Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La saggezza del Tao

#_Si dice che nella sala dei bottoni (aNZi dei 50 steli di A. 
Millefoglie) gli alti papaveri cinesi, prendano le loro decisioni 
interpretando il Tao dei "I Ching".
G.
China maps an end to the Afghan war
By M K Bhadrakumar
The article "Afghan peace needs a map" which appeared in the 
English-language China Daily newspaper on Monday should receive careful 
attention. China Daily is government-owned and the article is a very 
rare piece of focused opinion that proposes concrete steps to be taken 
on the way forward in unlocking the Afghan stalemate.
The article is credited to the deputy general of the China Council for 
National Security Policy Studies, Li Qinggong. A conspicuous increase in 
the Chinese reportage on Afghanistan is noticeable lately. Conceivably, 
in the period since unrest appeared in Xinjiang, there is heightened 
concern in China over the deepening crisis in Afghanistan, which impacts 
China's national security.
The timing of the publication is also important. A tipping point has 
appeared in the eight-year Afghan war, with the international community 
furiously debating the pros and cons of alternate scenarios for 
Afghanistan. The war is at a crossroads, with the Taliban fighting to a 
stalemate the formidable North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 
forces led by the United States. NATO has all but acknowledged that 
"victory" over the Taliban in the war may no longer be possible and what 
is within the realms of possibility is staving off defeat and scoring 
"success" in the "Afghanization" of the war.
The timing of the article is also significant insofar as the Barack 
Obama administration is revisiting its seven-month-old Afghan war 
strategy, which was enunciated in March. Broadly speaking, the pendulum 
of the American debate is swinging between stepping up the war effort 
via the augmentation of troop strength in Afghanistan or scaling down 
the scope of the war to a counter-insurgency operation.
There is much piquancy in that the debate is also unfolding against the 
backdrop of the tide of American public opinion turning against the US 
military involvement in Afghanistan. Then, there is the annual debate in 
the United Nations Security Council on Afghanistan, which began in New 
York on Monday. Also, the UN proposes to convene an international 
conference in Afghanistan within this year.
The China Daily article makes several important points. First, it 
bluntly calls on Washington to forthwith bring the US military 
operations in Afghanistan to an end. There are no caveats here while 
making this demand, no alibis. Simply put, the war has only resulted in 
aggravating the political and social turmoil in Afghanistan, causing 
great turbulence and violence and it has brought neither peace and 
stability as the George W Bush administration promised nor any "tangible 
benefits" to the US itself. "On the contrary, the legitimacy of the US 
military action has been under increasing doubt."
Clearly, therefore, the urgent necessity arises to promote 
reconciliation among the warring Afghan groups and this effort needs to 
commence with the US forthwith ending its military operations.
Second, the dramatic shift in US public opinion - with 58% of people 
opposing the war, according to the latest estimates - and growing 
skepticism about the war on Capitol Hill - especially the groundswell of 
opposition within the Democratic Party - casts shadows on the trajectory 
of the Obama administration's Afghan strategy. Certainly, Obama "cannot 
afford to bet his political fate on an unpopular war".
However, Obama can exploit the public and political mood in the US to 
salvage his presidency from the Afghan war. The article points out that 
from the time he assumed office as president in January, Obama has been 
under pressure from the Pentagon to step up the war effort. Now, "the 
young US president [has] the best chance to extricate himself from the 
Pentagon's pressures" if he chooses to tap into the rapidly growing 
anti-war sentiments in the country.
Obama should factor in that, if he decides to stop the war, "that would 
not only meet the US public expectations and save more American lives, 
but also help recover the US's peaceful image and enhance the 
president's personal political prospects".
The article stops short of drawing any historical analogy with the 
Lyndon Johnson presidency or the Vietnam war, but the warning comes out 
loud clear that the war can seriously damage Obama's political career 
and demolish the prospects of a second term as president.
Third, what lies ahead if the US stops its military intervention in 
Afghanistan? The answer is that it opens the way to a political 
settlement. And how is it that a settlement can be worked out? The 
answer is that there is no alternative but to seek a political 
settlement via national reconciliation. Any reconciliation process must 
involve all the "key actors that can play an influential role in 
deciding the country's prospect", especially the Afghan government, the 
Taliban and the forces that are commonly called "warlords".
Such an approach is predicated on the belief that the Afghan war is also 
principally a fratricidal strife involving Afghan factions, much as 
there is currently the "US factor". In actuality, various contending 
forces are locked in a "chaotic battle" today, which involves the US-led 
coalition forces, "the Afghan government troops and domestic warlords", 
the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. By implication, the battle lines have 
blurred.
Fourth, the confusion emanating out of the Afghan political scene has 
added to the already existing "domestic chaos". The presidential 
election of August 20 has failed to produce a final result and the 
lingering uncertainty, which may last months, over the recount of votes 
adds to the confusion, with the US urging President Hamid Karzai to go 
through a second-round runoff. The article stops just short of alleging 
that US interference muddies the Afghan political waters.
Fifth, picking up the thread from the above, the article says, "It seems 
that Karzai has hammered home the perception that the US is not a 
reliable partner that can help end Afghanistan's current predicament. 
Talks, he thinks, are the only way out. The Afghan president is likely 
to open the process of tripartite talks with the Taliban and major 
warlords, provided that the US ends its military action."
Sixth, the article then turns to the role of the international 
community. On the one hand, it calls for support from the international 
community for an essentially intra-Afghan peace process. On the other 
hand, it suggests that the international community should take advantage 
of the mounting anti-war sentiments in the US and "prompt" Obama to end 
the war and withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Obama may find it useful to cite the "international pressures" as 
"another excuse" to withdraw US troops. Three major European powers - 
Germany, France and Britain - have sought an international conference to 
be held within the year to discuss the vacation of occupation of 
Afghanistan. The United Nations Security Council should henceforth take 
the lead role to organize the conference on the basis of a consensus 
among the permanent five as regards a road map and timetable of Afghan 
settlement.
A "ticklish issue" still remains as to whether the parties concerned can 
accept the Taliban as a key player and also as to how to "dispose of" 
the al-Qaeda forces, and this has a "key bearing" on the outcome of the 
forthcoming international conference.
Finally, the article proposes that once the US withdraws its troops from 
Afghanistan, an international peacekeeping mission will be needed to 
assist the Afghan government and its security forces to exercise 
effective control. It doesn't spell out the nature of the international 
force, which can be presumably under the UN or regional auspices.
This is the first time that a Chinese commentary has openly called for 
the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan in immediate terms 
as a pre-requisite of peace. What the article doesn't say becomes 
equally important. One, it differentiates the Afghan problem from the 
so-called "AfPak" approach. The article doesn't make a single reference 
to Pakistan, either.
However, it must be assumed that the Chinese perspective disfavors a US 
military presence in the region as a whole and that includes Central 
Asia as well as Pakistan. Two, the article puts the primacy on an 
intra-Afghan search for settlement with the Taliban implicitly as a 
legitimate Afghan faction. Nowhere does the article even remotely 
suggest that the Taliban are propped up by Pakistan.
Equally, the article nowhere doubts that the so-called "warlords" can be 
overlooked as serious protagonists on the political chessboard. This is 
an endorsement of Karzai's pragmatic approach and a rejection of the 
opportunistic stance taken by the US and its Western partners to keep 
out Karzai's allies from the power structure.
Three, the article doesn't visualize the al-Qaeda as a big factor 
justifying the continuance of the war. Needless to say, the article 
rejects the contention by NATO that the Afghan war is integral to 
safeguarding the Western world from threat posed by international 
terrorism. Again, it is indifferent to the fate of the alliance's 
much-trumpeted first-ever "out-of-area" operation.
The geopolitics of the war have been completely left out in the article. 
This is consistent with the Chinese view that the Afghan people should 
be principally in charge of their destiny. Thus, the article gives the 
go-by altogether to the controversial thesis propounded by some experts 
regarding a regional solution to the war, with the US entering into 
"grand bargains" with the main regional countries such as Russia, China, 
Iran, India and Central Asian states.
The accent, on the contrary, is on the UN Security Council assuming the 
responsibility of guiding and monitoring a settlement in Afghanistan, 
and within that, the five permanent members will be the key arbiters.

