With the killing of Osama bin Laden and budget pressures at home, lots of rethinking of the US role in Afghanistan-Pakistan is going on. Much of that circles back to how to involve the major powers, especially China, that surround the region into playing constructive (from the US point of view) roles.
Mark Mazzetti writes “Should (Could) America and Pakistan’s Bond Be Broken” in the NY Times Outlook section (here)
America’s tormented relationship with Pakistan has long had the subtlety of a professional wrestling match. So when frayed relations turned openly hostile in recent weeks, it was hardly a surprise to see Pakistani officials flirt publicly with China, America’s biggest rival in Asia.
Within days of the American raid deep inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistani officials travelled to Beijing and asked their “Chinese brothers” to operate a strategic port on the Arabian Sea. They also said the two countries were planning oil pipelines, railroads and even military bases in Pakistan for the Chinese Navy.
The Pakistani officials had already advised their neighbors in Afghanistan — where Americans have committed billions of dollars and lost more than 1,500 lives since 2001 — that Afghanistan would be better off placing long-term bets on an ascendant China, rather than a declining United States.
With the tortured marriage clearly in trouble, Islamabad has sent signals that it is ready to start seeing other people. Can Washington afford to do the same? And just how far could Pakistan get by playing the field?......
And, further:
One question, however, is whether China sees such a partnership quite the same way. Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said that on a recent trip to Islamabad he was struck by how openly Pakistani officials talked about China as a promising strategic alternative to the United States. But he also said that travelling to Beijing made it clear to him that the Chinese didn’t return the sentiments.
“The Chinese are simply not interested in playing Pakistan’s game, and they don’t want to be played as a card against the United States,” said Mr. Markey.
What they might be willing to do, however, is cooperate in creating new opportunities to stabilize the region. Instead of the United States, China and others being at cross-purposes there, the regional powers might team up not only in trying to keep a lid on Pakistan’s combustible dynamics, but also on the thorny problem of the endgame in Afghanistan.
As much as India, China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia are all jockeying for influence inside Afghanistan, most experts believe that they all fear a rushed American military pullout and a chaotic power vacuum that might follow.
National security blogger Tom Barnett thinks it is way past time to bringing other regional powers into play (here)
Well, the United States' pursuit of success in Afghanistan has been by my definition amazingly unilateralist. And we really haven't gone the path of encouraging regional neighbors to step in and become the great nation builders in this effort. We want to somehow make Afghanistan work, somehow integrate it with the global economy, while not letting the Iranians in on the process at all, while not letting the Indians in on the process at all, and while really trying to hedge against rising Russian or Chinese influence in the region. And that's just highly unrealistic. In geostrategic terms, it doesn't really get any dumber than that.
I don’t think there is a get-the-US-out-of-Afghanistan process that does not ask or let China play a larger role.
And why can't the current Oregon legislature fund $30,000 for five Oregon high school students to study abroad in China for the 2012-13 school year?
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