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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

It's worth going back a decade and looking at US plans for Afghanistan's mineral wealth during Obama's first term in office, which coincided with increasing US military personnel in the country to 100,000.

Department of Defense report pointing to several trillion dollars worth of minerals (2010): https://www.reuters.com/article/afghanistan-mining-idUSLDE65...

State Department plan for "New Silk Road" (2011): https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/cl...

The latter was also about promoting the TAPI pipeline route for moving Central Asian oil and gas directly to the Indian Ocean, a project once meant largely for Chevron and Exxon (major operators in Kazakhstan) exports but which now appears to have been taken over by China:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-joint-statem...

China's approach to obtaining deals in Afghanistan appears to be strictly economic and diplomatic; there are no Chinese soldiers in the region.

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TAPI is a pipe dream (pun very much intended). It's been a Pakistani national security goal since the 1990s. As such, it's not surprising that Pakistan's closest ally announced their interest.

> there are no Chinese soldiers in the region.

So China is bribing all the tribes in the area to not "salvage" their stuff for parts? The problem with not having troops in such places is that they're in constant states of near lawlessness toward outsiders.

It would be more correct to say that "there are not yet Chinese soldiers in the region". It's only a matter of time.

Could the American plan be described as "use military force to suppress the terrorist group, and then give money to the legitimate government in exchange for minerals", and the Chinese plan as "give money to the terrorist group in exchange for minerals"?

It’s incredible that an illegitimate government can take over the entire country in ten days whereas the legitimate one wasn’t sustainable after twenty years of military and economic support.

Turns out that Afghans as a whole don't believe much in traditional Liberalism! Whereas it seems like Ukrainians do.

Most people don't like their nation being invaded and seeing their families die. Why would Afghanis be any different?

What’s the relevance of Ukraine?

Didn't much of the conflict in Ukraine from 2014 onwards arise from an effort to treat Russian-speaking Ukrainians as second-class citizens by the newly installed government?

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2014-01053...

For comparison, this would be like the U.S. government banning the use of Spanish or any other minority language, refusing to print translations of government documents in those languages, etc. Such a policy would certainly generate tension and resentment in areas like the Southwestern USA, and would be hard to characterize as 'liberal'.

Of course, in the context of TAPI and Afghanistan, the Ukraine war is just part of the ongoing struggle over who gets to sell fossil fuels to Europe, i.e. Russian pipeline gas vs USA tanker LNG.

The conflict in Ukraine is caused by Russia's imperialistic and colonial mindset towards the rest of eastern Europe. They invaded because a majority of Ukrainian peoples wanted closer relationships with Europe and to throw off the yoke of Russian authoritarianism.

Majority?

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7158

Majority

https://www.iri.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/iri.org/2014%2...

US state-affiliated media

https://www.iri.org/news/national-endowment-for-democracy-ne...

Are you disputing the results? They seem inline with the article you shared as well as the actions of the Ukrainian people since 2014.

Russia's colonial relationship with the Ukrainian people has been disastrous and it is great to see them fighting against an imperialistic and genocidal regime.

Are you disputing Russia’s position? It seems in line with the actions of the Ukrainians in the Donbas region since 2014.

Edit, can’t reply:

Russia’s position is that Crimea and Donbas republics had the right to secede due to the fact that Yanukovych was removed via illegal coup (organized by the US). Ukrainian sovereignty was forfeit when Yanukovych was removed despite insufficient parliamentary votes to do so according to the Ukrainian constitution. The Minsk agreements, meant to resolve these disputes, were not implemented, and now based on statements by European leaders we know they were never intended to be implemented.

What is Russia's position?

What sovereignty does Russia have over Ukraine?

>Ukrainian sovereignty was forfeit when Yanukovych was removed despite insufficient parliamentary votes to do so according to the Ukrainian constitution.

How does one follow from the other?

Without a binding constitution, there is no formal legal basis for a polity and people are free to do as they wish. E.g., join the Russian Federation or constitute themselves as an independent republic.

Even if that was the case, how does that justify Russia's invasion? Russia has made massive changes to its constitution, doesn't that inherently weaken Putin's right to rule by your logic?

You're starting from the fact that Russia is more powerful than Ukraine and working backwards to find justifications for genocide.

They formed and announced a defense pact with the independent Donbas republics, which Ukraine then continued to attack (shelling civilian areas, by the way). So Russia responded militarily in order to provide for the security of the republics in accordance with that agreement. They have not committed genocide whatsoever.

Has Russia made changes to its constitution illegally? That would be news to me. There is of course a strong argument that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not constitutional based on the results of the referendum.

Because "Afghanistan" only exists when the tribal autonomy is threatened otherwise Afghanistan has no real central government and it seems there is no will to be centrally governed. A completely different way of life the west continues to not understand. China will divide and conquer as it does in other similar regions just by making it too painful to not take their money when your local competition is.

There wasnt much legitimity in US-backed government, its empire ended at the border of Kabul. More moderate than extremists, but utterly corrupt, from what I read utterly incompetent in governing country properly.

Typical resource curse place, without even getting to the resource part properly

China's plan could just be do business with current gov't rather than invade and install a puppet gov't at an incredible cost to human life. They tend to do business with nations all over the world. They don't comment much on the politics of nations they do business with (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc).

I also think that is a very odd reading of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Even more so considering that the US has a track record of supporting fascists and terrorists for decades, and will overthrow gov'ts if it means access to natural resources, and greater profits for US corporations.

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