 interpretando il Tao dei "I Ching".
Te l'ha detto la Fatina Buona ?

 By M K Bhadrakumar
l'articolo � molto interessante. Senza dubbio i cinesi ormai vogliono 
diventare protagonisti nell'area e fanno appello al pacifismo obamiano per 
provocare il ritiro Nato dall'area. Ovviamente si sono accorti del contrasto 
Pentagono-Casa Bianca e lo sfruttano a loro vantaggio. E' chiaro che pensano 
al dopo Nato in Afganistan e al proprio ruolo nella regione anche in 
Pakistan. Da questo punto di vista � evidente che ormai la guerra in 
Afganistan, nata in un determinato contesto che oggi non � pi� tale, � una 
questione che travalica la missione iniziale. C'� ovviamente in gioco 
l'equilibrio geopolitico di buona parte dell'Asia... 

 ovviamente in gioco l'equilibrio geopolitico di buona parte dell'Asia...
#_Gia`!...e sarebbe ora che anche chi vuol far da guida alle avventure, 
faccia appello piu`ai propri Saggi, piuttosto che ascoltare chi piace 
suonare il corno di guerra.

 Te l'ha detto...
#_Qualche volta e`piu`giusto/onesto dare il merito del successo alla 
saggezza suggerita (da altrui o dai vecchi testi).
(Success is coming before Wisdom and Work only in the vocabulary)
  G.
~The Confucio of Piscinello

 suonare il corno di guerra.
un suggerimento che ti invito ad inoltrare alla Cina... 

 un suggerimento che ti invito ad inoltrare alla Cina...
#_CVD!
Il che la dice da solo che "more solito": 1) non hai capito una ceppa.2) 
soffri di sinofobia cronica.

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:ibuq8b$ab6$1...@nnrp-beta.newsland.it...

eppure non sei troppo distante dal paradiso cinese...perch� non parti una 
buona volta??? Fatti accreditare la pensione a Shanghai...