And then there's Afghanistan -- which from Beijing's point of view fits into the New Silk Road project as a resource corridor between South and Central Asia.
Beijing ideally wants to invest in Afghanistan's infrastructure development to access Afghanistan's resources and solidify yet another land bridge from Xinjiang to Central Asia and further on to the Middle East. Made in China products, so far, have to be exported to Afghanistan via Pakistan.
CNPC and the China Metallurgical Group Corp. are already in Afghanistan, investing in the Amu Darya oil river basin and the massive Anyak copper mine. It's been messy, but that's a start. Both Russia and China inside the SCO have a profound interest in a stable Afghanistan ripe for business in both the New Silk Road and the EEU. The key question is how to keep the Taliban "satisfied." Certainly by not applying Washington's methods.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon's "proposal" for what new chief Ash Carter describes as "this part of the world" is to deploy -- what else -- new weapons, from the still-in-production THAAD missile defense system to the latest stealth bombers and cyber warfare units. Eurasian economic cooperation? Forget it. For the Pentagon and NATO -- which, by the way, have recently lost a 13-year war to the Taliban -- economic cooperation is for sissies.
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