Afghanistan: the nightmare continues

S P SETH

Things are becoming murkier than usual as the US and its allies are in the process withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan by end of next year. The proposed US-Taliban talks in Qatar collapsed even before they started because President Hamid Karzai objected to the look of the Taliban office there with its official flag. In its bid for direct talks with the Taliban in Qatar, the US appeared to be bypassing the Afghan government. President Karzai wanted talks to be held in Afghanistan, with his government the centerpiece of negotiations. He, therefore, opposed the talks and the format adopted, and threatened to abort the negotiations with the US about a bilateral security pact post-2014.

According to media reports, a subsequent video-conference between Karzai and Obama didn’t go well, causing a serious dent in their personal chemistry. The US is, therefore, said to be considering an early and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is not quite clear if this is a serious proposition or a political ploy on the part of the Obama administration to put pressure on Karzai. Whatever the case, the Obama administration appears quite annoyed with Karzai.

With Afghan elections due next year, and Karzai constitutionally barred from running for a third term, he should essentially be lame duck. But it is difficult to visualize a post-Karzai Afghanistan, as the Americans invested so much of their strategy and hope in him and the people around him.  And now that they seem so keen to get out of Afghanistan they are no longer squeamish about dealing directly with the Taliban, without the usual pre-conditions of renunciation of violence, acceptance of the Afghan constitution and severing links with the al Qaeda.

Not surprisingly, Karzai is feeling abandoned in some ways. In its bid to hold talks with the Taliban, the US hopes to ease the process of its troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gone are the days, it would appear, when the Karzai administration was   the front and centre of any US strategy to deal with Afghanistan. For the time being, though, President Karzai has thrown a spanner into the works, so to say, to become the focus of US attention. But indications so far are that it has further annoyed the US. Frankly, the US is in a hurry as its withdrawal schedule is approaching and they have to work out some arrangement with the Taliban to avoid a disaster like that faced by the retreating British troops in the 19^th century.

At this point, it might be worthwhile to consider why things have gone so badly for the US Afghan policy? A recent book, “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat” by Vali Nasr, throws some light on it. Nasr was a US state department insider at one time as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He examines this in a chapter entitled, “Who Lost Pakistan?” In reviewing Nasr’s book in the New York Review of Books, Steve Coll says that Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, had a different approach on the Pakistan/Afghan issue to the mainstream view in the State Department. He was for bolstering up Pakistan through a large and ambitious aid program, like Marshall Plan, and change its “strategic calculus” of covertly supporting and sheltering Taliban as an instrument of political influence in Afghanistan, partly to thwart India. Holbrooke and Nasr felt that this was a better bet than the surge into Afghanistan. In other words, the solution to Afghanistan lay through Pakistan and investment in its prosperity.

Whether or not Holbrook was right or wrong is beside the point. The US went for the surge and it failed. The idea behind the surge was to put the US in a position of strength through some military gains on the ground to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. As this didn’t happen  there is now an element of hurry in the US to negotiate with the Taliban. to facilitate a relatively peaceful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the Karzai government is worried about being sidelined.

The real problem with the US foreign policy, in Afghanistan as elsewhere, has been to see issues through black or white lens of a US-defined strategic/moral imperative. George Bush’s categorization of Iran, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and North Korea as an “axis of evil”, is a case in point. It was the same with the threat from communism throughout the Cold War period. Such simplified categorization makes it easier to sell even a dubious policy domestically and with allied countries. And when that country is a superpower, as the US has been for much of the post-war period, chances of having much of the world on its side and having its way are pretty good; though there are exceptions as in the case of the Vietnam war where even total weapons’ superiority didn’t work.

However, if the American power is in retreat, as the title of Vali Nasr’s book suggests, it can create serious problems as it is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Take, for instance, the Middle East. According to Nasr, “If there is any American strategy at play in the Middle East these days it can be summed up as follows: Keep Egypt from getting worse, contain Iran, rely on Turkey, and build up the diplomatic and military capabilities of the Persian Gulf monarchies…” In other words, ad hocism is the order of the day.

But in the case of military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US is keen to see it happen in an orderly way. And for that to happen, some sort of cooperation with the Taliban will be necessary. But the Taliban are unlikely to oblige if they will be treated as a sideshow. On the other hand, if they come to occupy the centre stage, the Karzai government will create difficulties as they did with the planned US-Taliban talks in Qatar. And having invested so much in the Karzai government, including raising a large Afghan army, the US is in a terrible quandary. Which is: how to get out of Afghanistan in a relatively orderly fashion while still bequeathing a working political system for the post-American phase. Pakistan could be helpful in this with their patronage of the Taliban leadership sheltering there. But it is not as easy as that.

