By April 2024, some American media began to hype "China's desire to lease Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan." So what bad tricks is the United States holding back? So "smearing" China?
The United States is afraid of China's entry into Bagram Air Base
Bagram Air Base is the largest air base in Afghanistan and even the entire Middle East before the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, covering an area of about 13 square kilometers. Moreover, the air base is also the closest U.S. air base to China in the Middle East, only 700 kilometers from China.
After the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, it was abandoned, and some of the remaining US military fighters, cars and other materials were received by the Afghan Taliban.
Bagram Air Base
In fact, this is not the first time that the United States has hyped up the issue of Bagram Air Base, as early as August 2021, when the US troops just withdrew from Afghanistan, the United States was already hyping up this issue.
Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, publicly claimed that China had contacted the Afghan Taliban in an attempt to gain access to Bagram Air Base and discover some secrets of the U.S. military there.
From a purely military point of view, if China can really enter Bagram Air Base, it will indeed have a chance to discover some military secrets of the US military. But from a political point of view, this behavior is very dangerous.
Bagram Air Base
At that time, China had not yet recognized the Afghan Taliban as the legitimate regime, and if China did do so and it was exposed by the United States, it would be very detrimental to China's image in international politics.
In addition, the Afghan Taliban fell silent after that, and there was no news in the international community, so no one paid attention to this matter anymore.
However, now that the United States has turned over the matter of Bagram Air Base, the purpose behind it is naturally no longer the reason for the military secrets in Bagram Air Base.
At present, the reason why the United States is most afraid of China getting involved in Bagram Air Base is the change in China's foreign policy.
We all know that China is following a policy of peaceful rise + non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
China relies on economic cooperation to expand its influence
Because of this policy, China does not expand to the outside world at present, and the mainland basically has no military bases overseas.
The fundamental reason why China pursues such a foreign policy is that in the past, China's military strength was relatively inferior to that of the United States, and its international influence was not as good as that of the United States.
Therefore, China can only "hold on", do business with the world, actively embrace globalization, and expand its influence step by step by relying on the identity of "the world's factory".
With China's technological progress over the years, China's military achievements have gradually attracted attention, and thus China has now had a military advantage.
Although the size of the U.S. air force and navy is larger than that of China's navy, the U.S. military power is already in a black box state.
U.S. Navy
Because of the decline of the manufacturing industry in the United States and the confusion in personnel management, no one can say how much combat power is left of the huge military power of the US military.
China, on the other hand, is growing faster and faster in terms of military potential and military development due to the continuous expansion of its industrial volume and the continuous progress of technology.
At this point, the question arises for the United States: will China further shift its development focus to the world as China's military power grows stronger?
If China pursues global development further, there is no doubt that China will directly challenge the United States' position as the world's hegemon, rather than expanding its influence in a "boiled frog" style as it is now.
Conceptual map of the confrontation between China and the United States
China's modest means to expand its influence, and the United States can still sit in the position of world hegemon for 10 or 20 years. But if China further develops globally and competes directly with the United States, then the United States will not be able to sit in the position of world hegemon for many years.
Therefore, the United States is essentially afraid that China will develop globally and directly compete with it for the position of world hegemon.
America's return to the Middle East?
Of course, in addition to the above reasons, the United States also has the intention of returning to the Middle East when it comes out to talk about the Bagram Air Base.
When Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, the U.S. military system was dissatisfied.
U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan
And later, with the development of new energy vehicles in China and the United States, lithium ore has entered the sight of the United States. Because new energy vehicles require a large amount of lithium ore, and one of Afghanistan's specialties is lithium ore.
Therefore, many American media have also called for a return to Afghanistan to control this "oil in new energy vehicles", but the US government has ignored it.
But one thing we know for sure is that the U.S. military and other related forces have the intention of returning to Afghanistan.
However, from a practical point of view, there is no longer a question of whether the United States can return to Afghanistan, because the United States simply does not have the ability to do so.
US troops in Afghanistan
China will not enter the Bagram airbase
As for whether China will actually enter the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, it is quite unlikely.
On the one hand, even if China were to start developing globally, it would not take the same hard-line expansionist actions that the United States has always done.
The expansion of the United States is carried out by the military, and whoever does not accept it will be defeated. Or use color revolutions to overthrow the original government, and then prop up a pro-own government.
If China wants to go further global, it is likely to rely on economic cooperation.
Like the United States, the cost of using military backing is too great, and China only needs to make other countries economically close enough to China to the point that it needs to bear the price it cannot afford to decouple from China, so as to ensure that no one will turn against China.
This is just like the United States now, the United States said that it wanted to decouple from China, but as a result, domestic inflation was serious, and the financial consortiums and state governments in the United States did not want to decouple from China at all.
And those allies of the United States still have economic and trade ties with China as usual.
Subsequently, with the further expansion of China's influence and the completion of industrial upgrading, China has truly formed a full coverage from the upstream industrial chain to the downstream industrial chain, as well as the whole industrial chain.
When the time comes, no matter which country wants to engage in economic cooperation with China, it will be able to find a place where it can cooperate.
As a result, China's economic interests are tied to the economic interests of these countries, and these countries will take the initiative to ask China to engage in military cooperation with them.
The most typical example of this is the relationship between China and Pakistan, because of the economic cooperation between China and Pakistan, Pakistan is willing to lease the Gwadar port to China to promote the economic development around the Gwadar port.
Gwadar Port
And it is not impossible that the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan will be transformed into a special economic zone in the economic cooperation between Afghanistan and China.
Resources:
[1] Global Network, "Why did you quietly "slip away" from the Bagram base at night?
[2] Global Network, "Indian media claim that the right to use Bagram Air Base will be handed over to China, Taliban spokesman: This is a lie"