quick, or not so quick hit #1

I've been following the "revelation" that apparently Afghanistan is a gold mine of random and strategically/commercially useful minerals. That this has been known for decades was apparently overlooked in the reporting of that fact. The actual problem was getting those minerals to world markets, not finding them, just as it was for a long time in the interior core of Africa (the Congo basin for example).

There are several major questions that result
1) Was the US interest in Afghanistan sparked more by resources than by terrorism?
2) How does this affect Afghanistan's internal political situation?
3) What's the end game (for US involvement, the exploitation of resources, and the economy/political situation of Afghanistan)?

I'd have to say that I'm skeptical that ATTACKING Afghanistan under the Taliban was motivated by resource exploitation and controls. But I'm not surprised that occupying it could have been motivated by such a situation. The main reason this is a flawed case though is that the US typically deploys multi-national corporations and not soldiers to do this, just as China is effectively doing by buying up a huge copper mine in Afghanistan. Those minerals and resources find their way to markets and are consumed not so much by nations as by market participants. The days of mercantile hording of most things are over (maybe military grade resources work this way, like uranium), but not so much lithium or niobium or copper. So it's useless to go physically occupy territory for the purpose of extracting resources from it for a nation to do it. There are of course interested non-national parties, like corporations, that might benefit from such a strategy. But in general, the status quo of bribing a corrupt foreign government, like Afghanistan's is and has been, isn't dramatically altered by installing a government ourselves (because that includes costs of installing and supporting that government) or by simply leaving the previous one in place.

What about internally? Well, if Afghanistan had a reasonably strong central government or a history of reasonably unified cultures, then I'd say the potential development and exploitation of resources would be a good thing. Since it has neither, it's likelier to look more like a West or Central African rotating dictatorship than say, Australia. I suppose it's possible that extreme mineral wealth and industrial or infrastructure development would be a boon that somehow develops unifying forces in Afghanistan and helps resolve a sense of pervasive corruption and histories of tribalism, but I'm much too cynical to believe this as anything other than magical thinking.

So what does that mean for us? Well it sounds like so far the prevailing sentiment is that this means we can/will stay to get at the good stuff and somehow deny it to China. Which, as I said up there, I don't see why that's necessary (or possible). And it means the situation internally will probably get worse, not better. Rampant corruption over the opium trade already existed and has been well-documented. Rampant corruption over legal trade in metals and minerals is probably inevitable. That will not help the situation on the ground in the strategic sense of dealing with a counter-insurgency problem. If we're prepared to live with that in order to try to extract rents from resource controls (at the cost of bribing public officials in another country), I guess that's what we're going to do. I already didn't see a strategic justification for occupying the country before when it was just part of some sort of broad anti-terrorism plan. Economic and social development of Afghanistan is a decades long plan to top that off.

Good luck with that empire I guess.