A new Cold War between the United States and Russia is kicking off. Washington will again need its bases in #Afghanistan for its regional and global strategies to contain Russia and China while it is pivoting to the Far East to open up another front against China while it is already embroiled on the Ukrainian front against Russia. That is why Obama is personally involved in mediating between the two Afghan election candidates to somehow get a new, uncontested, uncontroversial president into power in Kabul who would sign the BSA. At this point, Russia will certainly act as a spoiler to American strategies for Afghanistan especially if it teams up with Iran. blogs.rediff/mkbhadrakumar/2014/07/26/new-cold-war-shadow-over-kabul/ What should #Pakistan be doing at this point? If the Americans get their BSA and their troops stay on in Afghanistan, theyll be somewhat dependent on supply routes running through Pakistan, which Pakistan would be able to use as a bargaining chip against Washington (but not too much). Should it work to keep the Americans in Afghanistan to serve as a check on the Afghan #Taliban? Should it work to push them out completely? Should it court Russia and Iran? Should it throw its lot with the US? It is our governments job to decide now just what the heck it should pursue in Afghanistan and make it happen. In light of the cut-throat Great Game going on right in Pakistans vicinity in ways that will directly affect Pakistans very survival and security in profound ways, this was the time for extremely bold, aggressive and pro-active diplomacy and geopolitical and military maneuvering on the part of Islamabad. But since we have been blessed with #NawazSharifs democracy, his government has absolutely NO foreign policy. He is his own foreign minister but has done absolutely nothing in this critical area, and he never shows his face in parliament to answer for his non-performance in it. Whatever you want to say about the Peoples Partys government of the previous 5 years, one thing where it performed extremely well was foreign policy, and to a significant extent it had reversed some of the terrible losses to Pakistans national interests that Musharraf had caused. At that time analysts like M. K. Bhadrakumar used to write extensively on Pakistans central importance in the Afghan question and on how much countries like Russia, China and Iran were looking to cozy up to Pakistan after they were impressed with how much it openly defied Washington with its strategic autonomy. Today, he makes hardly any mention of Pakistan when writing on Afghanistan, and we have Nawaz Sharif to thank for that. By the way, note how everyone is (very rightly) treating Afghanistan itself as a complete nobody in the whole fray; all it is good for is to provide a puppet leader to do the bidding of whichever foreign power controls the country (in this case the US); it has no independence or sovereignty of its own that it could assert to shape the regional situation as the centrally important country in a global all-against-all war in the natural resource-rich heart of Asia. The Afghans and their stone-age mentality and social setup just dont make them worthy of anything beyond perpetual servitude to foreign conquerors and perpetual poverty and national ruin, and that is exactly what they are getting. So please, Afghans, keep squabbling with each other and keep whipping up more tensions with Pakistan, which will only do you in even more.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000
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