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Preface
The Slavic Research Center (SRC) of Hokkaido University held an international symposium entitled “Eager Eyes Fixed on Slavic Eurasia:
Change and Progress” in Sapporo, Japan, on July 6 and 7 of 2006. The symposium was mainly funded by a special scientific research grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education’s Twenty-first Century Center of Excellence Program (“Making a Discipline of Slavic Eurasian Studies:
2003–2008,” project leader, Ieda Osamu) and partly assisted by Grants-in- Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (“An Emerging New Eurasian Order: Russia, China and Its Interactions toward its Neighbors: 2006–2009,” project leader, Iwashita Akihiro).
The symposium started with an opening speech, Martha Brill Olcott’s
“Eyes on Central Asia: How To Understand the Winners and Losers.” The aim of the symposium was to redefine the former Soviet space in international relations, paying closest attention to the “surrounding regions” of Eurasia. Well-known specialists on the region came together in Sapporo to debate topics such as “Russian Foreign Policy Reconsidered,” “South Asia and Eurasia,” “Central Asia and Eurasian Cooperation,” “Challenges of the Sino-Russian Border,” and “Russia in East Asia.”
All of the sessions noted China’s presence in the region. Central Asian issues and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization were mentioned in the sessions on South Asia and East Asia. Every participant recognized the crucial importance of increasing interactions in and around Eurasia.
Eighteen papers were submitted to the symposium: four from Japan, three from China, two each from Russia and the United States, and one each from Korea, Hungary, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and Australia.
As China is a decisive factor in the region, differences within the country
should be taken into account: the Chinese speakers came respectively from Beijing, Shanghai, and Harbin. At the symposium, the SRC showed the will to function as a hub center for Eurasian Studies on Northeast Asia as it forges new ties of research cooperation with academic institutions in South Asia that share common interests on the topic.
Considering the topics we debated during the symposium were far reaching and diversified, we decided to invite experts in specific fields.
Five excellent contributions came from Russia, China, India, Korea, and Japan. They covered the new dynamics of the bilateral and multilateral relations emerging and developing in Eurasia as an entity. Their presence undoubtedly strengthened the contents of the proceedings.
The first volume is entitled “Russia and Its Neighbors in Crisis.”
Here, we selected twelve papers for Central Asia—Heart of Eurasia, Russian Foreign Policy, and South Asian views on Eurasia. The first part,
“Geopolitics at the Crossroads of Eurasia,” covers Central Asia. As an opening chapter, Olcott shows us as an introduction to not only the part but also the volume as a whole how to keep our “eyes” on the region while tackling issues deriving from the “crossroad nature” of Central Asia.
She fully analyzes the power orientations and balance sheets of foreign influence over the region—coming from the United States, Russia, and China. Nevertheless, she does not seem to accept the so-called “Great Game” concept as prevailed in the nineteenth century in the region. The active existence and creditable performance of the Central Asian states are progressing well.
Also in the same volume, Farkhod Tolipov, Sun Zhuangzhi, and Yuasa Takeshi follow the same topic from a different perspective.
Recently, owing to some political disturbances in Central Asia, local experts face the challenge of expressing their own sincere and objective analyses. Tolipov has done this with success. His well-balanced contribution should be respected and accepted by most readers. Sun Zhuangzhi’s presence is also splendid. He is one of the most famous specialists in China in the Central Asian issue. His observations and conclusion closely relate to China’s official position. Understanding his chapter is a must for further discussion on China’s attitudes toward the region. Yuasa Takeshi is a leading Japanese scholar on the foreign policy of Russia and Central Asia. He tries to depict the details of Japan’s non- veiled involvement in Central Asia, using only resources that he knows.
The information should be shared with other researchers to develop the
discussion on why and how Japan could develop active commitment toward the region.
The second part of the volume, “Russian Foreign Policy Multivectored,” is vital for reconsidering Russian foreign policy. As Russia’s revival is creating a “regional hegemon,” some Western researchers cast doubt on the goodwill and orientation of Russian foreign policy: Russia is beginning to use its resources to maintain and increase its sphere of influence over its surrounding neighbors, and Russia is proceeding to ally with other powers to counterbalance the United States.
Indeed, Vladimir Putin’s recent speeches contain some of the elements that the researchers considered, but the exact orientation of Russian foreign policy should be tested against not only the discourse but also the realities in and around Russia.
