Fwd: Afghanistan in China's strategic Calculus by Dr Subhash Kapila

may 13th, 2010

china is now making afghanistan its buffer state with iran/russia. of course, it expects to swallow up afghanistan in future, just as it plans to swallow up siberia in due course.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sanjeev N

AFGHANISTAN IN CHINA'S STRATEGIC CALCULUS 

By Dr. Subhash Kapila http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers39/paper3804.html

Introductory Observations 

Afghanistan has long figured in China's strategic calculus.   One of the concessions demanded and given by Russian President Gorbachev in his famous Vladivostok speech in 1989 was the Chinese insistence on Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan again today looms large in China's strategic calculus because of the uncertainties generated by the current US Administration on America's continued military commitment in Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan figures significantly in China's current strategic calculus more geo-strategically and geo-politically than geo-economically notwithstanding its $ 5billion investment in the Aynak copper mines in the vicinity of Kabul. 

China along with Pakistan and Iran enjoys geographical contiguity with Afghanistan even though China's borders with Afghanistan in the Wakhan Corridor (North East Afghanistan) measure only 74 K.M. 

Geo-strategically Afghanistan connects the Indian Sub-continent with Central Asia besides its connecting the Indian s-Sub-continent with the Middle East, primarily Iran. Afghanistan also has geographical contiguity with a number of Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan's turbulence endangers China's Muslim turbulent region of Xingjian.

... deleted