deals with whatever Afghani government is in power at the moment the US leaves. China doesn't nation-build, it makes deals; which makes it a bit of an aloof superpower.
The Taliban (on the world stage) is relatively innocuous currently compared to what they could become if they had the backing of China. Of course, aiding an unstable militant group would be risky but, if there's enough money involved, it could happen. (It's not like the CIA hasn't tried the same thing numerous times in the past.)
I think worst case scenario is that we could see a completely Taliban-operated Afghanistan that is heavily backed by China, enough so that China has a controlling interest (so to speak) in Afghanistan's affairs. If Afghanistan were to become a pseudo-vassal state, we could see a US backed Iraq or Israel come into some kind of confrontation with the state, although at that scale we get back to problems presented by nuclear war.
If China underbids us and we're unable to leverage state power or anything of that nature, I'm sure we'll just lick our wounds and give up. Anything else would be really, really stupid.