The New “Silk Road?” – USA Gov Policy

This October marks the eighth anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s trip to the capital of Kazahkstan, Nur Sultan, where he proposed the creation of a new Silk Road Economic Belt connecting China with the West. Known today as the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative 丝绸之路经济带), it encompasses regions once part of the original Silk Road, including the isolated Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan. Few people exclusive of political and military analysts studying this part of Central Asia have paid much attention to this Corridor. The Wakhan’s 1,200 villages, covering 4,200 square miles, have a total population of just over one million today. There is very little hard infrastructure, and the Corridor remains poor with poppy production for drugs and the mining of rare gems serving as its main sources of income. There is a 26% literacy rate and 79% of the population is without potable water. In recent years China has made overtures to the leaders in the region offering to build roads and develop infrastructure that will better connect it to the outside world. At the same time Beijing keeps its 47-mile-long border with the Wakhan closed to avoid drug trafficking into the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. What calculus is China using to justify its involvement in the Wakhan?

The Corridor is a strategic zone that has piqued China’s interest over the millennium. Beginning in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries BCE the Wakhan linked China with the Mediterranean over the original Silk Road and supported trade with the West. Alexander the Great is said to have passed through the Wakhan in the 13th century. In the two decades since the Taliban fell, CCP officials have been holding meeting with the Taliban leaders left in northeastern Afghanistan. This raises speculation about China’s strategic plans for the Corridor now that they are again in power in Kabul.

President Xi often speaks of the period of humiliation China suffered 100-150 years ago during the Unequal Treaties period when Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the US, France, and Russia forced the country to concede many of its sovereign and territorial rights. He openly states that he intends to see China regain the prestige it lost by forcing the Western world to conform to Chinese standards of trade and accept its role as “the” global leader. One of Xi’s immediate purposes in the Wakhan is to secure a shorter trade route to Europe through northern Afghanistan. It is rough terrain and will be expensive to build roads or a railway. Most trade analysts in Washington say China would have to overcome major constraints to fund and build such a transportation system through the Wakhan. There appears to be more sinister answers to China’s regional interests.

The Wahken Corridor is resource rich with rubies, emeralds, lapis lazuli, and something even more critical to monopolizing its power – rare earth elements (REE’s). Chinese territory contains 36% of the world’s REE’s. It also processes most of the remaining REE’s from other nations. In effect, China controls over 95% of the world market. The physical properties of REE’s, including their magnetic characteristics, make them a good fit for high technology products. They are required to make everything from cell phones to military weapons work. China’s support of the Taliban makes access to this mineral rich region more likely. China could further strengthen its stranglehold on the global market with Afghanistan’s mineral resources. In 2019 China began work on a major road leading over the Wakhjir pass into the Wakhan with the intent to increase trade connections with the local Wakhi people.

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China also is concerned about cross-border solidarity in the Wakhan. If it has to collaborate with the Taliban to secure it borders it will continue to do so. Xi sees this as the best option for controlling the movement of the Uyghur population in Tajikistan and the other Central Asian nations. He wants to halt their crossing into China and causing unrest. Xi will not tolerate political upheaval inside his country and is determined to eliminate the Uyghur opposition and any of its foreign support. The Central Asian country of Tajikistan, immediately to the north of Afghanistan, relies heavily on China for the vast majority of it imports and foreign investment. It is cooperating with Beijing. Xi recently was able to resolve a border dispute with the country in its favor and acquired 386 square miles of Tajik land.

Since President Xi Jinping assumed office, he has continued to consolidate his power inside China and to extend this country’s influence abroad. He follows an old adage of Sun Tzu – stand on higher ground to see farther. Xi saw what was going to happen in Afghanistan and prepared well ahead of time to take advantage of the situation. The West must improve its understanding of how China operates in both the short- and long-term or be left in a position of weakness, only able to react to aggressive moves by China as it cements its plan to be the next global hegemon.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

Illustration: Pixabay

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Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.