Cold War 2

As Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan remains silent on the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Uyghurs, concern is mounting that Turkey will shift its alliance more permanently to the China-Russian bloc, a shift which would stabilize some parts of the Middle-East but destabilize others - and Africa. Threatened with sanctions from the US and the EU, President Tayyip Erdogan is looking to China for more economic assistance. The breakdown of relations between the US and Turkey has been steady and ongoing. As the Arab Spring turned more and more into an Arab Winter, Turkey and the US found themselves more and more at odds with each other, particularly in Syria. With the advent of ISIS, the United States supported PKK-linked Kurds in Syria while Turkey continued supporting the jihadists. Yet after the 2015 Russian intervention and the US-backed attempted coup in 2016, Turkey made the strategic decision to help Russia in their efforts to bring peace to Syria. As more and more rebels fou...

As the United States continues to pivot toward the Pacific, China has one ace in the hole: Afghanistan. Should the US pull out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9-11, China would be well positioned with its strategic partners Iran and Pakistan to fund instability and chaos there - and time it with its own invasion of Taiwan. Like the Obama Administration with Iraq, the Biden Administration looks set to make a strategic blunder with its withdrawal from Afghanistan. US President Joe Biden is setting his sights on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks to militarily withdraw from Afghanistan. Certainly in the past 20 years Al-Qaeda's global network has been decimated - but Al-Qaeda is not the threat to Afghanistan's future: Chinese strategic partners Pakistan and Iran are. Although Pakistani-Taliban relations are well known, the Islamic Republic of Iran has long favoured the Afghan government over the Taliban. Whether or not Iran will change this strategic calcul...