First, we introduce a Russian scholar’s view on Putin’s foreign policy.
Tatiana Zakaurtseva covers all-round orientations. Readers can easily acquire current basic knowledge from her chapter. László Póti’s work functions to reduce political exaggeration and make Russian foreign policy understandable. His persuasive analysis on Russian policy toward Central Europe calms down some sensational views on Russia and gives some hints for comparative studies on its foreign policy toward Eurasia.
Mark N. Katz, observing three challenges in Russian foreign policy, i.e., from the West, from the Muslim world, and from China, concludes that Russia faces difficulties in overcoming the dilemma. Ko Sangtu, using a theoretical framework, analyzes the shift in Russian foreign policy from bandwagoning with the United States to counterbalancing the United States. Ko’s chapter sheds some light on the Russian upsurge, while Póti and Katz’s discussions pay great attention to the weakness of Russia (the latter sounding bitter to Russia, while the former has a more positive tone).
A feature of Russian foreign policy is that it is now multifaceted and multivectored. What aspect to emphasize leads often to different conclusions. How to compile these differences in a consistent manner remains in the readers’ own hands.
The third part, “Russia and Its Southern Front,” is unique and notable in the volume. Iwashita Akihiro’s chapter combines the argument on Russian foreign policy with Russo-South Asian relations. He proposes a new model for analyzing Eurasia in international relations: border dynamism versus power balance. In this hypothesis, he endeavors to reveal the essential difference between Russo-Chinese relations and
Russo-Indian relations. His theoretical work is backed by empirical studies on Russo-South Asian relations. Nirmala Joshi and Fazal-ur- Rahman’s contributions to the volume represent a historic precedent for the Slavic Research Center. We have never invited Indian or Pakistani experts on Eurasia before. The two South Asian strategists’ discussions during the symposium profoundly attracted all of the participants. As the Eurasian world widens and Russian and Chinese relations with South Asia deepen, Indo-Pak dialogue on Eurasia represents an emerging new order in the region. Yoshida Osamu, a Japanese specialist on South Asian international relations, moderates the discussion and puts it in a global context. He wraps up the current meaning and importance of Indo-Pak relations for Eurasian unity.
The fruits of the contributing authors’ intellectual endeavors are much appreciated. It is our goal that these small but important academic contributions by some of the leaders of our field of study prove to be an impetus for further academic inquiry. If this goal is achieved, it will be our great pleasure.
This volume greatly benefited from the contribution of Japanese colleagues, who participated as discussants in the symposium. For the first volume, we particularly owe Hyodo Shinji, senior researcher at the National Institute for Defense Studies, and Oka Natsuko, senior researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies, for adding fuel to the discussion.
I would like to express my gratitude to Seth Cervantes, lecturer at Tomakomai Komazawa University, for his special contributions during the editing phase of this volume. I owe much to Ito Kaoru for kindly agreeing to take on the laborious task of designing the cover of the volume. I would also like to thank Hosono Mitsue, Okada Yukari and Miyazaki Haruka for their tireless efforts towards the completion of this volume.
Iwashita Akihiro Editor Sapporo, 2007
Eyes on Central Asia:
How to Understand the Winners and Losers
Martha Brill OLCOTT
The Need for a Perspective on Central Asia’s Importance
The collapse of the USSR led to almost immediate discussion of a supposed new “Great Game” in Central Asia. The US was purportedly vying for influence with Russia and China, while regional powers like Iran and Turkey were said to be competing with each other, and even with the European states, Japan, and other Asian countries.
But for all the discussion of a new “Great Game” in Central Asia, after fifteen years of independence, the five states of Central Asia have not been consigned to any single geopolitical “camp.” Neither Russia, nor China, nor the US is able to dictate outcomes in this region, and while Turkey and Iran are both active in the region, neither plays a decisive role.
In fact, all five states have sought balance in their international relations, lining up more closely with the US, Russia, and China as opportunities to advance their own national interests seem to warrant, while simultaneously maintaining a very inviting hand to virtually all the major industrial powers, to Japan, India, Korea, Germany, the UK, France, and even to the smaller European nations, as opportunities to advance their own national economic agendas were offered.
This does not mean that major actors in the international community have not competed for influence in Central Asia; they most certainly have.
