Trump’s strategy in South Asia: Afghanistan’s Gordian knot

ABSTRACT

This article examines President Donald Trump's South Asia Strategy, which places Afghanistan in a broader regional context. During Bush and Obama’s administrations, the regional policy was Afghanistan–Pakistan (Af-Pak) centric, and while under Trump’s regime (2017–2021), Afghanistan, Pakistan and India seemed to be given more weight. The United States (US), a leading proponent of regional security in Afghanistan, has found itself in a difficult situation while making a balancing choice between regional adversaries such as the Sino-Pak Axis and India, whose conflicting interests in Afghanistan have always created a Gordian Knot-like problem. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, some competing views emerged with regard to the practicability of Trump’s policy. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to examine the following question: Would Trump have been able to cut the Gordian knot if he had achieved his strategic objective of peace and regional security in Afghanistan?

KEYWORDS:

• US global war on terrorism
• Trump’s Afghan policy
• Gordian knot
• US–Taliban Peace process
• Afghanistan–Pakistan–India policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Statista. “Number of Fatalities among Western Coalition Soldiers Involved in the Execution of Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001 to 2019”, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/262894/western-coalition-soldiers-killed-in-afghanistan/; and “Iraq Coalition Casualty Count”, iCasualities.org, 2019, http://icasualties.org/. (accessed July 18, 2019).

2 Pres. Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia” (remarks, Fort Myer, Arlington, VA, 21 August 2017), https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-strategy-afghanistan-south-asia/ (accessed August 8, 2019).

3 FY17 was the last year for which full figures were available. Indications are that this figure has been drastically reduced for FY18 and FY1. US Agency for International Development, “U.S. Foreign Aid by Country: Pakistan,” https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/PAK (accessed March 8, 2019).

4 U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, Twitter, March 12, 2019, at https://twitter.com/US4AfghanPeace/status/1105513781705302016 (accessed December 25, 2019).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Sandeep Singh

Sandeep Singh is teaching in the Department of South and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, India.

Bawa Singh

Dr Bawa Singh is Associate Professor in the Department of South and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, India.

Balinder Singh

Balinder Singh is PhD Scholar in the Department of Political Science, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, India.