Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sino-U.S. relations were a rare foreign policy bright spot during President Bush's last term. Amid setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Administration was able to broaden and deepen ties with China, while keeping longstanding disagreements over issues such as trade and China's human-rights record under control. But that doesn't mean they went away. When U.S. President Barack Obama meets Tuesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, there are several trouble spots between him and his host, and the good relationship could erode if they aren...
...making deals with some pretty unsavory characters who wield real power on the ground - and that often requires turning a blind eye to corruption and other transgressions. Washington is looking to turn up the heat on Karzai to crack down on corruption by making clear that its commitment to Afghanistan is finite. Yet if Karzai took the threat of a U.S. pull-out seriously, it could make him even more reliant on ties with unsavory protectors...
Signaling America's resolve to prevail is essential, as Gates notes, because as long as Afghans and others in the region believe the U.S. military's presence in Afghanistan is finite, they'll hedge their bets. And hedged bets right now work in the Taliban's favor because, as General Stanley McChrystal has warned, it is the insurgents who have the momentum. (See "Multimedia: The War in Afghanistan Up Close...
...calculations of ordinary Afghans could change, of course, if they believed the U.S. was there to stay and had the will and capability to prevail. But, as Gates also notes, the U.S. military is not in Afghanistan to stay, and Obama is under growing domestic political pressure to find an exit strategy from a costly war whose importance to U.S. national security has grown murky. (See pictures of Afghanistan's mean streets...
Rather than allowing himself to be drawn blindly into a quagmire, Obama is insisting on a clear-eyed view of the prospects for success and ultimately, withdrawal. And that's likely to confirm that even pursuing the most limited kind of success in Afghanistan might require an expanded troop commitment that goes well beyond the next U.S. presidential election...