Essay: China’s role in the war on terror

All the countries in the region are concerned about terrorism and want to eradicate it. China is also facing the problem of terrorism in her Xinjiang‘s region and accuses U.S, Pakistan and Afghanistan for formulation of Taliban.
China does consider presence of U.S. military in the region an important factor responsible for aggravating political and social disorders and demands UN supervised mission of peacekeeping in Pakistan and Afghanistan to put an end to U.S. influence in the region.22 Pakistan‘s position in U.S. war against terrorism is as a frontline ally after 9/11 but it already had closer associations with the U.S. in 1950s when it was a part of Cold War alliance. In spite of the fact that this alliance threatened China, convergence between China and Pakistan was not affected by it. China did have certain strategic concerns over U.S. military presence in Pakistan especially after 9/11 especially because of developing U.S.-India linkage which will ultimately affect China‘s strategic aspirations.
China does have an idea of possible threats to her sovereignty because of presence of U.S. military in the region and modernizing her military to cope up with the global standards. Her military modernization doesn‘t involve the mission of challenging superiority of U.S. military only but also to weigh her defense relations with her neighbors like Japan, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan etc. First step taken by Chinese authorities to modernize the army is to make them more efficient by intensive trainings and realistic exercises followed by next step of bringing three military services in practice of joint operations rather than working in isolation. China tries to challenge U.S. overwhelming superiority wherever and whenever it is possible. On the other hand, U.S. demands China to follow a responsible stakeholder model and after developing and deploying an efficient army, it should co-operate with the powers in dealing with international turmoil including terrorism.24
China‘s aim is to protect her boundaries because presence of U.S. military in Pakistan and Afganistan may pose any serious threat to her and for that it is investing in various aggressive military developments. China is spending a lot on her defense in her budget and has also changed her policy from no first use minimum deterrent to first use. China is also trying to challenge U.S. hegemony and ensuring her safer side by investing in chemical and biological programs to make weapons. Moreover, she is trying to create or become a part of different military alliances to counter any offense on her boundaries.25
These efforts of China to ensure her defense may be viewed as U.S.A. is far ahead from China in her military technology and arms race and because China perceives her as strategic competitor, ignoring the fact whether she accepts it publicly or not, she has to work over modernizing her military, weapons and even nuclear program too.26 China not only has to work on her defense because she considers her a principal threat but she is also concerned about giving signals to other countries like India, Japan and Russia that she has a potential to deal with the conflicts, if imposed on her.27
Since, China is developing her conventional and modern weapons; she does have concerns on Pakistan‘s war against terrorism that Pakistan is largely dependent on U.S. for purchase of weapons.28 Pakistan on the other hand has certain budget constraints and need to make strategic decisions to fulfill her quality and quantity needs in terms of weaponry. Pakistan may get quality weapons from west at higher cost and meet the quantity may get less modernized weapons from China at a cheaper cost because in spite of all the modernizations, China is still unable to meet U.S. in technology of arms development. But Pakistan has to keep both the countries in her foreign policy by accommodating their demands and needs.29
On the other hand, U.S. doesn‘t see China‘s role positive in the war on terror. U.S. has certain reservations that China is not extending her cooperation for the U.S. led war on terror as she has not cooperated with the U.S. army in training of Afghan forces instead rejected it as an attempt of practicing hegemony in the region.30 On the other hand, China has cleared her position by claiming that she is facing real problems in the course of responding to war on terror. She wants to extend her support and cooperation for the sake of resolving issue of terrorism in the region but on the other hand she doesn‘t want to be an ally of U.S. in any case where its sovereignty is expected to be compromised. It is better to be a part of international efforts led by UN against terrorism rather than U.S. because China also wants issue of Xinjiang separatists to be settled.
The present US-NATO war in Afghanistan has already embroiled Pakistan since the mid-2000s. The on-going US-NATO’s Afghan war against the Afghan Taliban is being used to further rearrange geopolitical configuration to the advantage of US-NATO. It is a foregone conclusion that the US presence in Afghanistan will be redesigned to become an effective element of its strategy of encirclement of China and Russia. The much-hyped US with-drawal will only be a drawdown in the number of US troops on ground in Afghanistan. The US shall continue to maintain a credible military presence in Afghanistan probably com-prising ten to fifteen thousand Special Operations forces capable of dealing with both the risks of propping up a weak Afghan government and regional terrorist threats (Sanger 2012). It will also readily facilitate huge reinforcements against any strategic ambitions that may threaten US primacy in the region.
