“China’s involvement in the AfPak issue is, and will likely remain for some time, generally convergent with U.S. interests, given a basic continuity in China’s strategic outlook toward Washington,” concluded a recent think tank report by Michael Swaine, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (follow the link for a pdf download).
The report, a punchy 12-page analysis of “Chinese interests, policies, and apparent debates with regard to the AfPak problem,” deftly outlines the myriad of often-competing strategic interests in the region that add texture to China’s foreign policy and the debate surrounding China’s development and peace-keeping initiatives in the region.
Image taken from Xinhua
Regarding China’s stance on the Afghanistan side of the AfPak puzzle, Swaine writes, “Beijing has pursued policies that combine support for Afghanistan’s stability, prosperity, and independence through strong official statements and contributions to international political and economic assistance and counterterrorism efforts.” But while China has in some respects reached out a helping hand to Afghanistan, these efforts have fallen short of genuine contributions to underwriting regional security, an issue that Swaine suggests is of critical importance to many policymakers and strategists in Beijing (and Washington, for that matter). According to Swaine, this stance – that is, offering economic assistance to Afghanistan without commiting boots on the ground – is the subject of an energetic debate in Beijing that has raised the prospect of a more robust Chinese commitment in the months and years to come. At the heart of the debate is the question of whether or not Beijing can somehow leverage its assistance into a quid pro quo with Washington: contributions to Afghanistan in exchange for no weapons sales to Taiwan by the US, or no meetings with the Dalai Lama, to name a couple of ideas being floated. But while some analysts herald the eventual deployment of Chinese troops to the region, Swaine takes a more reserved tack:
While some analysts have argued…that Beijing might deploy forces to Afghanistan (assuming the United States desires such a move) or perhaps even apply pressure on Islamabad in support of the Obama strategy, in return for some very significant trade-offs in U.S. policy involving… support for Chinese behavior toward terrorists and separatists in Xinjiang, and other “core” issues. However, given both the hugely negative consequences for Washington (both domestically and internationally) and the uncertainty that the Chinese leadership would
actually perform as promised, it is highly unlikely that the Obama administration would seriously contemplate making such trade-offs (even if Beijing were to offer them).
Although Swaine doesn’t clearly assess how much currency these debates have in diplomatic circles in Beijing (i.e. who exactly is generating these ideas and whether or not these thinkers are influential), which is a major shortcoming of the report, his endnotes do suggest that these ideas have been widely dessiminated in academia and the defense establishment, and are worth at least a brief gander by analysts, especially readers of Chinese.
The report goes on to describe the implications of China’s Afpak strategy for the United States. The implications identified by Swaine include (but aren’t limited to): Beijing contractors “free-riding” by taking on lucrative development projects in Afghanistan with their security virtually underwritten by NATO forces; corrupt practices of Chinese officials in winning mineral ore projects in Afghanistan; and Chinese potentially leveraging American misadventures in the region to it’s strategic advantage in other realms.
In what is perhaps the most interesting section of the report, Swaine describes China’s murky ties with Pakistan, a relationship he acknowledges is obfuscated by a concerted effort on both sides to keep their diplomatic hand close to their sleeves:
China enjoys close, long-standing ties with Pakistani political, military, and intelligence agencies, based on a strong and consistent commitment to provide both conventional and nuclear weapons and ballistic missile assistance and intelligence to Islamabad in its ongoing struggle with India, as well as a variety of mutual support in combating domestic terrorism, including an anti-terror consultative mechanism set up in 2003, an agreement signed in 2005, and joint anti-terror exercises.
The report, while far from comprehensive (India’s place in China’s Afpak calculus, for one thing, is relegated to a couple of sentences; the restive region of Xinjiang and homegrown Chinese terrorism is another section that is inadequately addressed), is a very good introduction to the knotty strategic imperatives that continue to temper the geopolitics of the region. Drawing heavily from Chinese sources from both government sources and academic circles, Swaine provides insight into the relatively fluid debate taking place in Beijing and their implications for American, Afghani, and Pakistani policymakers alike. It’s findings are of import for military experts, China scholars, and anyone interested in US foreign policy in general.
