Meanwhile, nuclear-armed Pakistan, with bin Laden hiding out and the potential to destabilize India, is possibly a greater threat to U.S. supremacy than exists in Afghanistan.

As CHALLENGE’s last issue pointed out, the original U.S. Afghan invasion and every surge since have aimed at securing the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline route. But questions about the project’s near-term feasibility amid fears of an Islamic fundamentalist takeover in unstable Pakistan have caused a tactical split inside the dominant imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists.

One faction bets that the influx of up to 45,000 more U.S. troops that General Stanley McChrystal calls for can guarantee TAPI. Energy strategist Gal Luft is executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a top level think-tank. Its heavy-hitting advisors include assorted former admirals and generals and warmonger Ken Pollack. In 2002, Pollack — working for the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations — wrote a book titled, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.” Luft recently urged that:

“The Obama administration should actively promote...the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline....[W]hile providing the impoverished Afghan government with a steady revenue stream in the form of transit fees... TAPI would allow Turkmenistan to sell its gas to India, enriching two U.S. allies (Afghanistan and Pakistan) rather than selling the same gas to Europe, enriching a U.S. enemy (Iran).” (International Analyst Network, 9/25/09)

Begun in the late 1990s by the Clinton administration and Unocal (now Chevron), TAPI is financed from the U.S. government-dominated Asian Development Bank.

Obama’s First Afghan Surge:
Mistaken Gamble On Supposed
Russian Weakness

But one daunting task facing U.S. rulers is prying TAPI’s sole supplier, former Soviet republic Turkmenistan, from the grip of a growing Moscow-led anti-U.S. alliance. Until recently, two-thirds of Turkmen gas exports have gone to Russia. China and Iran take most of the rest. Gas-rich Russia and Iran don’t need Turkmen supplies for their own domestic needs but use them to augment their power as regional and global energy brokers. They’re trying to copy the racket the U.S. ran throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when, more than self-sufficient in oil, it used military might to wield Saudi, Iranian, Iraqi and Kuwaiti energy sources as a worldwide imperialist weapon (with junior partner Britain’s help).

In April 2009, with gas prices falling, Russia demonstrated its physical control over Turkmen energy by closing a valve on the country’s main export pipeline, causing it to explode. Obama & Co. mistakenly interpreted this act as a lasting rift between Turkmenistan and Russia and sought to exploit it with a 21,000-troop surge to buttress the TAPI pipeline. But Russia still has the upper hand.

Knuckling under completely, Turkmen president Berdymukhamedov slavishly said, “Negotiations… [with] Russia have allowed us to resolve some technical issues related to the functioning of Central Asia-Centre pipeline.” (Industry newsletter Upstream Online (9/22/09) The latter added, “Turkmenistan needs to agree with Russia soon to avoid pressure from export revenue shortages.”

 Pakistan Better Near-Range Target For Long-Term U.S. War-Makers

To oppose the “subdue-Afghanistan-now” camp, another section of U.S. imperialists has anointed a “voice of reason” spokesman — Rory Stewart, new head of the Carr Center at Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Stewart was governor of a U.S.-U.K.-occupied Iraqi province in 2004. With these credentials, he testified to Congress on September 16.

Trying to sound a phony anti-war note, Stewart said Afghan tribalism essentially made the country unwinnable but strategically worth the presence of special forces assassins: “The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer – perhaps 20,000.”

But then Stewart revealed his, and his ruling-class masters’ real target: “Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations.”

In a later interview Stewart presented his now famous feline analogy, “It’s like you’re going into a room with an angry cat and a big tiger….The angry cat is Afghanistan and the big tiger is Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear bombs. Pakistan has Bin Laden. Pakistan can destabilize India.”

Whatever course Obama and his ruling-class masters takes, it will be a disaster for our class. A drive for pipeline terrain in Afghanistan will kill tens of thousand of Afghan workers and working-class GIs. Expanding the U.S.’s semi-secret war in far more populous Pakistan will murder many more and help set the stage for World War III.

The working class has no interests in this debate among the rulers — but must organize against its consequences. We can’t stop the rulers’ wars just yet. But by building a working-class party with a revolutionary communist outlook, we shall eventually be able to crush the billionaires’ profit system and its ceaseless mass slaughter.