'US wants to use Afghanistan as staging ground for intervention'

Afghanistan serves as an essential staging ground for US imperialism's destabilizing the heart of Eurasia and disrupting its integration into Russia's Eurasian Economic Union and China's One Belt, One Road initiative, says Professor Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday, after US President Barack Obama that Washington will “continue to help strengthen Afghan security forces and support President [Ashraf] Ghani and the National Unity Government in their efforts to forge the peace and progress that Afghans deserve.”

“Afghanistan has always played a key geo-political role for those seeking regional and global hegemony. It bridges the gap between the Middle East (Iran), South Asia (India and Pakistan) and Central Asia and thus opens both Russia and China to attempts at their dismemberment, the clear goal of first British and then American imperialism since the mid 1800s,” Professor Etler said.

“Afghanistan serves as a dagger pointed in the direction of the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. If they fall it would give the US a clear shot at Russia's underbelly and China's far west,” the analyst stated.

US waging asymmetric war against Russia and China

“But how to accomplish that task? Pacifying Afghanistan is not the answer. The US, for all its rhetoric, is not interested in peace but in having compliant surrogates wage an asymmetric war against its main adversaries, both Russia and China,” Professor Etler said.

“This is not an ideological struggle. Even during the ‘Cold War’ the contention with the Soviet Union was more geo-political than ideological, although cloaked in the terms of ‘anti-communism’ to make US imperialist aggression more palatable to the US electorate. Naked imperial aggression does not sit well with the American people so it must be sugar-coated with patriotism, American exceptionalism, and making the world ‘Safe for Democracy,’” he stated.

“The US is hence not interested in establishing peace in Afghanistan. They will always try to use it as a staging ground for intervention throughout the region and as a card to play in its geo-political deck. It should be expected that no matter who is in the White House come 2017 US forces will try to remain in Afghanistan in perpetuity,” the scholar said.

“This scenario however need not be the final word. Both China and Russia are forging new economic, political and military ties with the nations of Central Asia, South Asia and Iran. If Afghanistan can be integrated into the emerging security network linking the nations of the region in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) there is ample opportunity for the US to be read out of the picture,” he noted.  

“The US is trying as hard as it can to break these emerging relationships, such as BRICS, the EAEU and the SCO. The trend of history is, however, on the side of the emerging, sovereign nations of the world, not the declining imperialists, no matter how much havoc is wrought in the process,” Professor Etler concluded. 

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