Understanding the Great Game and role of India & Asian stability

[Paul]

We only have a handful of tweets to go by to verify this theory....but I think it will happen

Scripturient
@56Dtweets
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Tashkurgan is Pamiri Nizari majority btw.

Tashkurgan is the part of China where Badakhshan links up to, not a Uyghur majority part. The USA deliberately eased this for the Taliban,removing Turkistan Islamic Party from even the gray list of Terrorists!

US is incredibly cunning!

[Paul]

Other countries are rushing to fill in the vacuum in Afghanistan

https://www.ft.com/content/d1e2f127-d04 ... f716a145c6

The graveyard of empires calls to China
Military presence may accompany the extension of the Belt and Road Initiative to Afghanistan

Afghanistan is not known as the graveyard of empires for nothing. Alexander the Great, the British empire, the Soviet Union and now mighty America, all have been humbled in their attempts to conquer this fierce country. Now China, the world’s nascent superpower, risks falling into the same trap before it has even properly begun its own neo-imperial project.

As America’s longest war draws to a close before the symbolic date of September 11 2021, China’s leaders and foreign policy thinkers are struggling with contradictory impulses. On the one hand, Beijing has always felt the US campaigns in Afghanistan were part of a new “Great Game” intended to encircle, contain and potentially destabilise China, which shares a small strip of border with the country. So America’s final humiliating withdrawal and potential re-establishment of Taliban control in the country is welcomed from that perspective.

On the other hand, the looming power vacuum has the potential to create chaos in a country that could destabilise the entire region. A renewed civil war could attract jihadist forces that are already turning their attention to what several western governments have described as the “genocide” of China’s Muslim Uyghur population just across the border. Beijing is especially worried about Uyghur fighters returning from Syria, where a small number have fought alongside Isis.

Early this month, foreign ministers from China, Afghanistan and Pakistan met to discuss security arrangements following the US pullout from the country. China has also courted the Taliban and has even held out the offer of infrastructure and rebuilding projects to the group. Beijing is hoping to extend its grand Belt and Road infrastructure construction project from its main branch in Pakistan up into Afghanistan and is optimistic this can help provide stability to the war-torn country.

Having witnessed and welcomed America’s overextension in its “forever wars” of the last two decades and with memories of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the last thing China’s leaders want is to become bogged down in their own Afghan quagmire. Beijing considers the US entanglements in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks mostly as a foreign policy distraction that provided a window of opportunity for a more assertive China.

Now the White House has publicly said it is ending the war in part to free up resources to meet the challenge of this rising power. The expectation that Beijing will get sucked into the country may well have played a part in President Biden’s decision to leave.

Beijing’s plan to extend the Belt and Road into Afghanistan is fraught with danger. In most other countries, these projects have been carried out with Chinese loans paying for Chinese workers to build roads, railways, ports and bridges. But thanks in part to the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Chinese contractors have already been targeted in parts of Pakistan. Given the much greater danger in Afghanistan and the political cost for Xi Jinping if workers come home in body bags, it is likely that any Belt and Road project in the country would have to be accompanied by a significant security presence.

Advisers to the Chinese Communist party have already recommended that China send peacekeeping troops to the country under the auspices of the United Nations to protect the “safety and interests” of Chinese people and companies there. Such missions have a habit of spiralling into much deeper engagement. President Xi should heed the lessons of history and avoid the fate of other would-be empires.

[Paul]

In that case why wait for 20 years? This could have been expedited during ombaba’s 8 years. My guess is he was more amenable to such social work. Why wait Cheena to spend $1 trillion cumulative on military before activating Turks? Curious.

This is answered by this

Having witnessed and welcomed America’s overextension in its “forever wars” of the last two decades and with memories of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the last thing China’s leaders want is to become bogged down in their own Afghan quagmire. Beijing considers the US entanglements in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks mostly as a foreign policy distraction that provided a window of opportunity for a more assertive China.

[ramana]

Paul, I don't think XJP will enter the Afghan trap.
They learnt for FSU and moreover, all this is their near abroad and they know the region quite well.

[Paul]

Ramana, I agree that China will not make FSU's mistake willingly. However there will be a vacuum in Afghanistan and some one have to fill it up.

In the 1970s much before Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Zbignew Brezenski NSA for Carter, had identified Central Asia as soft underbelly of FSU and planned to encourage Islamist rebellion there. FSU had no choice but to move into Afghanistan to forestall this threat to their southern borders.

There is an opportunity for the west here and I think they will exploit it.

[Manish_P]

Is that one the reasons (other one obviously to contain India) for the significant cultivation of influence by the Chinese of Pakistan?

