Wars and Empire | Page 6

... Military forces cannot
fundamentally solve problems and war benefits no one including the
war starter."
Nor are these views the preserve of the arthritic upper echelons of the
precariously balanced Chinese Communist party.
In an interview he granted to Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, last

week, Shen Jiru, chief of the Division of International Strategy of the
Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, reiterated his conviction that "the United States aims to create
a unipolar world through the Iraq issue."
Mirroring the People's Daily, he did not think that the looming Iraq war
can be entirely explained as a "dispute on oil or economic interests." It
was, he thought, about "the future model of international order: a
multipolar and democratic one, or the US strategic goal of a unipolar
world." China has been encouraged by dissent in the West. It shows
that the "multipolar international community is an "inevitable"
momentum of history."
Why this sudden flurry of historiosophic ruminations?
According to Stratfor, the strategic forecasting consultancy, "for
Beijing, the only way to stymie the fourth phase is through promoting
multilateralism; barring that, China must be prepared to confront the
United States in the future, and U.S. history can give some guidance ...
Thus, Beijing continues to focus on the concept of multilateralism and
the legitimacy of the United Nations as the best ways to slow or even
disrupt U.S. expansionism. At the same time, Beijing is preparing to
face a future confrontation with the United States if necessary."
When its economy matures, China wants to become another United
States. It has started emulating America two decades ago - and never
ceased. Recent steps include painful privatization, restructuring of the
banking system, clamping down on corruption and bad governance,
paring down the central bureaucracy, revamping the military and
security apparatus and creating mechanisms for smooth political
transitions.
China plans to send a man to the moon. It invests heavily in basic
science and research and development. It is moving gradually up the
manufacturing food chain to higher value added industries. It is the
quintessential leapfrogger, much of its cadre moving straight from the
rustic to the plastic - computers, cellular phones, wireless and the like.
Ironically, it could never have made it even this far without its
ostensible foe. Thousands of bright Chinese students train in the United
states. American technologies, management, knowledge, capital and
marketing permeate Beijing's economic fabric. Bilateral trade is
flourishing. China enjoys the biggest share of the world's - in large part

American - foreign direct investment flows. Should the United states
disintegrate tomorrow - China would assuredly follow.
Afghan Myths
An Interview with Anssi Kullberg
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Anssi Kristian Kullberg is presently employed as a researcher for the
Legal and Country Intelligence Service, Western and Central Asia
Desk, at the Finnish Directorate of Immigration. This interview
represents his personal views only and not those of his employer. On
Black Tuesday, 11th September, he was in Kyrgyzstan, on his way to
the notorious Ferghana Valley, in a reconstruction of the late Finnish
Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim's intelligence expedition to Turkistan and
China in 1906-1908.
Q: Was the Taliban the creation of Pakistan? Can you tell us about its
formation and how was Russia involved in it?
A: The Taliban was not a creation of Pakistan, although Pakistan was
among several states that contributed to the genesis and development of
this peculiar movement. It is true that the Taliban (which was
established only as late as in 1994 as a religious movement) had a
significant influx from Pakistani madrassas. But the Taliban is not only
an extreme religious movement, but also an ethnic Pashtun one. The
Pashtuns are a bit less than half of Afghanistan's population, but in
Pakistan there are 16 million resident Pashtuns plus 3 million as
refugees. There are more Pashtuns in Pakistan than in Afghanistan
nowadays. The "Pakistanis" involved in Afghanistan are in fact
Afghans.
The role of the Pakistani Islamist opposition in the formation and
support of the Taliban is widely recorded. But more important are those
who made it a military power. This is where Russia enters the game,
too. In order to understand the Taliban, we must recall the background
situation in Afghanistan ever since the events in 1970s.
The Taliban is not monolithic. Even less so is the Northern Alliance.
Neither were the Afghan communists united. This was made evident by
the internal power struggles following the ousting of King Zahir Shah
in 1973. Daoud was overthrown and killed by communists in 1978. But
the communists were divided into the Khalq faction, favored by China,
and the Parcham faction, favored by the Soviet Union. In 1978 it was

the Khalq faction that took over, but their more moderate leader Nur
Mohammed Taraki was overthrown and killed