here are few positives to be found in Afghanistan following twenty years of war and nation building. What must be remembered at the forefront of any analysis is the human suffering which decades of foreign interference, strategic and regional, have cost the Afghan people. Yet amidst the global pivot to great powers competition, Afghanistan retains a role in influencing global powers, that being the regional vulnerability which the ongoing violence and instability creates for Beijing and Moscow, as Afghanistan’s geography is squarely in their proverbial backyards.
While this finding may seem cold, it must be remembered that despite the prosperity gains made globally in recent decades, thanks to globalized economies, improved democratic representation, and digital connectivity, the gambit of international relations and geopolitics remains a ruthless, often zero-sum gambit. Most often, the United States and its liberal allies are motivated by mutually beneficial engagements abroad, both as a means of legitimizing democracy’s global leadership role, while enabling developmental independent and interdependent nations to cement a stable world order. However, there must be recognition given and accepted for when things occur to the competitor’s disadvantage, despite the unfortunate circumstances of the advantages gained.
Afghanistan’s Geopolitical Dilemma for China and Russia
That Afghanistan remains mired in sectarian violence creates a significant security vulnerability for China and Russia, a benefit that American occupation and attempted nation-building prevented for Moscow and Beijing during the two decades of coalition forces on the ground. What then, is the strategic value of a land-locked, resource-scarce state whose primary global export is illicit opium production, with complex ethnic relationships, and who’s only maneuver importance lay in its eastern proximity to the Middle East? Afghanistan’s importance in geopolitics is one of regional value, not strategic or global. Pakistan’s interest in Afghanistan is primarily rooted in the paranoia of its rivalry with India. Iran has been mostly concerned with keeping western forces occupied in Afghanistan while it concentrates on regional competition with Saudi Arabia. Being caught up in this ruthless game between Iran and Pakistan demonstrates Afghanistan’s tragic fragility while being surrounded by exponentially more powerful players.
While this grossly oversimplified summary does not intend to delegitimize Afghan sovereignty, the reality of Afghanistan’s influence on the last 30 years of international geopolitics is a striking oddity when its regional role is of greater prominence. Russia demonstrated similar geopolitical thinking, as it shrewdly maneuvered to positions of moderation, if not cooperation with the Taliban, even before American forces had withdrawn. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is well-documented, and its ambitions to press its economic arteries through Afghanistan are no exception. Both Beijing and Moscow understand that Afghanistan is not an end, but a ways and means to their long-term intentions for regional influence after the west’s departure. The real-politick analysis is that two decades of western forces attempted nation-building prevented a need for China and Russia to do anything in Afghanistan besides observe and wait.
But the removal of the western coalition from the equation does not immediately equate to a clean and tidy transition of powers. Afghanistan’s descent into chaos has created an entirely new quagmire with the re-assumption of Taliban control. There is conflict between the Taliban government and opposition leader Ahmad Massoud, who attempts to create an alternative governance to the Taliban’s brutal and ultra-conservative repression, while ceasefire agreements between the antagonists failed, as has always been the norm in Afghan politics. Meanwhile, continued violence from the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) – whose presence in Afghanistan since 2016 once made strange bedfellows of Taliban and coalition military – continues to wreak havoc on the potential for stability in Afghanistan.
No good options for Beijing, Moscow
The discord and violence create a scenario that places risk in the Russian and Chinese geographic underbellies. General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, recently noted that both Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K in Afghanistan are actively recruiting due to the vacuum created in the west’s withdrawal, the lone constant raison d'être for perpetual deployments by western forces. The rise in violent extremism, once stalemated by the twenty-years’ war, means that those same terror groups now have a fertile ground for planning and directing terror activities into the region and beyond. Russia knows from its own experience the quagmire of Afghanistan entanglement from its own occupation in the 1980s and has no intention of a redux. While Moscow is creating its own regional security crisis on the Ukrainian border, the threat in Afghanistan grows at the edge of former Soviet satellite states, creating a vulnerability for Moscow’s security bubble.
China’s proximal risks are more abundant, made scrutable by its disdain for foreign persons within its borders, where refugees are treated harshly in China and the repression of the Uyghur population offer little comfort to a conservative Taliban government who might engage Beijing. Little economic value is to be found for Chinese investment, as Afghan financial markets are tanking at rates comparable only to history’s failed socialist experiments. Thus, there is little, if anything, of value for China to purchase by way of integrating Kabul into the sphere of Chinese economic influence as it continues to do across the Pacific and in Africa. Afghanistan’s quagmire is now, in real politick terms, Beijing’s problem with little hope of a beneficial outcome, and only great risk with either intervention or ambivalence.
A stable Afghanistan would benefit China and Russia tremendously, if for no better reason than another steppingstone for Beijing’s growing regional hegemony, or a widening of the buffer zone which Moscow would puppeteer in Iran and other Middle East proxies. This future remains unlikely, save for a massive commitment above the $2 trillion already sunk by the United States, or a conquest untenable in the modern era. Even an attempted violent absorption by Beijing would bring the collective decry from the global court of opinion to a fever pitch, though perhaps not at the same level as reunification with Taiwan, something that is surely higher on Beijing’s to-do list. Russian commitment to Afghanistan is unlikely to exceed back-channel talks and some limited engagements, again, Moscow’s turn in the graveyard of empires is history not likely repeated.
Thus, Afghanistan will go on living out its terrible chapter in world history, as an unfortunate role player in the failed gambits of history’s superpowers, one that now stands as a thorn in the side of the possible empire in China, and a source of the very instability that Moscow would create elsewhere on its own terms.
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The Afghanistan Crisis Threatens the Stability of China, Russia
Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Mohammad Husaini via Unsplash.
