China's strategy in Afghanistan.

A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Playing devil's advocate, let's say the original US plan had succeeded.

The corrupt Afghan government supported by the US lingers on, a civil war ensures and the Taliban finally win after 2 years. The best case US intelligence analysis presented to Biden was 3 years if I recall correctly.

In that time, Afghanistan becomes Syria 2.0, harbouring ISIS and the Taliban become even more extreme, attacking China and the Shia Muslims.

That would inevitably drag in the neighbouring countries to support warring proxies, like we saw in Syria. And it would be Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia mainly - which suits the USA fine.

From the US perspective, they want China to be sucked into Afghanistan like the USA.

Again, let's say this did happen.

I reckon the only path to success would be mass internment and relocation of the Taliban / Pashtuns and the creation of a surveillance state.

Such a de-radicalisation programme would look similar to the Xinjiang re-education model, although it would have to be 10x larger and much more comprehensive.

In other words a vast (but necessary?) neo-colonial project. I think it would be doable, but would require vast amounts of Chinese money and attention.

But at the end, would you have a tolerant moderate Islamic society?

Anyway, this is all hypothetical musing, because reality hasn't followed US diktats.
 
sheogorath

sheogorath

Major
Registered Member
supersnoop said:
It absolutely was 100% focused on securing America and crushing terrorism.
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That wasn't really the aim behind the Afghan war as evidenced by the fact they strung Iraq along into the conflict despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism anywhere and that despite being warned that dismantling the Ba'athist hierarchy would result in an increase of insurgency and terrorism in the area, they still did so and that's how we ended up with ISIS a few years later.

They were also supporting terrorist organizations in Colombia, in the mean time.


Just look at all the compromises W. Bush made, rapprochement with Gadaffi, engagement with Assad, turning a blind eye to Dagestan and Chechnya, helping suppress ETIM.
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Those "compromises" had more to do with making sure those government didn't go taking advantage of the situation to make matters more complicated for the US in offering support for the Insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also offered plausible deniability when said conflicts and radicalization eventually spilled over to Syria, Russia and Libya, which what eventually happened, because while publicy they did al that, the State Deparment and the CIA were still funding and proping up the not-so-militant parts of the opposition in those countries, including the whole East Turkestan organizations.

Remember than one of the current main "voices" of the genocide narrative, Rushan Abbas, worked for Bush in Guantanamo.

The change with Obama and Hillary is that they were far more warhawk-ish they didn't want to keep pretending, and they also realized their main advesary was actually going to be China sooner than they expected and that they didn't really have any leverage over the Chinese government, so they started the whole "Pivot to Asia" bullshit.
 
R

Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
AndrewS said:
Yes, it would have been better if the US had stayed in Afghanistan for longer.



This assumes that the Taliban don't resume or support attacks on the US.
And that there is no long-term impact on how other countries view their alliance with the USA.

You can bet that China is telling Taiwan that they will abandoned by the USA.
The question becomes, is the US willing to fight China in a nuclear war over Taiwan?
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Taliban will no doubt resume extensive support terrorism in the region, inside Afghanistan, in Pakistan, also in former Soviet stans. They may sponsor targeted assassinations of outspoken afghan expatriates. They will also build relationships with other terrorist groups in the region, including inside western China. But I think they will likely not be seen to be undeniably directly responsible for attacks on the US, Europe, or China. This is consistent with the fact they have not been directly responsible gor attacks in the US, Europe, and China before 2001.
 
S

supersnoop

Major
Registered Member
Richard Santos said:
The initial entry into Afghanistan might have superficially conformed to what might be expected if crushing terrorism was the main aim, But in retrospect it is clear even at that time the Bush Administration was already opportunistically thinking of terrorism in terms of the cover and opportunity it provided for America to rampage through the Middle East reshaping it to facilitate direct American dominion over the middle of Euroasia.
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sheogorath said:
That wasn't really the aim behind the Afghan war as evidenced by the fact they strung Iraq along into the conflict despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism anywhere and that despite being warned that dismantling the Ba'athist hierarchy would result in an increase of insurgency and terrorism in the area, they still did so and that's how we ended up with ISIS a few years later.

They were also supporting terrorist organizations in Colombia, in the mean time.



Those "compromises" had more to do with making sure those government didn't go taking advantage of the situation to make matters more complicated for the US in offering support for the Insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also offered plausible deniability when said conflicts and radicalization eventually spilled over to Syria, Russia and Libya, which what eventually happened, because while publicy they did al that, the State Deparment and the CIA were still funding and proping up the not-so-militant parts of the opposition in those countries, including the whole East Turkestan organizations.

