Politics and Governance

Ronald Kirk, former United States trade representative and former mayor of Dallas, and R. James Nicholson, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, respectively led the U.S. Democratic and Republican delegations. The Chinese delegation was led by Wang Jiarui, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC). EWI Director John Hurley and David Firestein, EWI’s Perot fellow and vice president for the Strategic Trust-Building Initiative and Track 2 Diplomacy, also participated as non-partisan delegates.

In addition to the plenary dialogue session, EWI and the IDCPC co-hosted an inaugural U.S.-China Entrepreneurs Roundtable with the China Economic Cooperation Center, which included the participation of U.S. and Chinese corporate representatives. The U.S. delegation also met with Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan, who leads China’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign as secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Yesui. 

The U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue, launched in 2010, seeks to build understanding and trust between political elites from the United States and China through an exchange of views on governance and foreign policy issues. It is currently the only U.S.-China dialogue process involving sitting officers from the CPC and the U.S. Democratic and Republican National Committees.

Special thanks to our sponsors for their support of the U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue:

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Selected Media Coverage

Television news coverage of the 8^th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue (Mandarin)
http://m.news.cntv.cn/2015/05/06/ARTI1430898023295761.shtml

Television news coverage of the U.S. delegation meeting with Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan (Mandarin)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2015-05/07/c_127776042.htm

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Event Photos

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui greets Ambassador Ronald Kirk.

8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Edward Gillespie speaks at the 8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue. 

Former Missouri Governor Robert Holden speaks to reporters. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui speaks to former Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley speaks to Fu Kui of the CPC’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (far right).

 Republican National Committee Treasurer Anthony Parker speaks at the Celebration Dinner in honor of the 5th anniversary of the U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue

Group photo of all delegates and staff at the 8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue.

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui presents the “Excellent Team Award of the U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue” to EWI’s China team, accepted by EWI Perot Fellow and Vice President David Firestein.

EWI Director John Hurley speaks to a student at Tsinghua University. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)

ISIS has succeeded in developing enhanced methods of communicating their ideology and propaganda to appeal to thousands of youths from the around the world in an effort to recruit them to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

The conference, organized by the EastWest Institute in cooperation with the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, featured experts in policy, theology, deradicalization and counterterrorism practice, and social media from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the U.S. Participants analyzed and debated tools and methods used for recruiting and disseminating propaganda and messaging by extremist groups, the role of religious institutions, past and present deradicalization efforts, and the conditions and challenges to crafting a successful and appealing counter-narrative to ISIS’s ideological propaganda.

The conference was followed by a public panel debate at Kadir Has University entitled “Key Strategies in Countering Extremism: Experiences from the MENA Region and Pakistan.” EWI’s Vice President for Regional Security, Amb. Martin Fleischer gave opening remarks and supporting comments were provided by Manal Omar, Vice President at United States Institute of Peace, and Shafqat Mehmood, Founder and Chairman of PAIMAN Trust Alumni. The Discussion was moderated by Serhat Güvenç, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Kadir Has University.

*A comprehensive report will follow in the next days. 

Photographer: Ulaş Tosun

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to India will help set the new direction of bilateral ties. 

India was the first country with which Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement, but the dynamics of the relationship has changed with Ghani, a US-educated former World Bank official, assuming power. 

Ghani has visited China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US before coming to India. In China he spoke incautiously of Afghanistan’s new external priorities which seem to have relegated India to the outermost circle. 

He has also decided not to pursue the request for defence equipment from India, which would suit us as we are hardly in a position to substantially meet Afghanistan’s critical requirements, but this does jolt the relationship politically. 

He obviously feels that he must engage Pakistan vigorously and obtain its cooperation for pushing the reconciliation process with the Taliban.

In this spirit he has made some unusual gestures, such as meeting the Pakistani army chief at his headquarters in Rawalpindi, besides engaging in coordinated operations with the Pakistan army against the Pakistani Taliban on Afghan soil. 

Reconciliation 

Ghani has also sent six officers for training at the Pakistani military academy to allay Pakistani anger at Afghan officers being trained exclusively in India. 

In return, Pakistan has not yet concretely facilitated the reconciliation process, opening Ghani to domestic criticism for this lack of reciprocity. 

Ghani is also counting on China to influence Pakistan to actively promote the reconciliation process, besides providing economic support to Afghanistan to compensate for the economic consequences of Western troop withdrawal. 

He probably calculates that India’s capacity to economically help is limited because of lack of contiguity and negative Pakistani policies, and that China could be a more productive partner. 

China has expressed its willingness to help in the reconciliation process. Its investment commitments — in the Aynak copper mines for instance — are known. 

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project indicates far-reaching Chinese plans to bring this region into its economic orbit, from which Afghanistan would potentially benefit. 

Ostensibly, Ghani is thinking in hard, practical terms of Afghanistan’s national interest. The Afghan polity is not unanimous on Ghani’s outreach to Pakistan and the Taliban. 

If this is pushed too far without adequate fruits from the exercise appearing quickly, political fissures in Kabul could widen. 

As it is, there is a suspicion that Ghani is seeking to strengthen the Pashtun elements in the polity at the expense of other ethnic groups. It is too early yet to see things clearly as no talks with the Taliban have begun. 

