The Strategic Value of Afghanistan to the US in the New Great Game.

With the prisoner exchange of a US soldier for five top Taliban commanders, there has been a lot of talk about whether Bergdahl was a deserter, if trading him for five seasoned 'terrorists' could be worth it and whether they could possibly pose a threat to the US and US citzens.

One thing that remains uncontested is the claim that Obama is committed to withdrawal of  the US military presence by 2016. This is quite clearly not the case.

Obama is only winding down the conventional US military forces in Afghanistan. But many US contracted mercenaries are set to stay. in 2013 it was estimated that out of 110,404 contractors still working in Afghanistan, some 33,444 are American. Hence the use of the term 'drawdown'.

The US is not withdrawing from Afghanistan until its geopolitical ambitions to create a state stable enough to ensure the construction of the TAPI pipeline is ensured. As outlined in visits to Central Asia and India in 2011 by Hillary Clinton, the New Silk Road strategy is considered a vital US interest.

The construction of the TAPI pipeline is essential if Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are to be integrated into an economic community of interest and aligned to the US more than towards global competitors such as China and regional powers that threaten US interests such as Iran.

The value of the TAPI pipeline is that it would supply gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India as a substitute for Iran's rival IP pipeline. The war aims of the US in Afghanistan dovetail with the policy of isolating and imposing sanctions upon Iran so as to curtail its influence in both Asia and the Middle East.

Though 'nation building' was dropped in around 2011, the emphasis has shifted towards trying to forge a deal between the Taliban and Kabul so as to facilitate the removal of US ground troops and push forward the New Silk Road strategy (the TAPI could not be built if the Taliban threatened it ).

The prisoner swap reflects the new calculation that if the Taliban continues to offer a threat to US interests in Afghanistan, then drones can be used against them and US troops are going to be removed from Afghanistan anyway and replaced with US trained Afghan troops.

One reason the Obama administration has focused on getting Bergdahl and US soldiers home is that it does not want to be seen as doing deals with the Taliban, a group often conflated with Al Qaida so as to provide a justification for 'staying the course' in Afghanistan as part of the global 'war on terror'.

The war in Afghanistan was never only about counter-terrorism and for the best part of the last decade it was about realising other war aims that have never been clearly outlined in public. But only the credulous believe that the US fought the war for the official reasons given or that it won't retain a military presence.

In fact, as part of the new Pivot to Asia strategy, the US is bound to preserve a substantial military presence in Afghanistan so as to counter China's rival new Silk route strategies. With China now rejecting the IP pipeline and backing TAPI, there is the danger that it could increase its influence in the 'AfPak' zone.

China's 'march west' indicates a strategy of being the dominant power on the Eurasian 'World Island' so as to gain access to energy and as a counter to the US Pivot To Asia which is mostly concerned about controlling the sea lanes and oil tanker routes from the Middle East to China.

With the US finding problems finding a base in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have not wanted US bases in recent years), Afghanistan, with its "supersized" Bagram Air Base, will continue to be vital to check China's plans to expand its influence west.

Enclosed within Bagram, US and NATO service personnel should be relatively safe and the drones would be doing the work in attacking targets and monitoring the region from the Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Salerno bases, ones that the US has no intention of closing.

The Pivot to Asia: Energy Geopolitics and Containing China.

"In recent months, China has undertaken destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea....All nations of the region, including China, have a choice: to unite, and recommit to a stable regional order, or, to walk away from that commitment and risk the peace and security that has benefited millions of people throughout the Asia-Pacific, and billions of people around the world"-Chuck Hagel, United States Secretary of Defense. 

The largest risk to the Asia Pacific region and its security has come about through Washington's pursuit of the Pivot To Asia strategy that started in 2010 and is ultimately aimed at naval dominance of the vital sea routes along which tankers delivering oil to China from the Middle East and Africa.

As the the US has declined as the world's predominant economy relative to China as a consequence of the financial crash of 2008 and two hugely expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has refocused the aim of maintaining global military hegemony to Asia.

