Commentary There is a school of thought that international relations is a zero-sum game: if you’re winning, then I’m losing. Nowhere is this more apropos than in the case of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to this zero-sum argument, the “loser”—the United States—is obvious. But who is the winner? The Taliban, of course, but what other countries also stand to gain by America’s Afghan exit? It is increasingly posited that China could be a winner in all of this. This begs the question, however of how the U.S. withdrawal constitutes a “win” for Beijing. To a certain extent, the geopolitical vacuum left behind by the United States creates a natural opening for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to swoop into Afghanistan and Central Asia. The CCP has obvious interests in the area. China would love to incorporate Afghanistan into its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One …