Are Russia and China Sabotaging American Policy in Afghanistan?

By Anthony Cordesman

… To the extent there is any United States strategy, it seems to lie in the hope that peace negotiations will begin with the Taliban, that the Taliban is exhausted enough to make concessions, and the United States will then be able to leave with something close to victory. No one seems to want to remember how such a seeming “victory” played out in Vietnam, or how peace talks ended in giving political victory to elements of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and to the Maoists in Nepal.

Given these conditions, Russia and China have little incentive to support the United States. Russia may be determined to put pressure on the United States wherever it can. At the same time, one needs to be careful about assuming that either Russia or China is seeking to sabotage American efforts in Afghanistan, rather than react to the growing possibility that the United States will win every battle, lose the war, and leave out of eventual frustration and exhaustion. The question General David Petraeus asked about Iraq in 2003 has become steadily less relevant to the war in Afghanistan with every year of fighting. How does this end? The right questions for the war in Afghanistan are does this war ever end? And how long will the United States stay?...

To put it bluntly, the United States now has no regional friends on the borders of Afghanistan, and few common interests with Russia or China. The only good news for the United States is that the Russian and Chinese roles in Afghanistan are much more driven by self-interest than hostility.

Read on.