{"id":22818,"date":"2015-10-09T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T19:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=22818"},"modified":"2015-10-08T15:42:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T04:42:52","slug":"afghanistan-an-opportunity-for-us-china-cooperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/afghanistan-an-opportunity-for-us-china-cooperation\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: An opportunity for US\u2013China cooperation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2nd<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Auslin has called for<\/a> a \u2018new realism\u2019 in US foreign policy toward China, one that \u2018begins with an official acceptance that we are locked in a competition with China that is of Beijing\u2019s choosing\u2019. Moreover he suggests that Sino-US dialogue must be \u2018reset\u2019 and \u2018conducted not as an unearned gift to Beijing, but only when there are concrete goals to be achieved\u2019.<\/p>\n

While some, such US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, may dispute the first claim<\/a> as \u2018lazy rhetoric\u2019, the second admonition to structure the relationship through a focus on the concrete goals and interests of each party isn\u2019t as easily dismissed.<\/p>\n

The problem in the current climate of Sino\u2013US relations, however, is to identify areas in which those interests overlap to \u2018mutual benefit\u2019 more than they diverge. China\u2019s \u2018One Belt, One Road\u2019 (OBOR) strategy is an area that holds potential.<\/p>\n

According to John Hudson<\/a>, where US officials see China\u2019s resurgence and ambition in the Asia\u2013Pacific as the core driver of regional insecurity, in Eurasia they see a \u2018surprising convergence of US and Chinese interests\u2019 that \u2018boils down to one mutual goal: security\u2019.<\/p>\n

From this perspective, Beijing shares Washington\u2019s desires to see a stable and secure Afghanistan and Pakistan due primarily<\/a> to Beijing\u2019s own concerns with Uyghur terrorism in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

The strength of this view is based on two major factors.<\/p>\n

First, the OBOR itself, while growing out of a decades-long agenda to firmly integrate Xinjiang and overcome Uyghur separatism and terrorism through the delivery of economic development, looks set to engage China more directly in the problems of the region. With its focus on the development of trans-regional infrastructure links and investment, such as the \u2018China-Pakistan Economic Corridor<\/a>\u2019, the OBOR would give China a greater stake in the future security and prosperity of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama administration officials have approvingly noted that China\u2019s plan mirrors the intent of its own aborted \u2018New Silk Road Initiative<\/a>\u2019 of 2011. Indeed, the logic of that effort suggests some complementarity between US and Chinese interests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Second, the increasing number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, which China has attributed<\/a> to militants based in the Af-Pak tribal areas, has arguably revealed to Beijing that it can no longer rely on the partial \u2018outsourcing\u2019 of its security to the US military presence in Afghanistan nor the Pakistani military along the Af-Pak frontier. Instead, Beijing must revise its to-date largely \u2018hands off\u2019 approach to the security situation in Afghanistan as it pursues the OBOR strategy.<\/p>\n

Yet deeper consideration of both of these factors suggests that the potential overlap between US and Chinese interests shouldn\u2019t be overstated.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan, in particular, is deeply problematic for China in terms of the security of Xinjiang, its geopolitical interests and its reputation. China\u2019s aloof approach to the country since the US and NATO intervention began, as Andrew Small has noted<\/a>, has been dictated by a conflicted mindset:<\/p>\n

\u2018China sat out the conflict in Afghanistan. It wanted neither a Western victory that might entrench a US military presence in its backyard, nor a Taliban victory that would pose risks to Xinjiang and the wider region. As a result, its financial and political contributions to Afghanistan were at best tokenistic, the minimum necessary to avoid alienating anyone.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Greater Chinese security engagement in Afghanistan promises not only to make it a more overt target for radical Islamists, impacting negatively in the security of Xinjiang, but also to damage Beijing geopolitically by bringing it into conflict with its \u2018all weather\u2019 friend, Pakistan. Beijing has emerged as an active proponent of a negotiated political settlement between the Taliban and Kabul\u2014even brokering secret negotiations<\/a> between the two\u2014in the interests of \u2018stability\u2019, while Pakistan<\/a> \u2018has been keener to see a level of consistent instability in Afghanistan\u2019 rather than a secure and independent Kabul. The scope for this divide between the \u2018all weather\u2019 friends to widen was underlined by the multiple bomb attacks in the Afghan capital on 10 and 12 August. The Ghani government explicitly blamed<\/a> the attacks on Pakistan and Beijing offered to extend greater security assistance to Kabul in response.<\/p>\n

Speculation that China would actively consider a more overt security presence or engagement in Afghanistan, however, ignores the reputational costs this would impose on Beijing. Much of Beijing\u2019s diplomatic success throughout Eurasia over the past decade has been built not only on its undoubted economic weight but also its ability to counter-pose its doctrine of \u2018non-intervention\u2019 to that of the West\u2019s recent record of direct intervention into the affairs of others. The continued strength of this particular peculiarity of Chinese diplomacy has been most recently exhibited<\/a> in Beijing\u2019s response to the NATO-led intervention in Libya and its approach to the ongoing Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n

Despite recent developments on the ground in Afghanistan\u2014including the possible fracturing<\/a> of the Taliban in the face of the emergence of Islamic State, in the country\u2014it appears that China\u2019s approach to the country remains cautious. Indeed it is difficult to discern a fundamental shift in approach to that described by Beijing\u2019s Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Sun Yuxi, when he noted<\/a> in 2014 that \u2018preserving Afghanistan’s stability is not a matter of adding troops but of helping Afghanistan to quickly rebuild\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Auslin has called for a \u2018new realism\u2019 in US foreign policy toward China, one that \u2018begins with an official acceptance that we are locked in a competition with China that is of Beijing\u2019s choosing\u2019. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":22821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,1056,52,218,31],"class_list":["post-22818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-afghanistan","tag-bilateral-relations","tag-china","tag-middle-east","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAfghanistan: An opportunity for US\u2013China cooperation? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/afghanistan-an-opportunity-for-us-china-cooperation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Afghanistan: An opportunity for US\u2013China cooperation? 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