Kashi wrote:No, some of us clearly believe that we have legitimate concerns about both US and China, even if they are outwardly different. Some of use refuse to accept the drivel that "US is India's most important security partner". Reading some of the posts here, I understand the phrase MUTU better than ever.
The presence of US hegemony in Asia is a 'legitimate concern'. The prospect of losing a war against China would warrants a much more severe description.
Tried and failed and as a superpower to boot. China's victory was a lot less ambiguous and geopolitically it was a near peer at the time. Today in contrast, the gulf in power between us is huge.
Wishful thinking. It did not end at the end of the last campaign, it will not end now. If you remember, Robin Raphel was in the mid-90s, the Unocal- Taliban agreement was in 1996 or thereabouts.
The last campaign was about bleeding the Soviets in Afghanistan. This one started with the death of 3000 US citizens, masterminded by a gent found enjoying his retirement in a Pakistani military cantonment. There are parallels to 1980s, but in this case Pakistani proxies have been bleeding the Americans rather than the Soviets.
America will always be involved in Pakistan alongside Allah and Army. Also, they seem to have long term plans to keep some troops stationed in Afghanistan, so there campaign will never end ergo Pakis will continue to leech and continue with their attempts to bleed us with a 1000 cuts..
- April 1979, the first round of sanctions was applied to Pakistan.
- The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in Dec 1979.
- Sanctions were lifted days later.
- The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan completed in Feb 1989.
- Exactly
four months later i.e. June 1989, the US cut off aid to Pakistan.
- 16 months after that i.e Oct 1990, new round of sanctions was imposed on Pakistan.
- Lifted 11 years later, exactly ten days after the events of 11 Sep 2001, as the US campaign in Afghanistan began.
As to the current US footprint in Afghanistan, they're going to scale it back only gradually, to prevent the whole state from melting down post withdrawal a la Iraq, leaving them to explain just what they achieved having invested 15 years, thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. (BTW retention of US troops is something that India has been lobbying pretty hard for, given our significant economic interests in the country.) Afghanistan has relatively low intrinsic strategic worth to the US; a decade from now they will have no incentive to retain anything beyond a token presence, if that.