Brian M Downing
The Trump administration is concerned about China’s ascendance in world affairs, often at US expense. Its economy will surpass the US’s in a decade or so. Military spending has increased, especially in naval and air might. China’s territorial claims and fortified artificial islands are well known. Beijing’s efforts to control world commodities is less well known, but no less ominous.
China’s leadership is heady. It believes that it’s restoring China to its rightful place as center of the world – the Celestial Empire of emperors and literati. This entails regaining territory lost in periods of weakness, righting past injustices, and reestablishing itself as the preeminent political, economic, and military power.
Previous administrations have noted China’s rising power but done little to counter it. The present administration is seeking to weaken China’s economic growth, increase regional military cooperation, and detach N Korea from the Chinese sphere. The president’s comity with Russia, puzzling if not alarming to most, may be setting the stage for less agreement between Moscow and Beijing.
The US can saddle China with a host of problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia. It will not require military force, economic pressure, tough talk, sanctions, or lengthy diplomatic maneuvering. It only requires the US to withdraw from its protracted, costly, and futile effort in Afghanistan.
China’s position
Since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001-02, China has invested heavily in Afghanistan’s economic future. Soviet-era geological surveys indicated vast mineralogical wealth and once the smoke cleared, China was quick to get in. It bought the rights to oil, iron, copper, and rare earth assets and built infrastructure to exploit them. Railroads run south to Pakistani ports, west to Iranian ports, and north then east into China itself. Though not all mines are operating at optimal levels, China wants its investments to pay off.
China controls much of the Afghan economy. US troops protect those investments.
Beijing’s control of Afghanistan’s natural resources came chiefly through deals with the accommodating political leadership in Kabul. China has contributed to the government’s corruption and lack of accountability to people in the provinces. This in turn has played an important role in disaffection with Kabul and the rising insurgency against it. Beijing, however, is positioned to make deals with local Taliban commanders who will grant safe passage along export routes in the south and east.
China’s allies clandestinely support the insurgency with arms and money. Pakistan has aided the Taliban since their emergence in the chaos after the Soviet pullout in 1988. Iran gave assistance amid talk of US strikes on its nuclear facilities. Assistance has returned. Russia too is supporting the Taliban, despite their affinities with Islamists along Russia’s southern periphery. Moscow sees the insurgents as a likely winner, at least in Afghanistan’s south, and as a potential partner against more internationalist Islamist groups such as ISIL.
Whatever progress the US may bring about can be quickly and cheaply negated by Russian, Iranian, and Pakistani countermeasures. All of them want to bleed the US.
Playing the Afghan card
The war is unwinnable. Counterinsurgency has failed, as have several troops surges, the most recent of which is underway. It’s all the more futile now that Russia and Iran have joined Pakistan in aiding the Taliban. Washington can end the waste of GIs and money by withdrawing.
China already controls Afghanistan’s economy (sans opium); it will have to assume the burden of the country’s security. Training, arming, and advising the Afghan National Army and related police and intelligence agencies will be in Beijing’s hands. China may one day have to send training missions, battalion-level advisers, fighter aircraft, and perhaps even ground troops. The nation, after all, has a lot at stake.
Beijing will find itself more directly involved in the global generational conflict with Islamism. It’s already fighting a low-level war against the Uighur population in its western Xinjiang province, nominally an autonomous region. The movement is not especially religious at present but Beijing’s heavy-handedness is making it one – and an international Islamist cause as well. Uighur fighters are serving with al Qaeda and ISIL in both the Middle East and in Afghanistan. Islamist attacks may shift from the West to China.
Beijing is already considering a military base in the Wakhan Corridor, the narrow strip of territory improbably connecting eastern Afghanistan with western China. Beijing fears the Corridor is becoming an infiltration route for Uighurs who’ve learned the ways of war in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and who now wish to practice them in Xinjiang.
Taking up the burden of Afghanistan will put China at odds with its Russian and Iranian allies. Their aid to the Taliban may come to a halt once the US leaves, but disputes will persist and worsen over responsibilities and costs of holding up the Kabul regime and sharing the revenue from the Afghan resource bonanza.
The most vexing burden will be dealing with the duplicitous generals of Pakistan. Beijing will find that getting the generals to rein in the Taliban is impossible, as will be getting them to break with more internationalist forces such as al Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba, which are ensconced along the Af-Pak frontier.
China will be saddled with the unenviable task of holding Pakistan together. The multi-ethnic country is plagued by overpopulation, corrupt politicians, inept generals, and rising separatist movements in Pashtun and Baloch regions. Chinese personnel are already targeted by Baloch separatists who resent their growing presence in resource-rich but destitute western Pakistan.
Beijing will learn that its ascent to world power is not the exhilarating, inevitable restoration of past glory that it now seems to be. The US can help China learn this lesson by better assessing its strategic positions and leaving Afghanistan.
Copyright 2018 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks to Susan Ganosellis.