But Russia and China excepted, virtually no other international actors
were unwilling to make securing their influence in the region a foreign policy priority. This includes the US, which did accord priority to this region in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on American soil in September 2001, but US priorities once again shifted in 2003, with the decision to attack Iraq.
Some countries entered the competition with little sense of why, save that international competitors were eager to be engaged in the region.
Those, like Russia, Turkey, and Iran, that viewed their national security as directly tied to the Central Asian states often lacked effective levers to advance their cause, and this was particularly true of Russia in the first years after the collapse of the USSR. By contrast, China, which certainly had the capacity to advance its interests, took a “go slow” approach, Beijing not wanting to make its move too quickly as long as China’s long- term goals remained uncompromised.
With time, a number of countries even dropped out of the competition, while others began to formulate a clearer idea of what their national interests were vis-à-vis the Central Asian states. There is certainly much to attract the world’s largest economies to Central Asia.
The area has vast energy resources and presents new transcontinental transport alternatives. And neglect of the region has potential costs as well, given the potential for radical Islamic terrorism and for international criminal groups to become entrenched, tied in part to opium production and heroin trade through the region.
Nonetheless, most western democracies have decided that the states of Central Asia are of real, but secondary, importance for their energy, and for national security more generally. While fearful of the political vacuum that defeat of President Hamid Karzai’s regime in Afghanistan would create, most NATO nations remain unwilling to commit large numbers of troops to the military operation there. Similarly, Central Asia’s oil reserves, while relatively large (Kazakh oil reserves in particular), can only be a secondary or tertiary source for western countries, while Central Asian gas, of more direct interest to European states in particular, cannot fully substitute Russian gas, so must be secured in ways that do not fully alienate Russia.
By contrast, for Russia and China, securing long-term access to Central Asia’s energy resources would make a huge difference to their energy supply, both for domestic use and in the case of Russia allowing
them to better serve the export market. Civil unrest in Central Asia would likely have a direct impact on both Russia’s and China’s internal security.
And, in fact, it is China’s, but more especially Russia’s, interest in the region, and in the region’s energy resources in particular, that has been motivating many western governments to increase their engagement in the region. This is very apparent in US policy, in particular. In a somewhat simplified restatement of the policy, Russia and China are depicted as threats to solidifying the stability of these regimes, while an increased western presence is depicted as promoting the building of markets and democratic polities, all necessary for securing the long-term independence of these regimes. Other countries simply want to secure the investments of their national “flag-bearing” energy companies.
In an almost mirror image, especially since 2001, both Russia and China have justified their increased engagement partly as an effort to limit US influence in the region. And they soften their economic requests with promises of political protection, which, since the Rose Revolution in Georgia in late 2003, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and the violence in Andijian, Uzbekistan, two months later, seem more attractive to several Central Asian leaders than US and EU pressure to democratize.
However, this article will argue that the degree of geopolitical competition that currently exists in Central Asia poses no particular risk either for the region, or for western security interests more generally. The Central Asian states are becoming increasingly competent in defending their own national interests, and most have devised complex foreign policy strategies that rather successfully play off the competing foreign interests that seek to influence them.
Even more importantly, as this article will detail, while “all eyes”
may be on Central Asia, they are oftentimes not steadfastly focused, with foreign actors often pursuing conflicting policies that underestimate the complexity of the region. While the region may seemingly suffer from overengagement by the international community, it may actually be a victim of underengagement.
US Policies in Central Asia
US policy-makers shook up the strategic balance in Central Asia in the autumn of 2001 when it opened bases both in Uzbekistan and in
Kyrgyzstan, increased foreign assistance to the Central Asian states, and started talking about new kinds of strategic partnerships and alliances. Yet the limits of the US strategic engagement in the region were set by the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, and by the subsequent decision to use this military engagement to lead a global campaign to advance the cause of democratic governance. This made the Central Asian states much less attractive to the US, and also made the US a far more problematic partner for many Central Asian leaders.
The US Department of Defense always served as the region’s strongest advocate within the administration, using these states as a launching pad for military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan. A few even provided some ancillary support in Iraq.
