Tag: Afghanistan

The Legacy Of Failure In Afghanistan Starts In 1979, Not 2001- OpEd

Chin@Strategy

A decade ago, John Lamberton Harper, a professor of US Foreign Policy and European Studies at Johns Hopkins in Bologna, Italy published an indispensable history of the first cold war (The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2011) in which he described the origins of what became known as “the Carter doctrine.” The Carter Doctrine pledged US military action against any state that attempted to gain control of the Persian Gulf. As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich has pointed out it “implied the conversion of the Persian Gulf into an informal…

White House pushes back on China amid propaganda strike in wake of Afghanistan’s collapse

Chin@Strategy

The White House Tuesday pushed back against a Chinese propaganda campaign attacking the United States and Taiwan after the collapse of Afghanistan – with the Biden administration condemning the communist regime for taking advantage of the tragedy and doubling down on the its support for Taiwan. The U.S. statement was in response to Chinese propaganda outlets and the country’s official international propaganda mouthpiece, which seized on President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to intimidate Taiwan. The Chinese government also demanded that the U.S. cease “official contacts & military…

China Won’t Repeat America’s Mistakes in Afghanistan

Chin@Strategy

As the United States departs Afghanistan and Kabul falls, China is not showing up with an army. It is showing up bearing gifts to all parties, not least the ascendant Taliban. Beijing’s prospects, therefore, are already looking much better—and cheaper—than the U.S. state- and military-building project. Beijing’s traditional worry in Afghanistan has been regional instability and the prospect of cross-border aid to Uyghur militants in Xinjiang—or the provision of a safe refuge for Uyghurs fleeing Chinese oppression. But the Taliban will likely have learned from the experience of the past…

Will China Fall Into the Afghanistan Trap?

Chin@Strategy

Although the narrative of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires is a bit overdone – and tends to ignore imperial success stories like that of  Darius I of Persia or Alexander the Great in antiquity – there is more than a little truth to it. In modern times, British, Soviet and now American efforts to bring the country into their respective geopolitical orbits have met with decisive, and humiliating, defeat. And in the Soviet case at least, that defeat contributed directly to the fall of the empire itself. But what…

China will tread carefully in navigating the Taliban’s return

Chin@Strategy

The US’s hasty departure from Afghanistan has provided much material for China’s propaganda agencies to discredit Washington’s foreign policy. But Beijing is also treading a careful line in navigating an increasingly uncertain security situation in one of its most volatile neighbours. On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said that while Beijing will “continue developing good-neighbourly, friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan”, it also urges the Taliban to “ensure that all kinds of terrorism and crimes can be curbed so that the Afghan people can stay away from war…