Part of US strategy in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, examples of failed states we’re trying to turn around, is to provide security so businesses and investments develop. So it is good, and not surprising, that China’s businesses and investors are attracted. We need China to help develop these countries.
But there is a larger, unanswered set of strategic issues here. Are we in some global competition with China such that the US should be concerned about China’s growing business influences in strategic regions? (perhaps) Is it in our national interest to continue a system where China loans us the money for our military efforts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (so that we pay the costs in dollars and blood), while they invest and do business? (yes and no) Or should the US encourage China to also pay the costs, both in blood (troops) and Chinese currency, of the military efforts to stabilize and nation-build failed states? (yes) But, then, would we need to worry about their troops being in places like Iraq and Afghanistan?(perhaps, but we need the troops and the funding)
Chinese businesses are coming to Afghanistan and Iraq. A Wall Street Journal article “U.S. and China Work Together to Rebuild Afghanistan” by Michael M. Phillips and Shai Oster reports (here):
The U.S. and China have formed an uneasy alliance in the effort to build stability in Afghanistan.
In a valley long known as a Taliban haven, American troops live alongside Chinese road workers. The troops put their lives on the line protecting the workers. The workers put their lives on the line building a road the U.S. military desperately wants completed.
"Asphalt is ammunition," says Lt. Col. Kimo Gallahue, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 87th Infantry Regiment, quoting a phrase popular in the military. "Roads are one of the biggest needs in this province."
The Chinese are in Afghanistan mostly to make deals. "This is business -- we can work in Afghanistan or any other country," says Wang Shangkuei, an engineer for China Railway Shisiju Group Corp., a state-owned company with a $50 million contract funded by Italian aid money to grade and pave 33 miles of two-lane road past Momaki village in Wardak province. But, he says, "if there's fighting, we can't do the work."
What's happening in Afghanistan is an extreme example of the way the U.S. and China must work with each other around the globe. China needs the U.S. to protect global trade routes vital to Beijing's export-oriented economy. The U.S. needs China's investment to boost unsteady, but strategically important, economies. Chinese companies were among some of the earliest to re-enter Iraq….
International strategist Tom Barnett commented (here):
Interesting stuff, being the second article I've seen on such cooperation (the other involving a copper mine), but the basic M.O. is the same: they build and we guard.
So in a Taliban-infested valley, we have Chinese road workers living alongside U.S. troops. This is described as an "uneasy alliance." Why, I don't know, since both sides put their lives on the line, as the piece notes ("Asphalt is ammunition," says one U.S. officer; the phrase has become a bit of a mantra in Afghanistan)…..