Pakistan, therefore, faces multiple geostrategic challenges in military and non-military forms. As the most powerful country in the current inter-state system, US shall try to maintain its global supremacy at all costs. America’s unparalleled economic supremacy in the world will increasingly come to be challenged by China as it continues its rise, though at present China is far behind the US. America is already apprehensive of resurgent post-Soviet Russia, and, if past history is any guide, the potential for competition will be the dominant tendency in US-Russia and Russia-NATO relations, the veneer of cooperation notwithstanding. This will recreate the old Cold War dynamics where the US may increasingly view China as a counter-weight against Russia. This will create favourable  conditions for China and Pakistan. However, the benefits of China-Russia-Pakistan nexus, if it succeeds in developing, will be greater.
US strategic outlook considers American intervention in the regions surrounding China and Russia as the most credible guarantee for ensuring stability in the Sino-Russian regional neighbourhood and believes that “the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional powers depends (even in the absence of specific US commitments to some of them) on the international status quo reinforced by America’s global pre-eminence” (Brzezinski 2012). This strategic mind-set is enough to put at rest any false hopes regarding American intentions to withdraw any time soon from Afghanistan or from the region at large. The continued presence of US military forces and bases in Afghanistan is a sure recipe for continued conflict and anarchy in the region which will negatively impact all plans for peaceful economic development of the region. Such a situation poses the biggest challenge to China- Pakistan cooperation. However, there is no other viable option but to assiduously pursue this cooperation, predominantly in the non-military aspects, as a counterweight to American military presence in the region to be able to create a strong basis for future peace in Afghanistan and the region.
66. Pakistan, therefore, faces multiple geostrategic challenges in military and non-military forms. As the most powerful country in the current inter-state system, US shall try to maintain its global supremacy at all costs. America’s unparalleled economic supremacy in the world will increasingly come to be challenged by China as it continues its rise, though at present China is far behind the US. America is already apprehensive of resurgent post-Soviet Russia, and, if past history is any guide, the potential for competition will be the dominant tendency in US-Russia and Russia-NATO relations, the veneer of cooperation notwithstanding. This will recreate the old Cold War dynamics where the US may increasingly view China as a counter-weight against Russia. This will create favourable conditions for China and Pakistan. However, the benefits of China-Russia-Pakistan nexus, if it succeeds in developing, will be greater.
67. Nevertheless, America has always perceived China warily. China’s sustained rapid economic development has driven it to the top of US global security agenda and has resulted in what has been termed the US pivot to Asia. Perhaps the only other country that is of an equally high concern to the American security establishment is Russia. The US defence review, unveiled in January, 2012, and titled, “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”, poses China as the ace US defence concern and envisages US Defence posture “will of necessity rebalance toward Asia-Pacific”. This review further states, “China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our [American] power projection capabilities … Accordingly the U.S. military will invest as required to ensure its ability to operate effectively in anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) environments”. This Asia Pivot is designed to curtail any future Russian movement in Asia- Pacific as well.
An aspect of the current war in Afghanistan that escapes the attention of many is the fact that, in many ways, this war is becoming increasingly similar to the Opium Wars waged by the European colonial powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over the past decade, under US and NATO watch, Afghanistan has progressed from zero opium cultivation to becoming the world’s major supplier of opium-based narcotics. Today, Afghanistan is practically a narco-state supplying more than 90% of the world’s demand for opiates valued at over US$40 billion annually, with around US$60 billion generated in revenue for traffickers in 2009 from Afghan opiates (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2010, 2011). Narco-money is now providing huge resources to terrorist outfits in this region as well as non-accountable funds for hostile foreign intelligence agencies pursuing their subversive agendas in the region. It is puzzling that US and NATO allowed this to happen under their noses and that they have no visible plans, either short- term or long-term, to tackle this narcotic menace. Afghanistan as a narco-state is a sure recipe for a failed state which will continue to feed criminality and instability into the region.
India will continue to undermine any Pakistani effort to mend fences with Afghanistan. It was India which supported the Northern Alliance (NA), even in the UN, while Taliban ruled over 90% of Afghanistan. It is instructive to note here that it was India and the Northern Alliance which assisted the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It will suppress any Afghan desire to normalise relations with Pakistan through injections of newly accumulated Indian finance capital and contrived evocation of the past friction between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The US war on terror has provided an opportunity to India to consolidate its position in Kabul due to the domination of the Northern Alliance there. Regardless of the misguided convergence of Indian and Afghan interests with regard to Pakistan, India’s ability to influence Afghanistan will prove less effective in the face of a sustained Pakistani initiative to utilise cultural commonalities, locational complementarities, economic interdependence, and the re-emergence of Taliban as responsible power sharers in a future Afghan dispensation.