After 2011, Obama and Panetta made plain their intent to bolster naval cooperation and increase arms supplies of US military hardware to the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and other long standing allies as well as to bring in Myanmar and Vietnam as part of a plan to contain China.

Beijing has become increasingly worried about the plan to encircle China with a ring of regional alliances that threaten to cut of its access to strategically vital raw materials and energy, one reason both China and the US have continued to vie for influence even in Afghanistan.

One unmentionable geostrategic aim of the prolonged presence of US troops in Afghanistan was the construction of the TAPI pipeline, one aimed at uniting Pakistan and India together with a pro-US regime in Kabul in a community of economic interest that would check China's inroads into Central Asia.

Energy geopolitics is the predominant factor behind global power politics in the 21st century. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a unilateral move to control the second largest oil reserves in the world and hem in Iran to the east and to reduce dependence on Saudi Arabia in the days before US shale oil was tapped.

So a reason for China's unilateral thrust to claim the oil off the Paracel Islands is to secure the oil before the US is in the commanding position to threaten its oil supplies. Vietnam, at present, is not a partner of the US but has started to move towards Washington and the prospect of closer naval cooperation.

The New Great Game between the US and China for influence and control over resources has dangerous overtones of the Cold War and the fact that energy hungry Asia Pacific powers are quarrelling over essential supplies of oil in the South China Sea has led to rising nationalism and an arms race.

As regional rival powers such as China and Vietnam modernise their economies at breakneck speed, the tendency for one party regimes is to use nationalism as a means of diverting domestic discontent onto enemies that threaten their access to resources such as oil vital to drive industrialisation and transport.

A crisis over claims over the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea could well trigger off the potential for a US-China clash as the US is treaty bound to support the Philippines is attacked by a third party. This would cause havoc to the global economy as the centre of economic gravity lies in the Asia Pacific region.

The same potential for conflict exists between China and Japan over the what they respectively call the Diaoyus or the Senkakus islands which are disputed in the East China Sea and contain huge reserves of oil off their shores in maritime waters patrolled by both their navies.

It is ultimately the US that is responsible for ratcheting up the tensions by its attempt to hold on to its global dominance by pursuing a geostrategy of holding the Chinese economy to ransom through what Michael Klare terms the twenty-first century energy equivalent of twentieth-century nuclear blackmail'.

Thailand 2014 : The Year of Living Dangerously.

The vocal condemnation of the Thai army coup by the West could be a diplomatic mistake as might the US decision to suspend about one third of the aid provided to Thailand. None of it can affect events in Thailand nor determine the outcome of the power struggle for control after King Bhumibol Adulyadej dies.

The willingness of Washington to make a principled stand against a military coup reflects the fact that since 2011, the year of Yingluck Shinawatra's election, the Obama administration has pursued its Pivot To Asia strategy in which Thailand is considered a key regional partner in the quest to contain China.

General Prayuth, the head of the army and leading figure in the 2006 coup, is part of Thailand's 'monarchy-military nexus' which has felt pushed out of influence with the rise of Thaksin's party as it keeps winning elections and has been tacitly supported by the US since 2011

The reason for that is the authoritarian government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the PM from 2008 to 2011, one backed on the streets by the Yellow Shirts, had not proved as pro-US as Washington had hoped after the 2006 coup and raised the prospect of Thailand turning closer to China as a regional partner.

With the dispute between Vietnam and China over the oil and fish of the South China Sea reaching crisis point, Beijing could be posed to exploit the growing rift between the US and the interim coup government to step in to offer arms deals and military aid to the beleaguered monarchy-military nexus.

An authoritarian government in Bangkok dominated by former members of the Democrat Party would be far more congenial to China which has been attempting to cultivate its 'soft power' ties with Bangkok's Sino-Thai business and political elite as a means of rivalling the US for influence.

China has no interest in watching Thailand become closer to Cambodia and Myanmar as part of a coalition of states hostile to China's claims to dominate the South China Sea within the nine dash line just as Thailand and Cambodia have no oil interests at stake in these maritime waters.

