Rise and Fall of Hillary's American Silk Road
As we look to the future of this region, let’s take this precedent as inspiration for a long-term vision for Afghanistan and its neighbors. Let’s set our sights on a new Silk Road – a web of economic and transit connections that will bind together a region too long torn apart by conflict and division.
- Hillary Clinton, 2011
Hillary Clinton once had an ambitious idea.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rolled out the new plan, called the New Silk Road Initiative, last month. In the U.S. vision, she said: “Turkmen gas fields could help meet both Pakistan’s and India’s growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond.”
The idea was created by Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The plan was then approved and pushed by Gen. David Petraeus, before being announced by Hillary.
Almost immediately people were saying that it couldn't be done. Why? Because there were too many political and military rivalries in the area. (Which I guess is new to central Asia, because the ancient Silk Road required peace for it to function. LOL)
However, the purpose of an American Silk Road was never to actually help the people of the region.
As Marlene Laruelle writes in a new book, Mapping Central Asia, which includes a great chapter on the revived metaphor of the New Silk Road: "The underlying geo-economic rationales of these Roads is to exclude Moscow from new geopolitical configurations."
If your purpose is to create a large trade network, but the real purpose was to exclude several large nations in the area from that network, then you've crippled your initiative from the start. When you think about it, the easiest was to prevent a rival country from using that trade network is to never make the trade network in the first place.
No surprise when Hillary's plan never got off the ground. Meanwhile, China had heard of the plan and liked it.
So by 2013 Mattis had zeroed out the funding for the New Silk Road tiger team at CENTCOM. China turned the tables on America by filling this gap with its own version of the New Silk Road which it called “One Belt, One Road.” In contrast to America surrendering its New Silk Road strategy, Beijing was serious. China committed itself to a $1.4 trillion New Silk Road plan. To finance this commitment, Beijing created a New Silk Road Bank and an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.How was China so successful in turning the tables on America? And why is America so reluctant to actually implement its version of the New Silk Road plan? The short answer is China understands how to connect economics and security in its foreign policy. In contrast, American foreign policy keeps economics and security in separate silos. For the most part, America tries to solve conflicts in the world militarily.
Years later, the idea of a New Silk Road in Afghanistan is spooky, scary, and a threat to the U.S.
This second headline we need to dive in deeper.
for China, it holds the dazzling prospect of ending the country’s dependence on seaborne trade - trade that is at the mercy of the US Navy’s control of the world’s key "choke-points" - allowing it to import its energy needs and export its goods without a shipping container in sight, neutralising perhaps the last remaining element of US preponderance at a stroke.
And Afghanistan - the gateway between Central Asia and South Asia - is fundamental to the realisation of this vision. “Without Afghan connectivity,” said the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan in 2016, “there is no way to connect China with the rest of the world.”But it is precisely because a peaceful Afghanistan has such potential for global south integration that it cannot be tolerated by the US.
“We may expect that the CIA will try to stand up an Afghan counter-insurgency [sic] to the new government,” wrote Alastair Crooke, former MI6 liaison officer to the Mujahideen. While the Asia Times noted that “an unstable Afghanistan that exports terror threats to strategic rivals Russia, China and Iran is actually in Washington’s geopolitical interest”.Given the current US National Defense Strategy’s brazen admission that “interstate strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security”, and its commitment to “forcing” competitors “to confront conflict under adverse conditions”, such worries seem sadly well placed.
Now you know why the U.S. stole billions of dollars from Afghanistan in order to spark a man-made famine.
The US has frozen the entirety of Afghanistan’s $9.5bn central bank reserves, and the IMF has cancelled its lending to the country, leaving the new government unable to pay the salaries of government officials or for imports.
Comments
This is an amazing number
from being a global empire
Withdrawing military operations in Afghan was ugly
Freezing their assets is even uglier. Trading war for famine is not a great choice.
Hopefully the new BRICS agreements will smooth out that process.
American interests require cutting the silk purse to maintain their hegemony.
Further indication of the western central banks limiting role.
Strangulating nations' economies in a rapidly changing market and military
evolution shows just how short sighted the IMF neoliberal agenda is.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
I was very angry
I was very angry , learning some things from your main post on the Silk Road.
After all the horror we have rained on Afghanistan, we are engaging in more horror.
I so hope China, with the help and support of other countries, can establish this lifeline for Afghanistan.
Let's try and keep track here...
Yemen.
Afghanistan.
The economic casualties of lockdown and the war on home ownership.
An often-coercive global medical experiment that has basically-healthy people dropping like flies for "no apparent reason".
The cutting-off of some of the world's largest "breadbaskets".
The 6th Great Mass-Extinction.
How many Holocaust-comparable events is "our" government presently overseeing?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
If the government is 'overseeing' depopulation
makes one wonder what is 'overseeing' the government.
Critical mass extinction helps which group? Oh, yeah it's
in favor of the ruling class.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
IS it, though?
Fewer 99% = less competition = less expendability = a shift toward a seller's market for labor
The Black Death was indeed an Apocalypse-Horseman for High Feudalism, and one of the key midwives of the Renaissance; its impact on world history can hardly be overstated ("History of the Plague" would easily be worth its own 400-level college history course - hell, "Plageuology" could be its own historical sub-discipline, and I'll be rather disappointed if it already isn't!).
We've even already seen that this time around; the pandemic's done the "impossible" and reignited America's labor movement.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
The Silk Road is an increasingly important reality
...for the World. As I understand it, China's main route for the BRI does not run through Afghanistan. There are many connecting spurs on the rail route, including one that goes to Pakistan.
Here's an important new summary that offers instant expertise to those interested:
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Thanks for the link to BRICS 14th summary
very informative.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Glad it's helpful.
It is probably the most important global event in the world right now. It is changing everything already. Information about the project is generally withheld in the West.
The same (British) authors also provide the best BRI Briefing, that I know of.
Biden arrived at the G7 with a "Build Back Better" plan to compete with the BRI. It will exclude China and Russia, but hook up the rest of the participants.
It's probably the last we'll ever hear of it.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
@Pluto's Republic Brics also has the world
Brics also has the world's 2 largest authoritarian regimes as members. Whereas the G7 are all highly functioning democracies. I don't think India, Brazil, and South Africa are much ideologically aligned with those two countries other than wanting cheap oil and weapons systems. India is buying a couple of ships of the same type that Ukraine blew up for the tune of billions.
I'd think most people in the world would wish their country to be more like Japan and Germany not like Russia or China. Notice where immigrants head?
Please check out Sima's OT
You just may be wrong.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981