Remember than one of the current main "voices" of the genocide narrative, Rushan Abbas, worked for Bush in Guantanamo.

The change with Obama and Hillary is that they were far more warhawk-ish they didn't want to keep pretending, and they also realized their main advesary was actually going to be China sooner than they expected and that they didn't really have any leverage over the Chinese government, so they started the whole "Pivot to Asia" bullshit.
Click to expand...

Of course I wouldn't argue that Afghanistan and fighting terrorism provided a convenient pretext to further other aims, but 9/11 was the most psychologically devastating attack on American soil in modern history. Definitely getting back at terrorists was the main objective. In fact, this current chaos shows how little they had thought out the plans beyond getting Bin Laden.

Those compromises weren't just so other countries wouldn't interfere, they also essentially acted as an "outsourcing" of counterterrorism. Let Assad do his thing, let Gadaffi do his thing, let the Chinese and Russians do their things, and the Islamic terrorists will have their hands full. Especially with what they were planning in Iraq.

Of course the collapse of the Ba'ath government did give rise to greater insurgency, but ISIS did not really gain steam until Obama. We basically agree on what Obama and Hillary were doing.

As far as the two-faced dealings, that is just realpolitik. Every country does this. China and Russia says they have a good relationship, but Russia also supports India. China says they are helping the Cambodian government, but is the greatest benefactor to the ethnic rebels, to the point where their leaders are speaking Putonghua. The fact that Rushan Abbas is being a mouthpiece now, doesn't change the fact that she was most likely helping torture prisoners at the time before.
 
Bellum_Romanum

Bellum_Romanum

Brigadier
Registered Member
Just want deflate this propaganda talk that has seeped into this discussion lately that the U.S. intentions and goals were all about Human rights, women's rights or the even more ridiculous gay rights are just plain old bull.

Here is Maj. Danny Sjursen, Iraq War and Afghanistan War veteran, military strategist, Historian, West Point History professor debunking these nonsense

 
Hendrik_2000

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
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Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
Hendrik_2000 said:
That is the problem with US approach in Afghanistan using military to solve problem due to poverty and lack of development, ignorance. No way to win the heart and mind of the people. And they wonder it collapse so fast What would happened if they use those money for development instead like China did in Tibet

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Did someone mention development?

FB_IMG_1629290916358.jpg
 
R

Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
supersnoop said:
Of course I wouldn't argue that Afghanistan and fighting terrorism provided a convenient pretext to further other aims, but 9/11 was the most psychologically devastating attack on American soil in modern history. Definitely getting back at terrorists was the main objective. In fact, this current chaos shows how little they had thought out the plans beyond getting Bin Laden.

Those compromises weren't just so other countries wouldn't interfere, they also essentially acted as an "outsourcing" of counterterrorism. Let Assad do his thing, let Gadaffi do his thing, let the Chinese and Russians do their things, and the Islamic terrorists will have their hands full. Especially with what they were planning in Iraq.

Of course the collapse of the Ba'ath government did give rise to greater insurgency, but ISIS did not really gain steam until Obama. We basically agree on what Obama and Hillary were doing.

As far as the two-faced dealings, that is just realpolitik. Every country does this. China and Russia says they have a good relationship, but Russia also supports India. China says they are helping the Cambodian government, but is the greatest benefactor to the ethnic rebels, to the point where their leaders are speaking Putonghua. The fact that Rushan Abbas is being a mouthpiece now, doesn't change the fact that she was most likely helping torture prisoners at the time before.
Click to expand...
getting back at the terrorists was absolutely not the main objective. Being seen getting back at the terrorist was of course politically necessary. But the psychological impact of the terrorist attack in NYC and DC was ultimately leverage to provid an extraordinary and unmissable opportunity for the neoconservatives to try and realize what had up to that time been a pie in the sky dream due to the continued momentum of internationalist outlook and multinational mutural security institution built during the cold war. That dream was to leverage the overwhelming military power that the US developed during the cold war to forcibly overthrow regimes considered to be obstacles to permanent american hegemony in Euroasia in the post cold war world. 9/11 was used to run roughshod over those tradition multinational mutural security institutions and pretend unilateralist american hegemony was the most internationalist thing of all.

Attainment of the dream to excert anerican military dominion across the middle east was actually if briefly within reach, if administration did not also fuck up so badly by being so greedy as to impose constraints on the effort designed to maximize the domestic political advantage for the republican party.
 
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