By contrast with Washington, Beijing has been mute in response to the coup. Being far more pragmatic, diplomats in Beijing realise that the Thai elites, whether supporters of Thaksin's party or the opposition, would not take kindly to lectures or direct meddling from the West.

The dilemma for Washington now is if tried using punitive sanctions stronger than those after 2006 it could end up pushing whichever faction wrests control after the 2014 coup closer towards Beijing and, in effect, lose a military alliance it has had since the height of the Cold War in the 1950s.

As Ernie Bower of the Center for Strategic and International Studies made plain, “You could lose an alliance and if you don’t lose an alliance, you could in effect lose the primacy of a friendship with one of ASEAN’s anchor countries". Having Myanmar is the US orbit would hardly be compensation.

2014 is going to be a year of living dangerously. Thailand is the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia. But the impact of higher fuel and food prices in an oil import dependent economy is widening social divisions and creating political polarisation between the old elites and the rural masses and urban wage earners.

With the US and China vying for influence, it could be that an authoritarian regime emerging from out of the military coup would be backed by either Great Power, more likely China, and that this, and the reactionary stance of the Sino-Thai elites backing the Yellow Shirts,  could add ethnic enmities to class resentments.

Thailand's Coup: Serpents in the South East Asian Tourist Paradise.

Events in Thailand took a turn towards the surreal on Tuesday 20 May 2014. The imposition of martial law was imposed without notice to the caretaker government and without much interest from the general population in Bangkok or elsewhere a country seen as a welcoming and friendly tourist haven.

This seems to be borne out by anyone who has friends living in Thailand who regularly take digital snapshots of busloads of Thais being sent in to Bangkok in order to support the government the Red Shirts ) or the opposition on the street ( the Yellow Shirts ), something regarded by expatriates as a bit of a joke.

It seemed typical of Thailand's image as a peaceful Buddhist nation that  nubile young Thai girls appeared with their mobile phones taking 'coup selfies' with soldiers who are part of a military takeover staged a temporary basis that isn't, however, a coup. The suspension of normal political activity was at first termed a 'half coup'. 

On Thursday 22nd May, confirmation came that the Thai military was going to effectively be in power from 4.30am local time to restore stability and "reform the political structure, the economy and society". What this will mean domestically for Thailand is uncertain but there is an interesting geopolitical context to the unrest.

The head of the army, General Prayuth Chan-ocha could not term the coup as a coup because Thailand is an important regional military partner in South East Asia that's supplied by the US with arms and gear. So this is a coup that cannot be called a coup,as in Egypt, because military aid under US law would be suspended..

But it could possibly become an official coup for the US if it disapproves of the side the army is effectively backing and it is not clear yet if it is going to side with the opposition to the democratically elected PM Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted in the 2006 coup.

These weird political gyrations are part of the potential sea change in political allegiances set in motion by the ascendancy of China as a major economic power with gravitational pull over south east Asia against which President Obama's Pivot to Asia, the foreign policy emphasis since 2010, is purported to be a counterweight.

Bilateral ties with China have increased hugely in recent years with Thailand set to have a bilateral trade of 100 billion US dollars per annum before 2015. Even more ominous for the US is the move to boost joint boat patrols with China in the South China Sea. There is a competition for influence in Thailand between China and the US.

For a century, Thailand has had close ties with the US. However, in recent years have started to warm towards China as their 'soft power' ally. China offered financial support during the 1997 economic crisis and also US$16 million of assistance to help with the devastating 2011 floods, seventeen times more than the US.

The anti-Thaksin Yellow Shirt opposition is said to be hostile to towards the Pivot to Asia as a strategy that is aimed against China. Nor do the rather inaptly named People's Democratic Reform Committee have qualms about authoritarian government and backing a coup before the accession of the new Thai king who is said to be pro-Red.