Do the Pakistanis possibly think so and are trying desperately to see from whom they can extract the maximum amount?

[Adrija]

Gurulog, some basic questions... appreciate your views:

The Great game was driven essentially by two basic drivers:
1. Search of Mother Russia for warm water ports, and the consequent response by West to block it and choke off Russia (driven by the belief that RU is THE enemy and hence a stranglehold would given them leverage to hold off RU)
2. Since 1911, the shift in UK foreign policy from safeguarding India to safeguarding the SLOCs centered around the MidEast, to ensure continued and uninterrupted flow of oil and ensure price stability (which the US inherited after WWII)

But there are now fundamental changes happening on both fronts- after a generation, the Atlanticist hold on West (largely US) foreign policy is loosening as the WWII generation is retiring, and US has finally woken up that RU is no longer its uber enemy/ has hopefully found a new uber enemy in China

Also, while the petroleum age is not finishing, at least reasonable prospects for its decline are becoming visible as viable alternates emerge

The new Great Game will hence likely be marked by rare earth minerals and nuclear fuel. AND Afghanistan is a critical source for the former

US is throwing in the towel there. China is using Pak as its proxy to ensure a stronghold, while simultaneously trying to make sure that AfPak does not become a source of radical Islamic influence for its restive far West Xinjiang. If Xinjiang slips outs/ becomes restive, China will be faced with trouble on both fronts- SLOCs being dominated by US, and mineral resources supply chain from Central Asia/ Af being subject to Islamic radicalism

So what would be the likely contours which would play out

And what should India be doing- so far, it has been conspicuous by its complete absence in both energy security and access to rare earths (and both are interlinked)

Thoughts?

Apologies for the longish post

[Paul]

Paul, I don't think XJP will enter the Afghan trap.
They learnt for FSU and moreover, all this is their near abroad and they know the region quite well.

Taliban have said that they will not allow Uyghur militiant activity once they take over Afghanistan. So far the Chinese seem to be playing it well.

[RKumar]

Taliban have said that they will not allow Uyghur militiant activity once they take over Afghanistan. So far the Chinese seem to be playing it well.

They will sell their grandma for a penny, their word means null - we have learned this from history. Xi will learn soon.

[ramana]

Sorry, you have not understood what the Great Game is all about. It's still going on.
The great game is to prevent the Eurasian landmass consolidation.
Mackinder proposed that the Eurasian land island will control the world and its Great Britain's interest to prevent that happening.
The Russian reach for a warm water port will enable them to have acquired control of the Eurasian landmass.
The PRC's BRI and CPEC is still a revival of the ancient Han dynasty explored Silk Road in all its route.
It is not about controlling Eurasia.
Yes, trade links will happen along the route. And that will give de facto political control.

[chetak]

Other countries are rushing to fill in the vacuum in Afghanistan

https://www.ft.com/content/d1e2f127-d04 ... f716a145c6

Beijing’s plan to extend the Belt and Road into Afghanistan is fraught with danger. In most other countries, these projects have been carried out with Chinese loans paying for Chinese workers to build roads, railways, ports and bridges. But thanks in part to the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Chinese contractors have already been targeted in parts of Pakistan. Given the much greater danger in Afghanistan and the political cost for Xi Jinping if workers come home in body bags, it is likely that any Belt and Road project in the country would have to be accompanied by a significant security presence.

Advisers to the Chinese Communist party have already recommended that China send peacekeeping troops to the country under the auspices of the United Nations to protect the “safety and interests” of Chinese people and companies there. Such missions have a habit of spiralling into much deeper engagement. President Xi should heed the lessons of history and avoid the fate of other would-be empires.

so, basically, these cheeni guys want the UN to pay them to send cheeni troops into afghanistan to protect cheeni assets and investments.

and in all this while, the cheeni will be into illegal mining, exploitation of afghani resources and plundering afghan wealth.

they are out paki-ing the pakis in the fine art of selling snake oil.

[ramana]

This thread has become very relevant with the Ukraine Crisis.

Mackinder thesis at work.

[SSridhar]

Mackinder thesis at work.

True, ramana.

But, Russia had always to depend on 'heartlands' as their sea ports were largely unfunctional for most part of the year except in Sevastopol or Vladivostok. If the Chinese takeover Vladivostok, which they have been demanding and the Turks rescind the treaty of Montreux, the Russians have a huge problem. Besides, the Russians had a huge land mass to conquer, east, west and south which they did.

On the other hand, the Chinese have taken largely to Spykman's Rimland leading to a rapid expansion of their naval and air assets and a reduction of the infantry.

The geographical features determine the approach.