70. The attraction that Afghanistan should feel in a good relationship with Pakistan has been weakened by factors like the war on terror. Pakistan’s success lies in playing its part for a peaceful Afghanistan and then making it a durable ally of Pakistan which has not historically been the case. Pakistan should, therefore, seek to befriend the Northern Alliance and thus aim at the prevention of the accumulation of second-order power in Indian hands over Afghanistan by strengthening its bilateral relationship with Afghanistan, by revitalising once-strong Pakistan-Iran relations and by bringing Afghanistan closer to China.
71. The mutual advantages of a deeper Pak-Afghan cooperation should be high-lighted. Indo-Afghan relationship, mainly focused on the Northern Alliance, cannot be half as useful to Afghanistan when the pashtuns, who form almost 50% of the population of Afghanistan, rejoin governance and the Northern Alliance shrinks to its due size in politics. Also, Pakistan should stress the pros of geographical contiguity in its dialogue with Afghan leaders. A stable Pak-Afghan relationship can open the doors for accelerated development of Afghanistan, Central Asia and Pakistan where China’s involvement in this process of integrated regional development will act as a catalyst. This would dovetail ideally with China’s own development as well. This will also allow Pakistan to gain access across the Wakhan Corridor, which separates Pakistan from Tajikistan, for reaching out to Central Asia and becoming a reliable partner in China’s developmental strategy in the region.
72. Pakistan should, therefore, expedite socio-economic bridging with Western China and build complementary bridges into Central Asia both through Afghanistan and Iran to link up with China’s vision of progress for Central Asia. Troubles in Xinjiang and Muslim-led terrorism will cause serious friction in the smooth development of China-Pakistan strategic and economic relationship. In fact, Pakistan fully recognises that the development of a strong economic relationship with China depends on the former’s ability to completely defeat militancy, terrorism and foreign-funded secessionist insurgency in Balochistan and assist China secure stability in Xinjiang, which is a core Chinese national interest. Therefore, Pakistan is fully committed to helping China achieve stability in Xinjiang. The causes for friction have been, and will continue to be,
Second, China-Pakistan military cooperation is conditional and contingent on the changing complexion of US-China relationship. It could be argued that this military co-operation was primarily initiated in a different world environment of the Cold War when China was confronted with an India-Soviet axis, on one hand, and Pacific US-Taiwan security perimeter, on the other. The first thrust is long extinct now but replaced to some extent by a US-India axis; the second perimeter is unpredictable and potentially unstable owing to US rebalancing of its force projection capabilities from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean and the potential for instability in South China Sea, south of Taiwan. However, the trend of future developments in this sphere may lead to outcomes in which US and China may reach some sort of accommodation due to an overriding concentration of Chinese ability to claim reintegration of Taiwan with China. The logic of economic relations between China and Taiwan may also lead to some form of mutually acceptable confederation which satisfies Chinese demands for reunification and Taipei’s insistence on autonomy.
95. Renegotiating a constructive, mature and less ad-hoc relationship with the US will help Chinese peaceful development. This could even make it possible for China and US to work together to counter the foreign elements of destabilization in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan. Pakistan will thus benefit from the peaceful rise of China and be afforded an opportunity to acquire regional prominence as a consequence of the rise of China as a global superpower.
4.7. Forging multilateralism
96. China has also expressed its interest in South Asian cooperation and has shown keen interest to cooperate with SAARC, since 2007 at least (Hailin 2009). This move to diversify its approach from one-to-one bilateralism to multilateral regional cooperation can lead to more enhanced cooperation between China and Pakistan if the two countries mutually reinforce each other’s regional outlook. This can happen through Pakistan’s support for SAARC membership of China and China supporting SCO membership for Pakistan. This bilateral reciprocity for furthering multilateralism will strengthen China-Pakistan relationship. Multilateral cooperation shall also benefit China because countries, like individuals, thrive on the goodwill of their friends.
97. China will be enabled to engage India constructively through and in SAARC. This will help in countering the growing Indo-US nexus in the region and make the Indian Ocean less contentious and provide a relatively smooth sailing to the advancement of Chinese interests in the region. Pakistan can compleREGIONAL GEO-STRATEGIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHINA-PAKISTAN COOPERATION 20
ment Chinese efforts to engage with SAARC through accentuating multilateral realism and capitalising on the US acknowledgment of the significance of Pakistan in Afghanistan (Akram 2009). China’s becoming a SAARC member may also reinvigorate the grouping that has been rendered ineffective due to Indian hegemonic ambitions, thereby helping it get out of the rut of non-achievement in which it seems to be perennially stuck due to Indian intransigence.
