The Iron Kudzu

Joe Biden’s dishonorable failure in Afghanistan not only did incalculable damage to American interests abroad and our national security but left a chaotic vacuum in Afghanistan that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be all too eager to fill.  As Americans begin the process of assessing one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the last fifty years, we must be clear-eyed that our greatest strategic threat will find nothing but unchecked opportunity now in Southwest Asia.  Afghanistan may be lost to the Taliban and the CCP, but we can still do something about the CCP’s influence and opportunity here in America.  

As a Trump Administration appointee working on national security issues, I traveled on official business to Mali.  As I walked through the terminal that served diplomatic envoys, I was struck by decades of photographs showing Malian and Chinese Communist Party officials together. Why would the country of Mali want to celebrate its longstanding relationship with China?  Well, when Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the Council on Foreign Relations described it as his master plan to create "a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings" and telecommunications infrastructure across the globe.  A staggering number of countries have signed on for China-funded projects within their borders.  But the problem is that BRI funds are a Chinese Trojan Horse.  When a recipient country cannot repay, the Chinese take control of that asset in the host country.  That's how they took control of Sri Lanka's Hambantota Port.  This is why I am so concerned with China moving into Afghanistan, considering that country's rare earth metal deposits.  This is the defining difference between America's development efforts and China's: China has an imperialist mindset that is hell-bent on increasing its influence and coercive control.  Their tendrils stretch, coil, and clasp until the host has no freedom to move without permission.

If you look closely enough, the Iron Kudzu's slow creep is undoubtedly in your backyard as it is in mine.  In the rural northwestern corner of the state, General Electric Roper in Lafayette, Georgia, was recently purchased by the Chinese company Haier Group.  Why would the CCP be interested in purchasing American companies?  The Chinese state becomes most powerful as a strategic competitor to the United States when they own American companies, supply lines, and resources.  China's primary goal is to make the world dependent on them.  They are in Mali, Northwest Georgia, and everywhere in between—and now, sadly, Afghanistan.  And all the while, they are stockpiling their profit to enhance their military might so no one can challenge them in the markets or on the battlefield.

Because of Joe Biden's failures, Americans cannot impact the opportunity that the CCP will find in Afghanistan.  But we can resolve that the CCP shall find no opportunity in our homeland.  COVID-19 and its origins—as well as the CCP’s ownership of American companies—indicate that the Iron Kudzu’s noxious tendrils have come to the United States.  This must end.  In the South, it is a familiar roadside image to see an old home disappear and collapse under the strangling weight of the Kudzu vine.  Will this be the fate of the American republic?  Not if the American people wake up to the unrelenting and looming threat of the Iron Kudzu and require politicians even at the local level to orient all law and policy toward countering China’s presence here.  America’s founding structure, its ideals, and its people are stronger than the slow creep of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence.  As the CCP celebrates 100 years, America’s gift to the communists will be a nation awake to the threat they pose and armed with a fierce urgency to counter the Iron Kudzu’s spread. 

This Op-Ed is the first of a series of pieces stemming from the White House Fellows Class of 2018-2019 service project focused on countering China.  Clay Fuller served as a White House Fellow from 2018-2019, advising senior Trump administration officials on special operations oversight at the Department of Defense and advising the Office of the Vice President on countering the opioid epidemic.  He is an experienced federal, military, and local prosecutor in Appalachia and a reserve military officer with a decade of national security experience.  You can follow him on Twitter @Clay4MainStreet and on Facebook at Clay Fuller: Main Street Patriot.