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Lawmaker floats another reason to stay in Afghanistan: Keep minerals from China

As the May 1 deadline to withdraw nears, hawks' arguments for staying are getting more creative.

Reporting | Asia-Pacific

The United States should stay in Afghanistan because China wants the country’s mineral wealth, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R–Ill.) argued Monday.

Afghans “want the United States to stiffen their spine alongside NATO,” he told the audience at The Hill’s virtual Future of Defense summit. “If we pull out and NATO pulls out, I think it’s pretty obvious it’s going to be pretty difficult for the Afghan government to stay.”

“You look at, frankly, the mineral wealth of Afghanistan, you see how much China wants that to strengthen their grip on the world,” Kinzinger added.

Afghanistan sits atop between $1 trillion and $3 trillion of minerals, including vital rare earth minerals, according to various estimates. The Afghan government recently sought to renegotiate a major mining concession it granted China a decade ago as tensions flared up between the two countries, Foreign Policy reported in January.

Kinzinger's comments come only a few days after President Joe Biden said it will be “hard to meet” the Doha peace agreement with the Taliban, which requires that U.S. troops leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.

“It is not my intention to stay there for a long time,” the president told reporters at a Thursday press conference. “We will leave. The question is when we leave.”

Kinziner, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that the United States will be engaged in a “generational competition” with China.

Last week, the defense contractor Lockheed Martin cited competition with China as a reason why it should be able to get around antitrust laws.

Other officials have tried to use an alleged threat from China to justify longstanding U.S. military engagements in the region.

“You have to think in terms of the globe. You don’t have the luxury of focusing on any one theater,” argued General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, in speech to the Middle East Institute last June. “One of the Wild West areas of competition is the [Middle East and Central Asia], where we see China moving in.”


U.S. Representative and Illinois Air National Guard Maj. Adam Kinzinger thanks Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Airmen for their service during an urban evasion tactics familiarization demonstration as part of the representative’s visit Aug. 3, 2015, at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. Col. Jonathan Duncan, the 336th Training Group commander, said it’s important for our nation’s leaders to understand the rigorous training requirements asked of our service men and women, especially those who are at risk of isolation and must survive as part of their “Return with Honor” mission statement. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Benjamin W. Stratton)
Reporting | Asia-Pacific
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

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iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

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On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

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