Accommodating the Taliban in the power structure in Afghanistan unconditionally will meet resistance from other ethnic groups, especially the idea of giving them governorships and ministerial appointments outside any electoral process. 

This will be seen as a weakening of the fledgling democratic base of the country. 

Strategy 

Whatever it might want the international community to believe, Pakistan has not given up its strategic ambitions in Afghanistan. It remains opposed to the Indian presence there. 

The West accepts Pakistan’s strategic oversight over Afghanistan, even when it has suffered greatly from its duplicitous policies. 

Pakistan has been the real problem in Afghanistan, providing safe-havens to the Taliban and abetting terrorist attacks there, but all this is being overlooked and Pakistan is now being seen as the key to the solution in Afghanistan. 

With this kind of acceptance of Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan, why should it change its strategic designs in that country? 

Goodwill 

For India this is a problem, as Pakistan will continue to impede India’s access to Afghanistan as well as Central Asia. 

India will not be able to pursue its normal economic and other interests in this whole region because of the support the West and China give to Pakistani policies in Afghanistan. 

With radical ideologies and terrorism spreading in this region, and Pakistan itself in the throes of terrorism and sectarian conflict, India’s security is under threat. 

India needs to keep a presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia to consolidate its image as a benign partner capable of providing economic benefits and assistance, and maintaining a power balance in the region. 

It does not serve the interest of Western democracies to weaken India’s position in Afghanistan to the advantage of a military-dominated, terrorism- riven, democratically weak and radicalising state like Pakistan. 

Rationally, Kabul would need to maintain close ties with India to balance Pakistan and deter it from overreaching itself in Afghanistan. 

India, which enjoys great goodwill in Afghanistan, would want to nurture it and not lower its profile in Afghanistan deliberately, especially in the economic area, building Afghan capacities and humanitarian exchanges. 

India faces a big challenge, but its role and how it benefits the Afghan nation is understood by our many friends in Afghanistan, amongst whom President Ghani should rightfully figure. 

Click here to read the article at The Daily Mail.

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The EastWest Institute has released a new report by a working group of Russian and U.S. experts on how the United States and Russia can jointly combat narcotrafficking out of Afghanistan. The joint U.S.-Russia working group previously has released two reports, Afghan Narcotrafficking: A Joint Threat Assessment in 2013 and Afghan Narcotrafficking: Post-2014 Scenarios in February 2015.

The paper points out that Afghanistan accounts for 80 percent of global opium and 74 percent of illicit opium production worldwide—90 percent of which is trafficked out of the country. Afghan heroin has created an addiction crisis in Russia, whereas for the United States the growing Afghan drug trade is further testimony to the failed decade long U.S.-led state-building exercise in the country.

The current publication comes at a time of increased tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine, which is detrimentally affecting joint efforts elsewhere in the world. “(…) [C]ooperation between the United States and Russia may not come easily even when confronting a common threat. Fallout from the Ukraine crisis has damaged the bilateral relationship to an extent that will take years to repair,” the study notes pessimistically.

Prior to the Ukraine crisis, both countries had slowly increased joint operations in the region. For example, back in 2010, Russian and American authorities seized approximately $60 million worth of opium during raids on four drug laboratories near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The EastWest paper elaborates:

"According to official data from the Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation (FSKN), such cooperative operations continued through 2012, yielding a total of seven FSKN-DEA operations in the country. These operations resulted in seizures of 2.5 tons of opiates, 3.5 tons of hashish, 1.5 tons of morphine and 5.5 tons of precursors—along with the destruction of 10 drug laboratories."

However, even prior to the Ukraine crisis things did not always go smoothly between Moscow and Washington. Right around the time when United States state-building efforts intensified in Afghanistan (2008-2009), it became apparent that Moscow favored a more heavy-handed approach—a combination of opium eradication combined with interdiction efforts within Afghanistan and the destruction of laboratories—while Washington wanted to pursue a lighter touch campaign focused on drug interdiction in order not to further aggravate the Afghan population.

With the ongoing deterioration of Russia-West relations, the cooperation could potentially snap to a complete halt, although the U.S.-Russian working group does not seem to think this is likely. They offer a set of recommendations for Afghan, U.S., and Russian policymakers to consider. Here is a selection:

• Encourage Afghanistan to cooperate more actively with Iran to improve interdiction along the Afghan-Iranian border. (…)
• Speak with a common voice in matters of counternarcotics and border security in Central and South Asia and demand that Central Asian officials live up to the obligations of the counternarcotics and border management assistance that they have received. (…)
• Push Afghanistan and Pakistan to finalize the status of their frontier.(…)
• Deepen formal and informal cooperation across the FSKN and DEA field offices in Afghanistan and Central Asia.(…)
• Jointly expand multilateral training of Central Asian and Afghan border police, customs authorities and counternarcotics officers. (…)
• Establish joint positions on counternarcotics and border control at international bodies where these issues are discussed (…) 

According to the EastWest Institute, The State of Afghanistan’s Borders will be followed by three more reports in 2015 and 2016: two that will offer specific policy suggestions on alternative livelihood in Afghanistan and narco-financing and a final report presenting a compendium of all recommendations.

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To read this article at The Diplomat, click here.