Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Asian Perspective 38 (2014), 493-495 Introduction to the Special Issue Nadine Godehardt and Nicola Nymalm After President Barack Obama's announcement in June 2011 of the large-scale withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2014, discussions on the overall impact of the security situation in Afghanistan and the consequences for the wider and immediate regional neighborhood have, to different extents, been a constant topic on the political agenda of the countries most affected. The greatest impact has been on foreign policy discourses in Central, West, and East Asia. After Obama’s announcement, Afghanistan was no longer regarded as a regional problem for the United States and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). That country’s future security now forced many countries in Asia to define their position on Afghanistan. The articles in this special issue focus on the impact of post2014 Afghanistan on Asian regional security in terms of possible scenarios as envisioned by crucial regional actors. The special issue builds on a panel, “Afghanistan and Regional Security,” that convened at the international workshop “Regional Order and Regionalism in Asia” held in March 2013 in Beijing.1 Nadine Godehardt and David Shim look at Northeast Asia, in particular South Korea and China. They argue that for these two countries, Afghanistan amounts to a kind of geopolitical imagery within their national security discourse. Consequently, the debates in China and South Korea on the US withdrawal and the post-2014 Afghanistan situation tell us more about Chinese and Korean foreign-policy practices than about the situation in Afghanistan itself. Gao Fei and Xiao Yu, writing from a genuinely Chinese per­ spective, explore the potential role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in post-2014 Afghanistan. After the announcement of the US drawback from Afghanistan, many experts saw the SCO as a guarantor for regional security and sta­ bility. Gao and Xiao argue that the strategic interests of important member states of the SCO are not only intertwined in Afghanistan 493 494 Introduction to the Special Issue but also are congruent with the interests of Afghanistan. Thus, Gao and Xiao claim, the role of the SCO would lie in regionaliz­ ing the situation in Afghanistan as a policy issue as well as actu­ ally enabling Afghanistan’s integration into a regional framework of converging security agendas. Moreover, China sees the SCO as a mechanism to fulfill its regional interests connected to, but also beyond, Afghanistan. Henner Fiirtig focuses on Afghanistan’s role in the foreign policies of West Asian/Middle Eastern countries, in particular Iran. In his historical analysis he argues that Iran’s interests as the most important Middle Eastern neighbor ofAfghanistan are actu­ ally in line with those of the United States and the wider interna­ tional community, and that Iran’s policies since 1979 have been aimed at a stable, politically moderate situation in Afghanistan. This would also be the case in every possible scenario after 2014, as Iran is also the Middle Eastern country most affected by the withdrawal of the ISAF. Finally, Sandra Destradi addresses the South Asian dimension of the conflict and analyzes India’s foreign and security policy as a regional power. She characterizes India’s approach as rather hesitant for several reasons that are rooted in domestic issues (national threat assessments) as well as at international and regional levels (first and foremost, dealing with Pakistan and China). Her article makes clear that the debates on Afghanistan and the security situation reveal more about India than about Afghanistan and its future. Thus, the decadelong emphasis in India’s foreign policy on the principle of nonintervention accounts for a very restrained attitude when it comes to questions of secu­ rity governance in Afghanistan. What is apparent from the different national perspectives explored in the articles that follow is that although regional actors are directly impacted by the present and post-2014 evolu­ tion of Afghanistan, all of them are reluctant to deal with Afghanistan directly. On the one hand, this is due to the transna­ tional and transregional challenges posed by a possibly deterio­ rating security situation in the country, which makes it difficult to determine and address root causes of the problem. On the...