Written on May 15, 2019, this essay traces the struggles of great powers over Afghanistan and the meaning of the U.S. military presence there, then argues that the same structure applies to the Korean Peninsula, sharply presenting the essence of geopolitics through the idea of making it an “Eastern Switzerland” by having surrounding powers withdraw.

2019-05-15
The reason they continue to stay there even under the Trump administration, which has no interest in this region, is that the rising China has begun to set its sights on it.
India went first to seize it, but failed.
The name of the mountain range running through central Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, tells that history.
In the Dari language used by the local people, it means killer of Indians.
I am reposting the chapter I published on 2019-02-15 under that title.
The following is from this week’s installment of the famous column serialized in Shukan Shincho by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
The Theory of Leaving Korea Alone
Afghanistan lies at the center of Asia and occupies the highest position.
Whoever takes it can look down on Russia, the Middle East, India, and China.
If they wished, they could conquer and destroy them.
In Europe, Switzerland occupies a similar position.
If a great power were to take it, the security of the surrounding countries would be threatened.
That is why Switzerland was made a permanently neutral state and was not allowed to form military alliances.
Afghanistan has no such arrangement.
Countries seeking hegemony invaded it again and again.
India went first to seize it, but failed.
The name of the mountain range running through central Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, tells that history.
In the Dari language used by the local people, it means killer of Indians.
Next, Russia and Britain competed to conquer it.
This was called the Great Game.
The winner was Britain.
But although it took Kabul, that country was, put simply, a land of brigands.
Pashtuns, Tajiks, Turkmens, and Hazaras all held territory and fought one another.
The newly arrived British troops too were attacked and killed whenever they showed an opening.
Britain gave up trying to rule Afghanistan, and in January 1842, 15,000 British soldiers, their families, and prostitutes fled snowy Kabul.
Yet the only one who reached Jalalabad was the physician William Brydon.
He was the man Conan Doyle used as the model for Dr. Watson.
The reason for the crushing defeat was that the Indian soldiers were too weak against the cold.
The British army replaced them with Gurkha soldiers raised in the Himalayas and tried again.
They attempted it three times, including after the First World War, but they could not control the hordes of brigands.
Next came Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.
It meant to rebuild the communist regime through this, but in addition to the brigands, al-Qaeda, trained by the United States, was strong.
The Soviet army was crushed, and then the Soviet Union itself collapsed as well.
And this time, the United States came in.
It was not for hegemony in that area, but to eliminate al-Qaeda, which had carried out 9/11.
After ten years it killed the leader bin Laden, but the U.S. military remained.
This year marks the eighteenth year, and the number of American war dead has exceeded 7,000.
The reason they continue to stay there even under the Trump administration, which has no interest in this region, is that the rising China has begun to set its sights on it.
However, perhaps because it has gained confidence that it can contain China through Huawei and tariffs and the like, the U.S. government says it will halve the 14,000 American troops stationed there within the year.
Looking at Afghanistan’s national history, it has basically only been tribes inside the country quarreling among themselves, and there has never been a case of the tribes uniting and invading neighboring states.
However, if any outside power intervenes even a little, each tribe resists without tiring.
If left alone, they merely herd sheep, sell opium, and attack foreigners who stray in, and cause no great harm.
The U.S. government sees it that way as well, and in its withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban, the largest local force, it is making severing ties with outside forces such as al-Qaeda a condition.
Put simply, it is trying to turn Afghanistan into a Switzerland.
In fact, there is a view that this handling of Afghanistan applies directly to Korea as well.
To Japan, that peninsula appears to be a strategic key point.
If some great power were to take it, Japan would be in danger.
That is why Japan fought the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War.
For China as well, it would be troublesome if the culture of the Western free sphere were to press up as far as the Tumen River.
For Russia too, if a U.S. military base were created in North Korea, the issue would become far more serious than the Northern Territories.
Because of the intentions of the surrounding countries, the present divided state had become just the right point of settlement.
However, if one looks at Korean history, it has always split into two or three parts and quarreled noisily.
Just like Afghanistan.
Moreover, it is a pitiful country of which it was said, “Though the various barbarians took the Central Plain, it remained a tributary territory for a thousand years” (Hayashi Hakko).
There has never been an example of it uniting and striking outward.
So after removing North Korea’s nuclear weapons, why not have the surrounding countries talk and then completely withdraw their hands from that peninsula.
Tell Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae In, “Everyone hopes you will become the Switzerland of the East.”
They are quite vain.
I think they would gladly say OK.