The decade-old Western strategy to drive a wedge between Russia and China on the Central Asian arena has failed to produce the desired result. On the contrary, the current trends show that the Western strategy spearheaded by the United States has been counter-productive. But the US’ struggle for securing the pre-eminent role in the region shows no signs of abating.
The thrust of the Western strategy has been two-fold: to scatter the gravitas within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] and, secondly, to destroy the credibility of the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO] as a provider of security for Central Asia. The SCO and the CSTO held the potential to challenge the US' regional policies in Central Asia and to frustrate the projection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] as a global security organization. Although the SCO is not a military alliance, it has formed institutional linkages with the CSTO, which is a military alliance.
The US strategy has worked on the weakening of the historical bonding between Russia and the countries of Central Asia. The assumption was that in the geopolitical vacuum ensuing from the Russian “retreat” in Central Asia, the US would have a natural advantage over China to emerge as the main player.
However, the developments took an entirely different turn. True, Russian influence in Central Asia suffered erosion in the past two decades – largely due to Moscow's lackadaisical approach to the region. But the period ahead, for the first time, also offers a renewed opportunity for Russia. President Vladimir Putin's Eurasia Union project signals Russia’s commitment to a comprehensive integration of the former Soviet republics on the basis of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.
Indeed, Central Asia didn’t stand still in the past 20-year period and other outside players have entered the arena. But this does not constitute an insurmountable challenge for Russia, which still possesses considerable influence in the region and is virtually irreplaceable as the main provider of security for the region. Not only does it occupy many commanding heights in the political economy of the countries of the region, Russia’s “soft power” is also unmatched. At its core, the challenge for Russia is to remain engaged with the Central Asian countries on a priority footing in its foreign policy. On the other hand, the Western strategy in Central Asia so far has been singularly unimaginative. If the intention was to disrupt a harmonious partnership developing between Russia and China in Central Asia as well as to sow the seeds of a Sino-Russian discord in the region, this should have been best achieved by Washington offering a creative partnership to Moscow. Conceivably, Moscow would have favorably considered such a partnership provided Washington was willing to recognize its special interests on the territory of the former Soviet republics. But Washington eagerly took the Russian help in 2001 in order to get a toehold in Central Asia and once that objective was realized, it returned to the “great game”.
The US' “containment” strategy pursued during the George W. Bush presidency only prompted Moscow to forge a strategic partnership with China. On balance, therefore, the US strategy aimed at filling the vacuum left by Russia’s “retreat” has come a cropper. The real beneficiary of the “great game” so far has been China.
Indeed, several factors cramped the US' diplomacy in the region — the disrepute that the US acquired during the Bush era as a “crusader” against the Muslim world found its echo in the Central Asian steppes; the overall decline in the US' global influence in the Greater Middle East didn’t go unnoticed in the Central Asian capitals; the preoccupations over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US' propensity to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and its attempts to intervene or stage color revolutions to bring about regime change (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Syria, etc.) alienated the Central Asian elites and made them wary of the US’ intentions. The curious part is that Russia and China eventually found common cause in the recent years to counter the expansion of the US influence in Central Asia – especially since 2005 when the SCO took an open stand on the US’ military base in Manas.
Suffice to say that today, in spite of being a superpower, the US is left to furtively work to forge transactional relationships with the Central Asian leaders on a one-on-one basis. The Central Asian elites realize the Pentagon's extreme need for setting up “lily pads” in Central Asia without which the US presence in Afghanistan in the post-2014 scenario may become unsustainable, given the imponderables in the US-Pakistan relationship.
No matter the high-sounding coinages like “New Silk Road Initiative”, which the current US administration created to generate hype in its regional policies, the ground reality is that the US diplomacy in Central Asia is nowhere near gaining traction. In sum, when the balance sheet is drawn, while Russia may have lost some influence in Central Asia due to its own inadequacies, and while China may have gained substantially thereof, the US still hovers around ground zero.
The US’ policy failure in Central Asia is to be traced back to Bill Clinton’s presidency during the critical decade of “post-Soviet” Russia’s emergence. The cold-war mentality, imbued with a sense of triumphalism over the “defeat” of the Soviet Union, permeated the thinking of the “Russia hands” in the Clinton presidency such as Strobe Talbott and it subsequently formed the basis of the “containment strategy” toward Russia, as robustly pursued under the watch of Condoleeza Rice, the foreign-policy czarina of the Bush presidency.
Arguably, a fresh start was possible within the framework of the “reset” that the Barack Obama administration initiated. Central Asia, in fact, offered an ideal case for a genuine “reset” of the US-Russia relationship because there was substantial policy convergence possible between the two powers with regard to that region’s core issues of terrorism, religious extremism, economic deprivation and democratic transformation. The alacrity with which Russia cooperates with the US-led war in Afghanistan underscores that Moscow and Washington are practically on the same page, grappling with the very same challenges to their national security. To be sure, there was ample scope for a Central Asian vector within the framework of the US-Russia “reset”.
Yet, things didn’t happen that way. The blame for this squarely falls on Washington. The Obama administration’s Russia policy continues to be based on the approach of “selective engagement” of Russia. The eminent Russia scholar and historian Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies in Princeton University and New York, pointed out recently that for the Obama White House the agenda of the “reset” was almost exclusively focused on three areas – Russia’s cooperation in bringing Iran down on its knees; Russia’s logistical (not political) support for the NATO operations in Afghanistan; and Russia’s passivity over the Western intervention in Libya. Cohen wrote:
“The Obama administration got all three [above] concessions. In return, Moscow wanted a compromise on the [US] administration’s plan to place missile defence installations near Russia’s borders; an end to NATO expansion in the direction of Ukraine and Georgia; and a curtailment of US interference, known as ‘democracy promotion,’ in Russia’s internal politics. The Kremlin got none of these.
“In short, another chance for expansive cooperation in US-Russia relations, even the partnership possible after the Soviet Union ended in 1991, has again been squandered in Washington, not in Moscow… The three US policies to which Moscow reasonably objected before the reset have become more aggressive, and indeed, in the Kremlin’s view, have been supplemented by Washington’s policy of selective military ‘regime change’ in the Middle East.”
As Washington presses ahead with the intervention plan for Syria, the US-Russia relationship runs the risk of deteriorating. This would have negative fallouts for Central Asia. The New Silk Road Initiative is already permeated with the spirit of zero-sum game. Alongside, the post-2014 regional security scenario following the drawdown of the Western troops in Afghanistan is fraught with uncertainties. Russia and China simply cannot afford to see their backyard being turned into a cesspool of US conspiracies. The ensuing rivalries would form the leitmotif of the politics of the Central Asian region. Cohen’s prognosis is that “we are on the verge of, or already in, a new cold war.”