January 4, 2022
Afghanistan is inarguably a humanitarian crisis. Beyond that, it is a regional security dilemma which has major geopolitical implications for the stability of China and Russia, writes CSPC Senior Fellow Ethan Brown.
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here are few positives to be found in Afghanistan following twenty years of war and nation building. What must be remembered at the forefront of any analysis is the human suffering which decades of foreign interference, strategic and regional, have cost the Afghan people. Yet amidst the global pivot to great powers competition, Afghanistan retains a role in influencing global powers, that being the regional vulnerability which the ongoing violence and instability creates for Beijing and Moscow, as Afghanistan’s geography is squarely in their proverbial backyards.
While this finding may seem cold, it must be remembered that despite the prosperity gains made globally in recent decades, thanks to globalized economies, improved democratic representation, and digital connectivity, the gambit of international relations and geopolitics remains a ruthless, often zero-sum gambit. Most often, the United States and its liberal allies are motivated by mutually beneficial engagements abroad, both as a means of legitimizing democracy’s global leadership role, while enabling developmental independent and interdependent nations to cement a stable world order. However, there must be recognition given and accepted for when things occur to the competitor’s disadvantage, despite the unfortunate circumstances of the advantages gained.
Afghanistan’s Geopolitical Dilemma for China and Russia
That Afghanistan remains mired in sectarian violence creates a significant security vulnerability for China and Russia, a benefit that American occupation and attempted nation-building prevented for Moscow and Beijing during the two decades of coalition forces on the ground. What then, is the strategic value of a land-locked, resource-scarce state whose primary global export is illicit opium production, with complex ethnic relationships, and who’s only maneuver importance lay in its eastern proximity to the Middle East? Afghanistan’s importance in geopolitics is one of regional value, not strategic or global. Pakistan’s interest in Afghanistan is primarily rooted in the paranoia of its rivalry with India. Iran has been mostly concerned with keeping western forces occupied in Afghanistan while it concentrates on regional competition with Saudi Arabia. Being caught up in this ruthless game between Iran and Pakistan demonstrates Afghanistan’s tragic fragility while being surrounded by exponentially more powerful players.
While this grossly oversimplified summary does not intend to delegitimize Afghan sovereignty, the reality of Afghanistan’s influence on the last 30 years of international geopolitics is a striking oddity when its regional role is of greater prominence. Russia demonstrated similar geopolitical thinking, as it shrewdly maneuvered to positions of moderation, if not cooperation with the Taliban, even before American forces had withdrawn. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is well-documented, and its ambitions to press its economic arteries through Afghanistan are no exception. Both Beijing and Moscow understand that Afghanistan is not an end, but a ways and means to their long-term intentions for regional influence after the west’s departure. The real-politick analysis is that two decades of western forces attempted nation-building prevented a need for China and Russia to do anything in Afghanistan besides observe and wait.
But the removal of the western coalition from the equation does not immediately equate to a clean and tidy transition of powers. Afghanistan’s descent into chaos has created an entirely new quagmire with the re-assumption of Taliban control. There is conflict between the Taliban government and opposition leader Ahmad Massoud, who attempts to create an alternative governance to the Taliban’s brutal and ultra-conservative repression, while ceasefire agreements between the antagonists failed, as has always been the norm in Afghan politics. Meanwhile, continued violence from the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) – whose presence in Afghanistan since 2016 once made strange bedfellows of Taliban and coalition military – continues to wreak havoc on the potential for stability in Afghanistan.
No good options for Beijing, Moscow
The discord and violence create a scenario that places risk in the Russian and Chinese geographic underbellies. General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, recently noted that both Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K in Afghanistan are actively recruiting due to the vacuum created in the west’s withdrawal, the lone constant raison d'être for perpetual deployments by western forces. The rise in violent extremism, once stalemated by the twenty-years’ war, means that those same terror groups now have a fertile ground for planning and directing terror activities into the region and beyond. Russia knows from its own experience the quagmire of Afghanistan entanglement from its own occupation in the 1980s and has no intention of a redux. While Moscow is creating its own regional security crisis on the Ukrainian border, the threat in Afghanistan grows at the edge of former Soviet satellite states, creating a vulnerability for Moscow’s security bubble.
China’s proximal risks are more abundant, made scrutable by its disdain for foreign persons within its borders, where refugees are treated harshly in China and the repression of the Uyghur population offer little comfort to a conservative Taliban government who might engage Beijing. Little economic value is to be found for Chinese investment, as Afghan financial markets are tanking at rates comparable only to history’s failed socialist experiments. Thus, there is little, if anything, of value for China to purchase by way of integrating Kabul into the sphere of Chinese economic influence as it continues to do across the Pacific and in Africa. Afghanistan’s quagmire is now, in real politick terms, Beijing’s problem with little hope of a beneficial outcome, and only great risk with either intervention or ambivalence.
A stable Afghanistan would benefit China and Russia tremendously, if for no better reason than another steppingstone for Beijing’s growing regional hegemony, or a widening of the buffer zone which Moscow would puppeteer in Iran and other Middle East proxies. This future remains unlikely, save for a massive commitment above the $2 trillion already sunk by the United States, or a conquest untenable in the modern era. Even an attempted violent absorption by Beijing would bring the collective decry from the global court of opinion to a fever pitch, though perhaps not at the same level as reunification with Taiwan, something that is surely higher on Beijing’s to-do list. Russian commitment to Afghanistan is unlikely to exceed back-channel talks and some limited engagements, again, Moscow’s turn in the graveyard of empires is history not likely repeated.
Thus, Afghanistan will go on living out its terrible chapter in world history, as an unfortunate role player in the failed gambits of history’s superpowers, one that now stands as a thorn in the side of the possible empire in China, and a source of the very instability that Moscow would create elsewhere on its own terms.
