Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
Afghanistan is more like a roadblock to potential trade routes. This analysis from the Real Institute Elcano highlights the geo-economic dimensions of the Central Asian region. There are five ways out of Central Asia: Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Caspian. Three are closed to US control (Russia, China, Iran), one is about to close (Afg), and one is in dispute (Caspian).

The quest to open new corridors that undermine Russia's geographic and infrastructure monopoly in Central Asia (originally) looked to Afghanistan as an opportunity alongside routes through the Caspian. The Afghan conflict obviously makes it necessary to look elsewhere in the interim.
The briefly proposed Afghan pipeline project would have had a very minimal capacity and was never a serious effort to undermine Russian dominance of Central Asian hydrocarbon export routes. The US of course cannot "control" Central Asian exports, and never could. Since the US doesn't need to control them, it's not a matter of any great relevance. I don't think the US interest in Afghanistan has ever been about controlling trade.

The Russian dominance of Central Asian export routes will of course eventually be broken by China, a process that has already begun. That's not something the US needs to be much concerned with.