The Pentagon never expected any of these states to follow the path of Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but the Bush administration did expect the region to continue to provide support in the global repositioning of US forces. But by late 2005, it was quite clear that this was a not-to-be realized goal, at least for the life of the Bush administration. The US was forced out of its base in Uzbekistan, after already-difficult negotiations were broken off in the wake of US criticism over Tashkent’s handling of events in Andijian, and the refusal of the Uzbek government to permit an OSCE- or UN- sponsored inquiry into them. And it took the US almost 15 months to negotiate new terms for their facility in Kyrgyzstan, with Washington settling for a short-term agreement with substantially increased costs to the US side.
Increases in US assistance to the region never came close to mirroring Central Asian expectations. While there was an increase in US assistance to the region, in most categories, it proved short lived; US military assistance increased quite strikingly in 2002 and 2003, only to drop sharply in FY2004 and FY2005, when the relative importance of these bases began to diminish. And US security assistance in the region was designed to respond to immediate US security needs, targeting border security in particular, rather than to provide support for a comprehensive overhaul of the internal and external security systems, something that the Central Asian states were anxious to receive.
So it should not have been surprising that the US relationship with Uzbekistan began to turn sour in 2004, after the Bush administration had fully embraced the call for the global spread of democratic governance,
and as a consequence of this, the US secretary of state refused to certify Uzbekistan as having made progress in human rights, resulting in nearly
$20 million of assistance to the Uzbek government being cut off.
After the European and US displeasure over Uzbekistan’s refusal to allow an OSCE or UN inquiry into the civilian deaths there, it was effectively a foregone conclusion that the US presence would not be long term. The Pentagon had already begun to “step down” the state of readiness of their base in Uzbekistan, but did wish to preserve long-term basing rights as protection against future security risks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as a year-round entry point for northern Afghanistan. As a result, they were quite unhappy when the Uzbeks requested the withdrawal of US forces in the late summer of 2005, invoking a six-month termination clause in the original agreement.
The Uzbeks were clearly playing tough with the US, having discussed their desire to break out of Washington’s sphere of influence in bilateral meetings between President Islam Karimov and both his Russian and his Chinese counterparts. And the US presence in the region was also raised at the July 2005 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, held in Astana, Kazakhstan, at which all six member nations (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) called on Washington to set a date for its military withdrawal from the region.
The faltering US-Uzbek relationship made it very important for the US to retain control of the US military facility at Manas Airport, which is renewed annually and now serves as a major logistical hub for US operations in Afghanistan. It has also provided about a hundred local jobs and revenue for the government and local suppliers, which under the Akaev regime, included close family members, which left some in the Kyrgyz opposition demanding that the US compensate the Kyrgyz government for “lost” revenue, lost because President Askar Akaev accepted an agreement that provided relatively little rent—under $30 million per year—but made commitments to purchase all fuel and many other supplies through local merchants.
Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev reaffirmed the status of the base during a visit by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Kyrgyzstan in August 2005, shortly after Bakiev’s election, but the negotiations over the base continued for over a year, after the new government demanded $200 million annually in rent. In the end, the Kyrgyz and US governments agreed to a base arrangement that included
rent for the base as part of a larger and broader foreign assistance package.
But the basing issue will continue to arise, and is likely to remain a factor causing friction between the two countries, as both the opposition and the government remain “suspicious” of the US, the government in part because it is committed to trying to balance relations with the US with close ties with both Russia and China, and the opposition because they feel that the US has not been supportive enough of their efforts to continue the “Tulip Revolution” that ousted Akaev until a real democratic system is introduced in Kyrgyzstan.
Although there is no military base there, Kazakhstan is the Central Asian state of greatest interest to US leaders, largely because of the country’s vast oil and gas reserves, whose largest fossil-fuel deposits are being developed in partnership with US energy companies. The government in Astana is an important partner for Washington, and for this reason, even with Kazakhstan’s initial opposition to the US-led military action in Iraq, the Kazakhs did eventually decide to send a small group of twenty-seven troops to Iraq to support the US-led international effort, after initially opposing the war in terms that were only slightly more measured than those of Russia.
Turkmenistan and Tajikistan do not figure as prominently in US strategic thinking about Central Asia. Until now, Turkmenistan has facilitated the passage of large volumes of humanitarian assistance bound for Afghanistan through its territory, and quietly allowed repairs and occasional refueling. There has also been increased cooperation between US and Turkmen officials to interdict heroin and opium crossing the country. The principal US security concern in Tajikistan is improving narcotics interdiction. Tajikistan’s government is eager to cooperate even more closely with the United States. NATO forces are allowed to use highways bound for Afghanistan and enjoy access to bases, but the road between these two countries has high mountain passes that are impassable during the long winter.
