Afghanistan/Eurasian Foreign Policy - "New" Silk Road Much Like The Old Silk Road

[Dover]

I saw that Hillary Clinton was promoting a foreign policy for Eurasia, calling it the NEW SILK ROAD.
This caught my eye because I had posted ad nauseum on DU about the 'old' Silk Road Policy that I felt
explained why we were in Afghanistan (rather than due to 9-11, bin Laden, etc.). In fact this policy
had been in the making for a very long time and got an update in 2006. It describes our intentions for
development in Eurasia very clearly and aligns with our gas/oil/pipeline interests in the Caspian Sea region.
So seeing the headline announcing the NEW Silk Road policy connected more dots in that long road to
Eurasia this country has been on. From what I can tell, at least from a brief glance, it seems this 'new'
policy is simply an extension of the 'old' policy only given a new pretty binder for handing out at the
international summit conferences going on this month. Just a reminder to our global neighbors of our intentions
and undying commitment (part of which is to, no doubt, keep this area of the world out of the control of China, Russia, Iran).
So if you want a look into the future (a policy sure to be carried out regardless of who sits in the White House),
here it is....we're planting our flag in Eurasia, Eurasia, Eurasia.

Foreign Policy: Afghanistan's "New" Silk Road
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142128687/foreign-policy-afghanistans-new-silk-road


The "Old" Silk Road Policy (I posted this in the fall of 2008)
Policy written in 1998 just prior to the Afghanistan invasion -

...To begin, you may ask why is the United States active in the region? The United States has energy security, strategic, and commercial interests in promoting Caspian region energy development. We have an interest in strengthening global energy security through diversification, and the development of these new sources of supply. Caspian export routes would diversify rather than concentrate world energy supplies, while avoiding over-reliance on the Persian Gulf.
We have strategic interests in supporting the independence, sovereignty, and prosperity of the Newly Independent States of the Caspian Basin. We want to assist the development of these States into democratic, sovereign members of the world community of nations, enjoying unfettered access to world markets without pressure or undue influence from regional powers.
..cont'd..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=171417&mesg_id=171417


---
Article:
The New Silk Road?

...The metaphor of a “New Silk Road” has become a trope of Central Asia policy ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union gave these countries their independence, and the opportunities to forge their own foreign and trade policies. But this particular vision originated with S. Frederick Starr, a Washington-based scholar of the region and chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The plan was picked up by officers at U.S. Central Command, led then by Gen. David Petraeus, who saw it as a way to build long-term stability in Afghanistan. The plan also dovetails nicely with a broader U.S. project to wean these countries away from their economic and political ties to Russia. The United States has already sponsored projects to tie the electricity networks in Central Asia to those in South Asia, and in a bureaucratic but pointed move, reorganized the regional bureaus in the State Department so that Central Asia was grouped with South Asia, rather than with Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union.

The vision is ambitious, but what can the United States do to bring it about? So far, the plan has been light on specifics, but State Department officials have said that it will partially entail new infrastructure like highways, railroads, electricity networks and pipelines – the so-called “hardware” portion of the plan – and partly reducing legal barriers to trade, by getting the countries surrounding Afghanistan to reduce customs duties and ease onerous border crossings, the “software.”

But Starr cautioned that the State Department’s version of the plan, as he saw it so far, needed to focus more closely on the “software” rather than hardware and to develop a plan for short-, medium- and long-term projects. He proposed starting with relatively easy to implement but high-profile projects like truck convoys along a few key corridors. “Skeptics abound,” he said. “We must prove to them that the U.S. can deliver tangible results that positively affect peoples’ lives, and do so in the short term.”

In their public statements on the plan, U.S. officials have cited a handful of current or potential projects that the New Silk Road would build on, including an Afghanistan-Pakistan free trade agreement, a U.S. government sponsored project to transmit electricity from hydropower plants in Central Asia to Afghanistan, and a pipeline that would ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan. In total, the U.S. government has identified 30 to 40 infrastructure projects that it sees as potential elements of the New Silk Road.

But those are hardly firm foundations on which to build Afghanistan’s economic future. The Turkmenistan-India pipeline, known as TAPI, along with similar proposals, have been discussed for years, but have never reached fruition...

cont'd

http://the-diplomat.com/2011/11/11/the-new-silk-road/

[yurbud]

1. any economic explanation is more plausible than the childish lies about the war on terror

and spreading democracy.

[bemildred]

2. These institutions seem to be incapable of learning, they keep repeating the same stupid mistakes. n