One of the most important lessons Russian policymakers have learned from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is to refrain from forging local allies in their own image and to instead seek to galvanise partners wherever mutual interests intersect. A case in point is the nexus with the Taliban.
A border settlement between China and India is unlikely in the foreseeable future, and Beijing believes it has little incentive to push for a quick resolution. China’s priority remains crisis management and escalation prevention, until India is willing to embrace a package deal which basically follows the earlier trade between the eastern section and the western section, with the exception of Tawang.
The strategy is to create a war psychology. If China wants to stop India from taking certain decisions contrary to Chinese interests, it can achieve this by raising the risk of kinetic conflict. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his inner circle come to believe that war can follow upon their decisions, they will be increasingly reluctant to act and/or even become paralysed. In large measure, this is a subtle and repetitive exercise in psychological conditioning.
The past is not prologue, and the comparisons to war have limits and detractors. Still, wartime analogies can be useful for an understanding of the potential economic consequences of this crisis. Wars last longer than downturns, and the economic cycle in which we suddenly find ourselves is unlike any peacetime cycle we have experienced in the past half century—including during the Vietnam War and in the aftermath of 9/11.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah signed a power-sharing deal on Sunday, signalling the end of a months-long stalemate that plunged the country into a political crisis. The breakthrough, which sees Abdullah heading peace talks with the Taliban, comes as Afghanistan battles a rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus and surging violence that saw dozens killed in brutal attacks last week.
By many measures, 2020 is looking to be the worst year that humankind has faced in many decades. We’re in the midst of a pandemic… The world economy is in free fall, with unemployment rising dramatically, trade and output plummeting, and no hopeful end in sight. A plague of locusts is back for a second time in Africa…Given all that, what could possibly make things worse? Here’s one possibility: war.
They said we were going to uncouple from the Middle East. Barack Obama, they said, was going to pivot to Asia. Donald Trump was, finally, going to get the United States the hell out of there. Intellectually, politically and, most importantly of all, militarily, we were going to put this most vexatious of regions behind us. It was, they assured us, a new day. They were wrong.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for a global ceasefire, urging all parties to conflict to lay down arms and allow war-torn nations to combat the coronavirus pandemic. “The worst is yet to come,” Guterres said, referring to countries with fighting like Syria, Libya and Yemen…The COVID-19 storm is now coming to all these theatres of conflict.”
The reality is that Afghanistan is a landlocked country thousands of miles away from America and of marginal economic and strategic importance to it. Once the Trump administration signed a deal with the Taliban, it began to look at Afghan war through the rearview mirror. And with the monumental crisis created by the Coronavirus pandemic, the American foot will remain steady on the accelerator. The troops are coming home.
Read Here – The National Interest
If there is any lesson to be learned from three decades of American interventions, it is that the politics of foreign lands are far too complicated for an outside superpower to intervene and not produce costly unintended consequences.