98. The expansionist trend of Indian foreign policy, that the US is now trying to harness for its New Silk Route Initiative to be used against China and help US further its strategic aims in the region, can also be countered effectively through the SAARC membership of China and SCO membership of Pakistan. Otherwise, there is a possibility that this Indo-US axis may become a future instrument to challenge Chinese access to Central Asia, Caucasus and beyond to Europe and help in choking access to the Strait of Malacca through the Andaman Sea.
99. To dominate through conflict is NATO’s speciality; and the absence of peace in Afghanistan and the on-going problem of isolation imposed on Iran increase the chal-lenges for Pakistan, especially to its plans for closer integration with the region. On the other hand, US-NATO is bound by the logic of its own interests to promote the economic development of the region which presupposes enhanced trade in the region. But the aspirations of the countries and peoples inhabiting the region may run counter to the underlying realities of US-NATO’s promotion of development.
100. As these contradictions play out, it will be witnessed that NATO, which is essentially a defence-based organisation, will find it harder to navigate peace than to act in conflict. This is the gap where China’s strategy and resources for the development of the region may also work in favour of peace.
101. This situation does provide China-Pakistan with the framework for regional integration that can be utilized and influenced through wise conduct and management of geopolitics. The New Silk Road Initiative of the US State Department should be viewed pragmatically and if possible, co-opted constructively and subordinated to China-Pakistan-led regional integration.
102. 9/11 gave a license to the US to expand its global military reach, threat and ap-plication of force in the name of pre-emption but the limits imposed by the very interna-tional Westphalian nation-state system which the US dominates, have restricted its power to redraw the geostrategic map to its preference. So far, this dialectical relationship between the logic of the system and the preferences of the most powerful element in the system has opened up a new field of action for emerging global powers like China and regionally important players like Pakistan. This helps China- Pakistan cooperation to improve its strategic position by promoting peace and multi-polarity in the global inter-state system. China is already meaningfully utilizing this systemic limit to the extension of US power not only in the region but in the world at large by promoting multilateral engagement to solve tensions in the inter-state system.
103. Pakistan should follow China’s lead and pursue multilateralism to build protective relationships with countries in different regions. It has already been pointed out that building such multilateral relationships in Southeast Asia and East Asia with countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia etc., will allow China-Pakistan cooperation to deepen and provide a meaningful foil to aggressive Indian overtures towards Central Asia. Using second-order neighbourhood relations with Central Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia would increase Pakistan’s geopolitical options. It shall also allow Pakistan to escape the rough edges of American foreign policy based on domination and subordination to American interest dressed with vigour.
73. Currently, the war in Afghanistan is proving unwinnable and costly for the US-NA-TO which has prompted the US to announce a withdrawal/drawdown by 2014. A post-exit or post-drawdown scenario would mean considerable security challenges for Pakistan. Moreover, the ruling consciousness in the Afghan Establishment and Government perceives Pakistan as an adversary rather than an ally. It will of necessity involve showing the actually desperate situation on ground in Afghanistan as under control and blaming Pakistan for providing sanctuary and support to Taliban so as to shift the responsibility for a failed military campaign from US-NATO squarely onto Pakistan. This will exacerbate these adverse perceptions even further. In order to deal with adversarial Afghan perceptions, Pakistan needs to promote a broad-based Afghan-led consensus for peace in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s attempt at fostering Afghan-led peace process will be facilitated by the fact that there is a US-sanctioned realisation in Kabul that Pakistan has a critical role to play to help the reconciliation process between Taliban and the current Afghan administration (Shaikh 2013).
74. One way of strengthening the desire for a strong relationship with Pakistan in the hearts of Afghans may be to bring order and security to Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In order for Pakistan to reap the maximum benefit from its relationship with Afghanistan, the Taliban (TTP) militancy needs to be defeated followed by the reintegration of the former Taliban militants into society. As a part of this strategy, development must take place on an emergency basis in FATA, affected areas of KPK and Balochistan, more quickly and more abundantly than it does in Afghanistan. However, militancy in KPK and Balochistan, fostered by foreign elements, must end for this development strategy to be successful.
75. The accelerated development of the two provinces, and especially the whole Pak- Afghan border belt, should take place on an urgent basis. It is needed to develop physical and social infrastructures there like roads, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, etc. The development of border-town markets should be fast-tracked and be linked to the national markets of both Pakistan and Afghanistan to allow Afghan traders to participate actively in these cross-border integrated markets. Chinese support and investments can prove crucial in this development strategy but this is conditional upon the establishment of peace and defeat of foreign-fomented terrorism.
76. The desire for participation in the booming economy next-door can be a strong motivation for Afghans to respond favourably to sincere friendly overtures of Pakistan. Islamabad may also help rebuild dilapidated higher educational infrastructure of Afghanistan and perhaps use the successful experience of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission to rehabilitate Afghan higher education.