Afghanistan: America's Weak Link


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 calculus remains to be seen - but recent history shows Iran has substantially strong reasons for such a betrayal, especially if the end result is defeat for the United States of America.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was hit hard by the Trump Administration. In 2018 President Donald Trump tore up the Iran Nuclear Deal, resulting in snapback sanctions and protests in Lebanon and Iraq. Iran was under pressure financially and it almost lost Iraq for good. Certainly, if President Trump had been reelected in 2020, Iraq would have likely left Iran's sphere of influence, even if Lebanon would likely not.

But more important than these was the killing of Iranian Quds force leader Qassem Soleimani, a move which prevented the US from a Benghazi-like scenario in Iraq in 2020. Qassem Soleimani was a thorn in the US' side for the entirety of the Iraq War (2003 - 2011), but neither the Bush nor Obama Administrations wanted to deal with ramifications for assassinating him. President Trump's calculation was different - and the reprisal by the Islamic Republic for such an enormous loss was comparatively small, with a dozen ballistic missiles being fired at US-Iraqi bases on January 7th 2020.

Qassem Soleimani was replaced by Esmail Qaani, who until being head of the Quds force commanded covert Quds force operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Change in US Administrations is unlikely to assuage the boiling anger of both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Esmail Qaani at being so humiliated by the Trump Administration, and President Biden's Afghan withdrawal is likely to present a perfect opportunity for humiliating revenge on the United States by Iran, and that in spite of renegotiations for another nuclear deal.

But China's strategic calculus is what is most likely to land Afghanistan in chaos. China has wanted to invade neighbouring Taiwan for decades, and an unstable Afghanistan, although inconvenient for neighbours Iran and Pakistan, provides China with a perfect opportunity to keep the US engaged away from the Pacific. The Chinese Communist Party is likely to apply substantial pressure on its strategic partners Iran and Pakistan to get both nations into funding a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. While Pakistan's support for the Taliban is unquestionable, the Islamic Republic of Iran is likely to be harder - though certainly not impossible - for China to persuade.

Should China persuade both Iran and Pakistan to back the Taliban and bring down the Afghan government, the United States would be faced with a crisis of almost equal measure to the ISIS invasion of Iraq in 2014. If the US is unable to count on either Pakistan or Iran for support in Afghanistan due to Chinese pressure, the Biden Administration would likely be forced into humiliating concessions for the Iran-Pakistan-China bloc in order to return. Then, while the US is reengaged with a chaotic and unstable Afghanistan, China would make good on its threat to invade Taiwan.

What is even worse is the possibility of another terrorist organisation rising out of the ensuing chaos in Afghanistan, one as extreme or more so than ISIS. Should that happen, the United States would be completely distracted and consumed by Afghanistan, and Taiwan would likely fall to the Chinese Communist Party.

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