While Washington never had any realistic expectation that the Central Asian states would be admitted into any of the key European political and economic associations, US policy-makers did hope that these states would make steady progress towards becoming democracies with market economies. Over the past fifteen years, the region’s progress towards democracy has been erratic at best. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan made some early progress towards creating more open and democratic
polities in the mid-1990s, only to move in the other direction over the next several years. Kyrgyzstan’s color revolution in March 2005, which led to Askar Akaev’s replacement by Kurmanbek Bakiev, was the most ambiguous of the post-Soviet popular protests that resulted in a regime change. But the government of President Bakiev and Prime Minister Feliks Kulov has also faced strong opposition since taking power, although the adoption of a new constitution providing for greater power for the parliament in November 2006 could prove a stabilizer for the regime, and a source of pressure for other governments to introduce greater balance in their highly centralized presidential systems.
Kazakhstan, too, has made very uneven progress towards establishing democratic political institutions, holding what were judged by the OSCE to be flawed elections for parliament and president in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Nonetheless, President Nursultan Nazarbaev’s claims that his country’s progress in political and economic institution building merits Kazakhstan having the chance to be the first post-Soviet state to preside over the OSCE (in 2009).
Nazarbaev is likely to prove an even less enthusiastic political reformer if his request to the OSCE is rebuffed, demonstrating the increasing Central Asian self-possession in international affairs. With Kazakhstan on track to pump more oil for export each day than Iran by 2010, the United States no longer fears that the long-term access of western nations to Caspian oil might be at risk. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is already a reality, and the Kazakhs have committed some of their new output to this route starting sometime after 2008.
The US-Kazakh relationship has been capable of weathering potentially difficult crises, including the ongoing New York-based trials and investigation into corruption in Kazakhstan’s oil industry. Although these cast a shadow over President Nazarbaev, both sides have proved able to compartmentalize the corruption scandal and keep it from damaging the bilateral relationship.
Over time, the Kazakhs have become much more businesslike in their dealings with western oil companies and the management of their national oil sector more generally. But they are seeking balance in investment in their hydrocarbon sector. This has been a contributing factor in the growing frustration of US policy-makers who have sought to expand US and western access to Caspian oil and gas. While there are always many
mutterings over Russian pressure on the Central Asians, in reality, the situation is far more complex.
As is discussed a little later on, Russia has sought to consolidate its position in the Central Asian gas industry in particular, and expand its holdings in the region’s oil sector. But the Central Asian states, for all their much-professed desire to have alternative pipeline routes that bypass Russia, have not been terribly enthusiastic about leaping on the bandwagon to support US-sponsored alternatives.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was already operating before Kazakhstan made a firm, but very imprecise, commitment to ship substantial amounts of oil across this route once “big oil” from Kashagan was available. They have also given more tempered support for the building of undersea gas and oil pipelines across the Caspian, an idea recently revived by the US and some European states. In the last few years of his life Turkmen president Saparmurat Niiazov became more enthusiastic about the idea of getting its gas to Europe through routes that bypass Russia. The government of Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, which came to power in December 2006 has promised a more receptive environment to Western investors whose partnership in the gas production side of the project, without which the supply of Turkmen gas for such a pipeline cannot be assured.
In the mid-1990s, there were western firms keenly interested in investing in Turkmen production. Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell hoped to use Turkmen gas to open the door to develop Iranian gas fields through building a pipeline across Iran. Unocal put together an international consortium to ship Turkmen oil and gas across Afghanistan. Continued US sanctions put paid to the first project, while the deteriorating political situation in Afghanistan, and the newly acquired knowledge of al Qaeda camps in that country, led Unocal to walk away from its project.
Even today, there is no commercial interest behind the idea of a Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistani pipeline, despite the fact that the ADB is backing this project and prospects for the commercial sale of gas from Pakistan to India have improved. Even if conditions of doing business in Turkmenistan improve, investors still confront deteriorating political conditions in Afghanistan.
The same is also true of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline. The US administration is interested in the project, and so too are a number of European governments (Hungary, Romania, and Austria in particular) as
this pipeline, which would connect with the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline currently under construction, would supply gas to the planned Nabucco pipeline that would go from Turkey to the Austrian border. Like the TAP pipeline, which could have ADB loan guarantees for participants, this project might obtain similar assurances from the EBRD, but Russia, too, has offered to supply gas to Nabucco, making this project less dependent upon Caspian gas.
