Afghanistan wave 4



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***Counterplan answers




AT: Silk Road CP



The Silk Road fails--- stability and uncooperative states

Tellis, 10 is a senior associate in Carnegie’s South Asia Program (2010, Ashley, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “IMPLEMENTING A REGIONAL APPROACH TO AFGHANISTAN,” http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/regional_approach.pdf)

The first is the need for security in Afghanistan. Without stability in Afghanistan, the investments required to transform this landlocked country into a major trans-regional transportation hub will simply not materialize because the risks to all assets created, from whatever source, would be extraordinarily high. In other words, the means required— investible resources—to produce the goal desired—Afghanistan as a nucleus of regional cooperation—cannot be secured without that end existing to begin with. This persistent conundrum has continually frustrated all efforts to realize the otherwise laudable objective of regional integration.



The second obstacle is just as significant as the first. The unspoken assumption that underlies the regional approach based on economic integration is that all states, no matter what their political differences, can profit from the gains from trade. A steady accumulation of such gains would provide enough incentives for all the warring competitors to mute their rivalries or at least to hold them in sufficient check to avoid disrupting the benefits accruing from trade and transit. In other words, regional competitors would value the absolute gains arising from economic intercourse over and above the relative gains associated with their political rivalries.

Unfortunately, this assumption is both heroic and untrue. The evidence thus far suggests that at least one critical state, Pakistan, has consistently valued its security-driven relative gains far more than any absolute gains emerging from enhanced regional trade. Consequently, here too, the desired goal of regional integration has been unfailingly stymied because Islamabad’s fears about its political interests being subverted as a result of the increased prosperity accruing to others— even if Pakistan itself flourishes in the process—have prevented it from cooperating in the manner that the votaries of economic integration imagine it should.


Pakistan prevents a successful trade route

Tellis, 10 is a senior associate in Carnegie’s South Asia Program (2010, Ashley, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “IMPLEMENTING A REGIONAL APPROACH TO AFGHANISTAN,” http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/regional_approach.pdf)

The discrepancy between Pakistani and American goals in Afghanistan continues in the realm of economics as well: while Washington has a strong interest in ensuring the viability of the fledging Afghan state by restoring it to its historical position as a trade and transit corridor between Central and South Asia, Pakistan’s fear of becoming merely an appendage in the process, mainly supporting the growth of other major powers such as India, has led it to obstruct all worthwhile proposals relating to the expansion of economic intercourse across the greater South Asian region.



AT: Regional Cooperation Counterplan (this is also neg vs. SCO advantage)



Bilateral relations are impossible--- competing interests

Tellis, 10 is a senior associate in Carnegie’s South Asia Program (2010, Ashley, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “IMPLEMENTING A REGIONAL APPROACH TO AFGHANISTAN,” http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/regional_approach.pdf)
While the logic of Petraeus’ argument is unassailable, the “cooperative security” that this third approach embodies runs into many problems. In large part, this is because many regional states have competing—and often non-negotiable—national goals in Afghanistan, even if they otherwise stand to benefit from the success of American actions focused on eliminating transnational terrorist groups based there or in its environs. Equally importantly, the United States too often has competing interests with respect to many of the regional states—interests that prevent Washington from making cooperation in Afghanistan, however desirable, the first order of business in America’s bilateral relations with these countries. For these reasons and others explored below, the kind of partnership that the third version of the regional approach demands has proved thus far beyond reach.
Pakistan’s conflicting goals prevent successful regional cooperation

Tellis, 10 is a senior associate in Carnegie’s South Asia Program (2010, Ashley, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “IMPLEMENTING A REGIONAL APPROACH TO AFGHANISTAN,” http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/regional_approach.pdf)

Pakistan, the most critical U.S. ally in the war in Afghanistan and one of Afghanistan’s most important direct neighbors, pursues far more divergent aims relative to Washington (and Kabul) than the high American dependence on Pakistan would lead one to assume. Although both Washington and Islamabad have gone to great lengths to publicly emphasize their shared goals in Afghanistan since 2001, a close analysis reveals deep and perhaps unbridgeable gulfs between the two countries, at least in the near term. These chasms are manifested most clearly on the core issues of high politics: defeating the Afghan Taliban and preventing its return to power in Kabul by force, and constructing a minimally effective central state in Afghanistan.

On both these counts, Pakistan’s interests differ from those of the United States. Where the first is concerned, Islamabad—or more precisely, the Pakistani military, which dominates national security decision making—views protecting the Afghan Taliban leadership and its core capabilities as essential to shielding Pakistan’s westward flanks against India. Although Pakistani policy makers certainly do not prefer to see the Taliban ensconced in Kabul, as they did before—in part because the events leading up to this outcome would be quite dangerous to their own country—they nonetheless seek a government in Afghanistan that has sufficient Taliban representation because of their conviction that such a regime alone would be capable of reversing India’s current influence and denying it any significant role in that country. Islamabad also rejects the goal of building an effective central state in Afghanistan, because it fears that if such an entity comes to be dominated by secular Pashtuns, they would stymie Pakistan’s goal of preventing Afghan territorial claims on its Pashtun-dominated lands. Were a competent central authority in Afghanistan to be controlled by nonPashtun ethnic groups, the disenfranchisement of Pakistan’s closest tribal allies in Afghanistan could, it is feared, leave Islamabad at a conclusive disadvantage vis-à-vis India. For these reasons, Pakistan’s commitment to supporting the U.S. objective of raising a minimally effective central state in Afghanistan is suspect. The erection of an effective central state in Afghanistan would also undermine Pakistan’s long-term goal of becoming the principal foreign adjudicator of Kabul’s strategic choices, which— whatever its justification—ends up placing Islamabad at odds not only with the United States, India, and Iran, but also with Afghanistan itself, when the interests of the Karzai regime, the northern regions, and the non-Taliban Pashtuns are taken into account.





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