With the US withdrawal emboldening the Taliban and casting doubt on the Kabul government’s ability to stay in power, the group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen says it welcomes Chinese investments in reconstruction and would guarantee the safety of investors and workers.
I’ve seen some leftist takes that the US withdrawal is going to lead to China being sucked into “the graveyard of empires”,
This sounds some real Reddit-brain shit to me. It assumes China has the same ambitions of extractivist economic imperialism in Afghanistan that the United States did.
My understanding is that the US M.O. was basically to blow up key infrastructure, plug the country into the global free market system, create a space for western firms can operate with legal assurances, loan them a shit ton of money to pay those western firms to fix the shit they just broke, then have them pay back the loans over the next 100 years under a regime of austerity as the mineral wealth is siphoned out of the country.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the political economy of Afghanistan, but what I assume happened is 20 years into this quagmire, the cost/benefit analysis simply never added up. The US-aligned government in Kabul practically operated as an "autonomous zone" surrounded by a vast expanse of mountainous terrain it had little to no influence over. The prospect of building out mines, factories, and infrastructure throughout a mountainous, landlocked, hostile country never turned out to be a sound investment. Why would anyone pour western capital into building a factory in Afghanistan which needs to be guarded by coldblooded Blackwater mercenaries around the clock and where rugged trade routes need to be patrolled with military convoys, when you can reap the same level of exploitation with far less risk in a place like Bangladesh?
They could never get the country into a condition where it was a profitable investment for anybody other than the security contractors and political consultants. That meant there were insufficient foreign capital investments being made to really capture any usurious IMF loans. This in turn made it so the military invasion and occupation never offered a return on investment. Instead of being able to leave the people of Afghanistan paying eternal interest for the privilege of Coca-Cola and having their country destroyed, Uncle Sam got left holding the bag.
China likely has much different interests in Afghanistan than the US. They're likely much more interested in regional stability than they are in turning the country into a mining colony, reservoir of sweatshop labor, or military launchpad for imperial conquest. An autonomous but relatively stable Afghanistan is a net positive for them even if the cost of reconstruction comes at a break-even price or a loss. On the other hand, the only way the US invasion was going to pay off is if the country's economic system remained permanently under their thumb.
As a neighbouring country, dealing with whoever is in power is the path of least resistance, and as problematic as the Taliban is, for them it is much better than having US-aligned free-market fundamentalists chock full of military bases creating a non-stop stream of refugees and black markets (particularly of military hardware) right on your border.
Hell, assuming China does have selfish interests in the mineral wealth or labor power of the country, they still aren't in a position where they have an absolute need to capitalize on it at any cost for the relationship to be beneficial. There is no sunken cost they need to chase to the depths of hell.
While reading this, I started wondering how Iraq could connect up here, knowing it was on the other side of Iran. Looking at this wiki map, looks like before this Afghanistan stuff, they had a separate road through Pakistan and up through the other *-stans. Maybe with Afghanistan on board, they could make one nice central one through that whole area.
Also, the thought of China improving the material conditions of the Iraqis (and Iranis too) where the US mostly failed would make these combined things doubly hilarious.
This sounds some real Reddit-brain shit to me. It assumes China has the same ambitions of extractivist economic imperialism in Afghanistan that the United States did.
My understanding is that the US M.O. was basically to blow up key infrastructure, plug the country into the global free market system, create a space for western firms can operate with legal assurances, loan them a shit ton of money to pay those western firms to fix the shit they just broke, then have them pay back the loans over the next 100 years under a regime of austerity as the mineral wealth is siphoned out of the country.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the political economy of Afghanistan, but what I assume happened is 20 years into this quagmire, the cost/benefit analysis simply never added up. The US-aligned government in Kabul practically operated as an "autonomous zone" surrounded by a vast expanse of mountainous terrain it had little to no influence over. The prospect of building out mines, factories, and infrastructure throughout a mountainous, landlocked, hostile country never turned out to be a sound investment. Why would anyone pour western capital into building a factory in Afghanistan which needs to be guarded by coldblooded Blackwater mercenaries around the clock and where rugged trade routes need to be patrolled with military convoys, when you can reap the same level of exploitation with far less risk in a place like Bangladesh?
They could never get the country into a condition where it was a profitable investment for anybody other than the security contractors and political consultants. That meant there were insufficient foreign capital investments being made to really capture any usurious IMF loans. This in turn made it so the military invasion and occupation never offered a return on investment. Instead of being able to leave the people of Afghanistan paying eternal interest for the privilege of Coca-Cola and having their country destroyed, Uncle Sam got left holding the bag.
China likely has much different interests in Afghanistan than the US. They're likely much more interested in regional stability than they are in turning the country into a mining colony, reservoir of sweatshop labor, or military launchpad for imperial conquest. An autonomous but relatively stable Afghanistan is a net positive for them even if the cost of reconstruction comes at a break-even price or a loss. On the other hand, the only way the US invasion was going to pay off is if the country's economic system remained permanently under their thumb.
As a neighbouring country, dealing with whoever is in power is the path of least resistance, and as problematic as the Taliban is, for them it is much better than having US-aligned free-market fundamentalists chock full of military bases creating a non-stop stream of refugees and black markets (particularly of military hardware) right on your border.
Hell, assuming China does have selfish interests in the mineral wealth or labor power of the country, they still aren't in a position where they have an absolute need to capitalize on it at any cost for the relationship to be beneficial. There is no sunken cost they need to chase to the depths of hell.
deleted by creator
This is a really great post.
While reading this, I started wondering how Iraq could connect up here, knowing it was on the other side of Iran. Looking at this wiki map, looks like before this Afghanistan stuff, they had a separate road through Pakistan and up through the other *-stans. Maybe with Afghanistan on board, they could make one nice central one through that whole area.
Also, the thought of China improving the material conditions of the Iraqis (and Iranis too) where the US mostly failed would make these combined things doubly hilarious.