But international financial institutions seem more eager for these projects than do western oil companies. Both projects have received new life since the Russian-Ukrainian gas fiasco of January 2006, when after failure to reach a gas price accord, Russia turned off gas supplies to Ukraine, and Ukraine bled off gas for their own usage, precipitating a further drop in gas pressure and effectively cutting off gas to Gazprom’s European partners, but both still lack major western investors.
Russia in Central Asia
Initially, both Russia and China accepted the US military presence in Central Asia as an inevitable part of the US’ retaliation against the “9/11”
attacks. But neither country was willing to have its national interests overshadowed, and both have taken advantage of the increasingly ambivalent attitude of regional leaders towards the US to make further inroads into the economies and security environments of the region. Based on improving bilateral relationships with Moscow and Beijing, plus the expanding forum provided by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Central Asian states view Russia’s and China’s engagement in the region as less hegemonic than those of a decade earlier. In fact, with time, given its “democratization” agenda, Washington is coming to be viewed as the greater threat to the region’s nondemocratic ruling elites.
Although some are reluctant to say so publicly, many of Central Asia’s leaders share Russia’s and China’s displeasure regarding the shift in the focus of the “War on Terror” from Afghanistan to a long-term war of “liberation” in Iraq.
Somewhat ironically, the increased US security presence in Central Asia worked to Russia’s advantage. Vladimir Putin has extracted concessions from states in the region that might otherwise not have been granted, such as basing rights for the Russian military in Kant, a long-term
lease for a Russian military base in Tajikistan, and a series of bilateral military accords with Tashkent, which were augmented by Tashkent’s reentry into the Russian-dominated CSTO (Collective Security Treat Organization) in 2006. Much of the enhanced Russian military presence is more show than substance, designed to demonstrate to a Russian domestic audience that Vladimir Putin is successfully reasserting Russian prominence in traditional areas of geopolitical domination, even in the face of US encroachments.
The various bilateral relationships between the Central Asian states and Russia have each had their ups and downs, but Central Asia’s officials are often quite eager to promote better bilateral relations with Russia.
Partnership with Russia is fine, as long as Moscow does not dictate the terms or demand exclusivity. There also seems to be substantially improved cooperation between the internal security agencies of the countries in the region, an area in which Russia is seen as having an edge.
While this might change when a new generation comes to power, most of Central Asia’s ruling elite share more common goals with their Russian counterparts than they do with leaders from most other parts of the world, not to mention a common language. They also all share a sense of annoyance for having been judged as “bad boys” by the United States (and to a lesser degree, by the Europeans).
Russia remains a major arms merchant in the region, given the virtual dependence of all of Central Asia’s military on Russian (or, more accurately, Soviet) equipment, and the ease with which spare parts can be obtained and repairs carried out. The Kyrgyzs and Kazakhs cite this as an important reason for continued close military cooperation with Russia.
The Uzbeks continue to obtain equipment from the Russians. And now, some of this equipment is being bought with the help of Chinese financing.
Although all of these countries are increasingly reaching out to a global market, Russia’s private and state capital is continuing to capture a piece of these markets in ways that are not likely to be ephemeral. Russia is still a major trading partner for all the states of the region, particularly on the import side, and the economies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in particular, are still heavily dependent on goods coming from Russia.
Russia has the largest economy in the region, and despite its own incomplete economic reforms, unprecedented high oil prices have added to the already-ample capital available for export. Geography also favors
Moscow’s desire to play a major economic role in the region, especially in the energy sectors.
Russian capital is most visible in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, two states that have pledged to form a common economic space with Russia (a project that at best is moving forward very slowly). But Kyrgyzstan is already a World Trade Organization (WTO) member, and now that Russia has cleared most obstacles for WTO members, and Kazakhstan is rapidly moving toward it, economic ties between the three countries are sure to deepen.
The Kyrgyzs and the Kazakhs have been committed to maintaining close ties to Russia in economic and security relations. From the Kazakh point of view, maintaining good relations with Russia means Moscow should be less likely to take up the plight of the local ethnic Russians, who remain generally dissatisfied with their de facto second-class status in independent Kazakhstan.
