One felicitous result of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was the setting up of a military-to-military relationship between China and the United States 30 years ago. The move was born of mutual fear of Russian expansion, for no one could foresee then that Afghanistan would be the undoing of Soviet power and that the Soviet Union itself would collapse partly because of it.
Nor was it clear then that China would emerge in the next century as the potential rival to American power in the Pacific. But militaries have their own codes and their own ways of thinking and it is always a good idea to keep them talking and getting to know each other.
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