Well, crap.

[zunger]

It looks like the US may have actually managed to do something which will change the situation in Afghanistan in the long term, not just the short term: discovered large mineral deposits.It's going to take a while to process the potential implications of this. Afghanistan has been an isolated place, ruled by tribal warlords and resisting any

Comments

[benrosenbaum]

I dunno, the US's best strategic option might be to ask China in. Possibly Brer Rabbit style? "Well! We want the people of Afghanistan to live in freedom and tranquility! So we'll just remove our armies now! We sure hope China doesn't move in or anything! Hear that, China?"

Let them be the overstretched empire for a while!

[zunger]

*grin* My fear is that China would deal better with the briar patch than we would. I could easily see them just walking in to the spots they wanted to be in, making a deal with the local warlords, and setting up shop. When things get rough, either kill everyone or pull out. No conquest, no attempt to build political or physical infrastructure, no problems.

[benrosenbaum]

I'm sort of unclear why this is a "fear". Is it because you have faith that the American nation-building, democracy-grounding project in Afghanistan is viable and will ultimately yield positive results? (I'm not mocking this position, I don't know enough to be sure one way or another myself.) Is it because you see America and China in a zero-sum game of great-power competition? Or is it because you think Afghanistan's current rural, tribal, decentralized poverty is preferable in human terms to becoming an exploited satellite of post-Maoist Chinese robber-baron capitalism?

[zunger]

I would say a combination of (b) and (c). I think that America's current project in Afghanistan is highly unlikely to have a lasting positive impact, since it doesn't ultimately address any underlying issues or even build much physical infrastructure. But I do foresee an increased period of competition between the US and China, and expect that it will take on more and more of the forms of a Cold War-type battle of ideologies. In that context, I think that US strategic interests are served by having as much "resource leverage" as possible over China; but I'm not convinced that the US actually attaining that level of leverage would be good for all, or even any, concerned. Sometimes having two great powers is better than having one

[benrosenbaum]

Okay, I think I'm with you on c). I'm more skeptical on b). Even from just a purely provincial, partisan American point of view, I'm not sure getting into Cold War style resource competition with China is a good bet. I think it may be a very poor bet. I think a lot of the cold war hinged on a very unfortunate conflation by Americans between the officially pronounced aims of Soviet Communist ideology -- global revolution by the working classes, etc. -- and the actual geopolitical interests of the Russian Empire, which were far more modest and largely defensive. And this misunderstanding had the effect of actually goading the Soviets into a kind of "defensive expansionism" and heating up the conflict, keeping them on a war level. (My source for this is largely a very interesting book called "The Wise Men", a group biography of the men who ran the US cold war state dept. -- Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, etc. -- and who first mostly propagated, then later in part tried to restrain, when it was too late, this misunderstanding

[zunger]

I agree with you and think that I was unclear earlier. For (b), I think that there is likely to be a competition, and that many of those in a decision-making position are likely to view this as a key strategic advantage; but I'm not at all certain that competing in this way will end up being to our net advantage in the long term

[benrosenbaum]

I share to some extent your ideological worry. I have two counterbalancing responses, though. One is that we don't entirely know what an ascendant and secure China would look like -- what internal struggles and processes its rise would bring. If we cast back to the period when the US was still militarily weak and relatively impoverished compared to Europe, but the farsighted could already see its rise as predestined, we're talking about the Civil War era or just post Civil War -- when America was busily at work on concluding the genocidal takeover of the remains of the frontier, and either still in the grip of the peculiar institution, or restoring it in large part de facto via Jim Crow and the KKK; not to mention robber barons and sweatshops. I expect the humane values of an ascendant China will be different from ours, certainly. The emphasis on free speech might be lost, for instance. But there might be counterbalancing virtues. (This is sort of the Ibn Khaldunian model, in which barbarians by their very roughness always conquer the

[zunger]

Your first response got me thinking about the things which stayed the same and the things which changed for various countries. Many of the things which most characterized the US in the post-Civil War era could still be seen today; for example, a deep notion of national exceptionalism, a propensity for waves of religious fervor of a particular sort, and powerful shared ideas about individual liberty. And as you said, several other things changed -- robber-baron capitalism is no longer quite so popular, and as a country we seem considerably less bloodthirsty than we were back then