The US is concerned about Chinese inroads into Thailand and would not want a government dominated by the army generals or by those too favourable to China and hostile to a US led regional  alliance as part of a strategy to contain China. China would have no problems doing business with an authoritarian regime.

In fact, during the last government of the Democratic Party in 2010, PM Abhisit Vejjajiva firmly rejected attempts by the US to mediate between them and the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and sent diplomats to Washington to complain about attempts to meddle in internal Thai affairs.

Chinese diplomats, schooled in Asian pragmatism, have realised that the noisy protests and lectures from Washington about how Thailand should, can and must be governed only leads members of Thailand's older ruling elites to look more favourably towards the Middle Kingdom. The US can no longer count on guaranteed support from Bangkok.

Even more ominously, China has attempted court the politically and economically powerful Sino-Thai minority which tends to support the Yellow Shirt opposition to the Thaksins and the rural masses who overwhemingly back the Red Shirts against the older elites in the monarchy-military nexus'.

Given that the Red Shirts have already spelt out consequences if the coup leads to a restoration of the old regime and a reversal of democracy, China's ' race-based diplomacy' could impose hitherto absent ethnic enmities on to sharp social and economic divisions between rural Thais and the Sino-Thai elite in Bankok.

China and the USA's Pivot to the East

'China's economy was 87% the size of the US economy..This would have many important consequences beyond the most obvious – that the US, the symbol of post-second world war democracy and western capitalist beliefs, is no longer the world's biggest economy'.

China's economic power is one thing; its potential military weight, however, is being offset in advance by the US through Obama's 'pivot to Asia' strategy which, since 2011, has sought to counter an increase in China's economic and political power in the Far East.

There is no evidence the US intends giving up its global dominance. In particular Washington has made plain it intends to back its south east Asian allies in their disputes with China over access to the oil of the South China Sea. There is also a dispute between Japan and China, in the East China Sea, over the Senkaku /Diaoyu islands

As Michael Klare points out, the US has created an 'anti-Chinese coalition on China’s periphery' by providing military support to India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, a strategy responded to by China bolstering is naval fleet.

The US promotion of free trade ties to Asian states is already under threat from China's model of development in which states supply them with raw material and in return benefit from investments in infrastructure, partnership with Chinese businesses and arms sales.

With the shale oil and gas 'revolution', the US has become less interested in the Middle East as it was under George Bush. Instead, the aim is to contain China as this nascent economic superpower made inroads into both Eurasia and the Pacific regions in the 2000s when the US was bogged down in the Iraq War

China is set to become more dependent upon oil from the unstable Middle East than the US. By securing naval dominance of the South China sea and other vital sea lanes through which oil and LNG flows, the US can thereby put itself in a power political position so as to hold China in check.

In Egypt, the Obama administration was prepared to tacitly acknowledge the military coup of 2013 as it wants to preserve its influence over the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden ( one reason for US concern for Yemen and also Somalia where oil is present ).

In Afghanistan, the continued presence of US forces and mercenaries is concerned with containing Chinese inroads there as regards its competition for lithium and other minerals. The TAPI pipeline would also bind Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India closer as a bulwark against Chinese influence.

China's influence in Iran was a major reason for the growing importance of the TAPI pipeline, a  main geopolitical ambition of the Afghanistan war ( though unmentionable to the US and European publics ). which would block off Iran's rival IP pipeline and work towards isolating it.

The rise of the Chinese super-economy and rivalry with the US for control over energy supplies and resources is part of a global New Great Game. An arms race and ferocious competition to court oil and gas producing states is as important as China's clout in global economic institutions.

A pathological race for resources stretching from the Greater Middle East to the Eurasian landmass through to the Pacific is on and could herald a new epoch of proxy conflicts ( e.g Syria ), terrorist blowback from destabilised regions, resource wars and the rise of authoritarian security states.

In that sense, China, far from being an anomaly with its authoritarian political structure and turbocapitalist economy, may be a model that other states across the globe would start to converge towards, including the democratic states of Europe and the US ( as predicted in Huxley's Brave New World revisited )