Russia is still Kazakhstan’s dominant trade partner, and an important source of investment in small and medium-sized enterprises in Kazakhstan, which still lack western investors. Russian economic recovery makes the regional market stronger. Ruble appreciation means that Kazakh products become more competitive at home and in Russia.
In October 2004, Putin got the leaders of four of the states in the region to agree to Russian membership of the Central Asian Cooperation Organization. Moscow’s participation can perhaps reinvigorate this almost entirely ineffective organization.
Energy is one of the cornerstones of the new Russian geopolitics, and nowhere has it been used with greater effectiveness than in the Kremlin’s relationships with the five Central Asian states. Over the past five years, Russian energy companies have deepened their cooperation with Central Asian partners in oil, gas, and hydroelectric energy. All this is part of a general reassertion of Russian influence in the region, in which economic partnerships are being advanced as part of a broader package security guarantee. For Russia, certainly, these partnerships have real economic benefit as well, and many offer substantial benefit to the Central Asian economies and not infrequently to prominent political figures. These partnerships also reinforce Soviet-era dependencies and create levers that Russia can use to influence domestic developments in these states.
Moscow is seeking a major voice on legal questions concerning the development of offshore Caspian oil and gas reserves, dominance in
Central Asia’s gas industry, and control of Central Asian hydroelectric power. They have been far less successful in the first than in the latter two areas. The Kazakhs and Russians have already delineated their national zones, with wide areas of common development, and several joint projects in the Kazakh offshore sector are already being developed by LUKoil, Rosneft, and the Kazakh national oil and gas company, KazMunaiGaz.
But the legal status of the Caspian Sea is still being worked out by the five littoral nations (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan).
The biggest challenge for Russia will not be gaining access to Central Asia’s gas but being able to afford the necessary improvements to the pipeline system to market it.
Russia is eager to sew up Central Asia’s gas in long-term transport contracts. Kazakhstan is likely to be Russia’s most dependable gas partner in Central Asia. Kazakhstan’s gas exports are fewer than those of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but Kazakhstan could have much more gas to export than was once expected. The full measure of Kazakhstan’s undersea gas reserves is not yet known, nor is the quantity of associated gas in the oil projects that will be made available for export. But geography added to a competitive gas market means the Kazakhs are pressed to take a lower purchase price than they would like in order to maximize their transit fees (on Uzbek and Turkmen gas), as well as ensure at least some access to Gazprom’s export routes.
The Kazakh and Russian gas industries are working in tandem on these questions of natural gas transit through Kazakhstan, for the Kazakhs are trying to have their gas sent to market ahead of the Turkmen. But there remain many unresolved questions about shipping gas from Kazakhstan for processing in Russia.
Gazprom also signed a cooperation agreement with both Kyrgyzstan and the reorganized Uzbek state gas company, Uzbekneftegaz, the latter a major producer and supplier of energy for the Central Asian region.
Gazprom subsidiary, Zarubezhneftegaz, and LUKoil have also committed to a plan that, if completed, would lead to $2 billion of investment in joint-venture projects in Uzbekistan’s oil and gas sector.
Russia’s growing partnerships with Central Asia’s other gas producers have put Turkmenistan in a difficult position, because they increase Russia’s ability to isolate Ashgabat, forcing the Turkmen to surrender more control over the marketing and development of their gas industry to Russia. The Turkmen-Russian relationship remains very
difficult, with a 25-year agreement signed in 2003 lasting just over a year before Ashgabat cut off supplies to get payment terms improved from their part-barter basis. Niiazov’s Turkmenistan was a difficult friend for Moscow. Just how difficult is a subject of some speculation, as the complicated cash and barter deals through which Moscow purchased Turkmen gas almost certainly benefited President Niiazov directly or through his family members.
Low purchase prices for Turkmen gas maximize the profit of Gazprom’s sales in Europe, as it permits the cheaper and more efficient Turkmen gas to be used in the Russian economy, and the Russian gas to be shipped abroad. The current sales agreement between Russia and Turkmenistan for the sale of gas to Ukraine, negotiated in late 2005, was even more profitable, as it sets up an old Soviet-style ledger-based asset swap, allowing Turkmen reserves to be nominally sold to Ukraine, while in fact they are being used in Russia. And this leaves aside the transit fees that the middleman, in this case the rather mysterious RusUkrEnergo, is collecting. Future gas agreements involving Turkmenistan are likely to be no less convoluted, but seem certain to provide more income for the Turkmen side.
