With Donald Trump has endorsed the return of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a sign of the U.S. bosses’ anxiety about leaving a superpower vacuum in Central Asia and the Middle East. This 16-year-old war, the longest in U.S. history, is a product of inter-imperialist rivalries—mainly between the U.S. and China, but also between regional rivals Pakistan and India, and China and India as well.
House of Cards
For three centuries, the bloody British imperialists ravaged what is today Afghanistan. Then the U.S. imperialists followed suit. After 16 years of wreckage for the working class in Afghanistan, with the Taliban resurgent and controlling vast swaths of territory, the U.S. bosses have been forced to admit both their failure to date and their lack of any solution for the future:
American-led efforts, despite some successes, have ended up reinforcing and accelerating the broader cycles of violence and fragmentation that have been growing since the state’s collapse in the early 1990s…Its [Afghanistan’s] location puts it at the mercy of several foreign powers, all of whom would benefit from seeing Afghanistan stabilize but also stand to lose out if another country dominates (New York Times, 8/24).
As the U.S. drew down its military in Afghanistan, from a peak of more than 100,000 troops in 2011 to fewer than 10,000 today, it left an opening for China. The Chinese capitalist bosses are eagerly filling the gap with troops, funds, and training of local forces:
China’s financial interests revolve around Afghanistan’s abundance of natural resources and minerals, and its access to Central Asian markets. Beijing sees Afghanistan as a vital link for its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, an economic policy that seeks to connect Eurasia to China (Military Times, 3/5).
The U.S. rulers can ill afford for China to become the dominant big power in this critically strategic territory. If the U.S. cannot control Afghanistan, it will dig in for a stalemate, which means more chaos, slaughter, and plunder of the working class. In 2016 alone, according to a United Nations report, “3,498 Afghan civilians were killed…and 7,920 were injured, making it the deadliest year for civilian casualties since the U.N. began counting in 2009….[T]he number of children killed in 2016 was 24 percent greater than the previous highest recorded figure” (nbcnews.com, 8/22).
Not for the first time, the U.S. is exploiting the regional rivalry between India and Pakistan to sustain this stalemate. But with India pledging billions to Afghanistan in the wake of its transit and trade agreements with U.S. nemesis Iran, and Pakistan strengthening its economic and military partnership with U.S. archrival China, this strategy may backfire.
No Grand Plan
The war without end in Afghanistan has provoked disagreement within the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, as recently illustrated by two writers associated with the Council of Foreign Relations, the bosses’ leading think tank. While Max Boot favored renewed “nation-building” in Afghanistan (NYT, 8/22), Aaron O’Connell called for a de-escalation and adopting “more realistic, minimal goals” (Foreign Affairs, 6/16).
The rulers’ indecision reflects the relative weakening of U.S imperialism. U.S. bosses have no winning cards to play, which makes them even more dangerous to the international working class.
Workers, the Wild Card
The working class, organized under the revolutionary communist leadership of Progressive Labor Party, holds the trump card. As the imperialists expand their wars, they are forced to recruit into their armies the same workers and students who are targeted by the bosses’ racist attacks. These young soldiers, won to a worldview of no borders and no capitalism, can turn the next world war into a revolutionary war for communism. The capitalists inevitably will make their wars, but we will finish them!