Follow us on social

150803-f-jf989-017-scaled

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.”

Thanks to our readers and supporters, Responsible Statecraft has had a tremendous year. A complete website overhaul made possible in part by generous contributions to RS, along with amazing writing by staff and outside contributors, has helped to increase our monthly page views by 133%! In continuing to provide independent and sharp analysis on the major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the tumult of Washington politics, RS has become a go-to for readers looking for alternatives and change in the foreign policy conversation. 

 

We hope you will consider a tax-exempt donation to RS for your end-of-the-year giving, as we plan for new ways to expand our coverage and reach in 2025. Please enjoy your holidays, and here is to a dynamic year ahead!

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
Neville Chamberlain
Top image credit: Everett Collection via shutterstock.com

It's time to retire the Munich analogy

Global Crises

Contemporary neoconservatism is, in its guiding precepts and policy manifestations, a profoundly ahistorical ideology. It is a millenarian project that not just eschews but explicitly rejects much of the inheritance of pre-1991 American statecraft and many generations of accumulated civilizational wisdom from Thucydides to Kissinger in its bid to remake the world.

It stands as one of the enduring ironies of the post-Cold War era that this revolutionary and decidedly presentist creed has to shore up its legitimacy by continually resorting to that venerable fixture of World War II historicism, the 1938 Munich analogy. The premise is simple, and, for that reason, widely resonant: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in his “lust for peace,” made war inevitable by enabling Adolf Hitler’s irredentist ambitions until they could no longer be contained by any means short of direct confrontation between the great powers.

keep readingShow less
ukraine war

Diplomacy Watch: Will Assad’s fall prolong conflict in Ukraine?

QiOSK

Vladimir Putin has been humiliated in Syria and now he has to make up for it in Ukraine.

That’s what pro-war Russian commentators are advising the president to do in response to the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to the New York Times this week. That sentiment has potential to derail any momentum toward negotiating an end to the war that had been gaining at least some semblance of steam over the past weeks and months.

keep readingShow less
Romania's election canceled amid claims of Russian interference
Top photo credit: Candidate for the presidency of Romania, Calin Georgescu, and his wife, Cristela, arrive at a polling station for parliamentary elections, Dec. 1, 2024 in Mogosoaia, Romania. Georgescu one the first round in the Nov. 24 presidential elections but those elections results have been canceled (Shutterstock/LCV)

Romania's election canceled amid claims of Russian interference

QiOSK

The Romanian Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision to annul the first round results in the country’s Nov. 24 presidential election and restart the contest from scratch raises somber questions about Romanian democracy at a time when the European Union is being swept by populist, eurosceptic waves.

The court, citing declassified intelligence reports, ruled that candidate Călin Georgescu unlawfully benefitted from a foreign-backed social media campaign that propelled him from an obscure outsider to the frontrunner by a comfortable margin. Romanian intelligence has identified the foreign backer as Russia. Authorities claim that Georgescu’s popularity was artificially inflated by tens of thousands of TikTok accounts that promoted his candidacy in violation of Romanian election laws.

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.