If the past is any guide, despite their dependence on Pakistan in so many ways, the Taliban leaders have generally managed to go their own way. It was certainly not in Pakistan’s strategic interest for the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to get involved with the al Qaeda leadership, and the latter’s sponsorship of the 9/11 attack. Pakistan is still reeling from it, being part of the George Bush’s war on terrorism. In other words, Afghanistan is going to haunt the US as much as it did the British in the 19^th century and the Soviet Union in the eighties of the last century, contributing in some ways to its collapse. And will continue to haunt Pakistan, as its involvement with the Taliban and their politics will tend to overwhelm its resources and further skew its domestic priorities.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

Managing US-China relations

S P SETH

When the US whistleblower, Edward Snowden, was allowed by Hong Kong authorities to fly to Moscow, where he is seeking temporary asylum, it put a damper on US-China relations. Having revoked Snowden’s passport and made a formal request with Hong Kong for his extradition on spying charges, the US was hopeful that they would have their man to face the music back home where he was likely to be locked up for the rest of his life. Hong Kong, as part of China, apparently followed Beijing’s directions to be rid of him to avoid entanglement in an unseemly and long diplomatic and legal stoush with the US. Hong Kong authorities argued at the time that they couldn’t detain him, as the paper work from the US was deficient and incomplete. That is the benign explanation. The US didn’t buy this, contending that Beijing’s handling of the Snowden affair would damage US-China relations.

The management of US-China relations has been tricky with the rise of China. Beijing has long harboured the suspicion that the United States is trying to contain China. Indeed it has said this much now and then. The US is increasingly aware that China is emerging as the other superpower. The recent summit between President Xi Jinping and the US President Barack Obama in the informal surroundings of a presidential retreat in California was, in a sense, an acknowledgement of it. China and the US are engaged in a competing and contending relationship, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. This requires deft handling to avoid entanglement in a nasty conflict.

China would like to regard Asia-Pacific region as its own backyard, like the US has done with the Monroe Doctrine warning off external powers from its backyard in Western Hemisphere. China would like to do the same in its region. The US, with its Pacific coastline in California, Hawaii and its Pacific territories, regards itself as much a Pacific country as China. Besides, it has a string of military alliances with a number of regional countries and extensive trade and strategic interests.

Even as China has been seeking to establish its regional preeminence in the last decade or so, the US decided to checkmate it (formally) by Obama’s announcement in 2011, during an Australian visit, of his country’s “pivot” to Asia. Which would make Asia-Pacific region the primary focus of US power, with much of its naval deployment concentrated in the region. This announcement obviously rattled China.

In the last few years, Beijing has been engaged in a series of disputes with some of its neighbours over maritime boundaries in South China Sea and East China Sea. China strongly believes in the authenticity of its claims based on history. At the same time, it is also seeking to test the limits of the US commitment to the region and its allies. Undoubtedly, there is an element of brinkmanship, which, if not handled carefully, might lead to confrontation.

President Xi Jinping seems aware of this danger and during their recent summit in the US the two presidents sought to concentrate on how best to manage their difficult relationship. Even as regional territorial disputes between China and its neighbors have become a matter of serious concern, another issue cropped up to cause friction between the US and China. And this was Washington’s deep concern about cyber attacks from China, some even said to be emanating from within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The US alleges that these attacks on US companies have cost them billions of dollars worth of intellectual property theft. And they introduce a dangerous element of cyber warfare between the two countries.

The summit, therefore, sought to deal with managing US-China relations over regional maritime disputes and cyber hacking/espionage. And they reportedly declared their determination to keep these issues, as New York Times reported, “from descending into a Cold War mentality and to avoid the pitfalls of a rising power [China] confronting an established one.” This is the real problem. The recent history, in terms of the two world wars, is not reassuring on managing relations between an emerging superpower and an established one, especially when the emerging power (China, in this case) believes that the US is trying to limit its ‘legitimate’ sphere of influence.

Just after the US-China summit came the Snowden spy saga revealing that the US was also hacking into Chinese systems. This has seriously embarrassed and compromised US position accusing China of hacking into US economic and defense secrets. Not surprisingly, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said, obviously with some glee, that, “I would like to advise these people [US officials] to hold up a mirror, reflect and take care of their own situation first.” At the same time by not getting entangled in the Snowden affair China has acted smartly. Of course, it has displeased the US and might further complicate US-China relations, so soon after an apparently successful summit between their leaders.

There was one positive outcome of the summit to please the US especially. And that was about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.  According to the US media reporting on the subject, “US and Chinese officials appear to be finally on the same page on how to contain a nuclear North Korea”, including using China’s economic leverage and keeping the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, on the outer until he fell in line. It is clear that Pyongyang is already feeling the heat from China. A recent visit to China of a high-level North Korean emissary didn’t get much traction. Apparently, he was told that Pyongyang should lower the temperature and resume nuclear talks. And North Korea has been making overtures to South Korea and the US. The recent visit to China of the South Korean President Park Geun-hye and high level talks with the top Chinese leadership was another signal to Pyongyang of Beijing’s displeasure. China and South Korea are both agreed on denuclearization of Korea (North Korea).

This is a positive development as far as it goes. But if regional disputes flare up, and with US committed to its regional allies, China might not push North Korea too much into the abyss because it remains a useful strategic buffer against the United States.

In a nutshell, the recent US-China summit was a useful development though marred by the subsequent Snowden affair. But Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist and an old hand on US-China affairs, was way off the mark when he reportedly described the summit as “…the most important meeting between an American president and a Chinese leader in 40 years since Nixon and Mao.” 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au