Following Saparmurat Niiazov’s death, US and European leaders hoped to convince his successor that Turkmenistan’s interests are best served by sending its gas to Europe across the Caspian Sea and bypassing Russia. But Russia’s President Vladimir Putin rushed in and got the Turkmen to commit to expand pipeline routes across Kazakhstan into Russia, which increases the likelihood that China will use this route to ship Turkmen gas as well.
The United Energy Systems of Russia (RAO-UES) have also been moving into Central Asia quite aggressively in the past few years. Like Gazprom, RAO-UES would like to use Central Asian energy to serve European markets. Its management has calculated that developing some of the water resources in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan would be far more economical than developing hydroelectric power in parts of Siberia, given the presence of the Soviet-era unified electrical grid throughout Central Asia.
RAO-UES has been an actor in northern Kazakhstan since the early 1990s, and in the last few years, they have expanded their role to incorporate large hydroelectric stations in both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, where most of Central Asia’s water resources are found, in the case of
Tajikistan in conjunction with Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, who has substantial business interests in Tajikistan. The US, too, is interested in Central Asia’s hydroelectric reserves, and hopes to induce a US firm (hopefully AES, a Texas company with considerable investment in Tajikistan) to be become interested in them, in order to divert electricity to Afghanistan as part of US-sponsored reconstruction efforts there.
Russia’s leaders are aware of the geopolitical influence that Russia would gain by controlling Central Asia’s hydroelectric power and gas pipeline system. This is obviously their goal, and one for which they are seeking new levers for its achievement.
China: Tomorrow’s Superpower
The increased US presence in Central Asia brought Washington’s military presence to within a few hundred miles of the Chinese border, and left Beijing feeling that they had to give more thought to protecting their long- term interests in the region. China, which shares borders with Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, views the region as one of great potential consequence, having the potential for security problems and for meeting Beijing’s growing energy needs.
Everyone recognized that the US military presence in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan was an encroachment on Russia’s sphere of influence. Chinese sensibilities were thought to be affected by the opening of the US bases.
Thus, there were few concessions that China could gain from Washington, although one that they did get, the designation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as an international terrorist organization, was important in Beijing. It had direct consequences in Central Asia, as it led to the outlawing of local Uighur groups.
Beijing has focused on bilateral as well as multilateral initiatives. The US military presence in the region has contributed to the strengthening of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which all the Central Asian states except Turkmenistan are members, as are both Russia and China.
The SCO’s first-ever joint military exercises were held in the summer of 2003. The SCO’s Anti-Terrorism Center was opened in January 2004 and formally inaugurated at the SCO head of state meeting held there in June 2004. The Chinese are also pushing hard for bilateral military
cooperation with other SCO states, and in 2005 and 2006, they made real inroads in this regard with the Kyrgyzs, the Kazakhs, and most significantly, with the Uzbeks. As they do not share a border with China, Tashkent sees only positive aspects to bilateral military cooperation with Beijing.
The SCO has not yet fully evolved as an organization, nor is its final membership set. But with Beijing and Moscow both placing real primacy on an organization in which military and intelligence cooperation is a realistic goal, it seems unlikely that other states will be asked to take full membership any time soon. But observer states like Iran may receive a lot of attention, as happened at the 10th-anniversary summit of the SCO in China in June 2006. This attention certainly suited both Russia and China vis-à-vis their concerns about US policy on Iran, but neither country is likely to sacrifice its longer-term strategic advantage in Central Asia by expanding the organization prematurely.
China’s size and economic potential make Beijing at least a silent presence in virtually every setting of importance involving the Central Asian states—and sometimes it is a visible and vocal one. Trade with China is increasingly important to all the Central Asian states. Unlike in the first years of independence, it is legal trade and investment that is now being encouraged by the various Central Asian governments. China’s economic presence is largest in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan hopes to be a gateway to China, because they are both members of the WTO and China is a major investor in Kazakhstan’s oil industry, as a way to ensure increased access to Caspian oil and gas reserves. The Kazakhs and Chinese are building a new jointly owned 2,900-kilometer oil pipeline to link Kenkiiak in Kazakhstan to Atyrau in China. The prospect of supplying China could create new synergies between the oil industries of both Kazakhstan and Russia. These synergies could also be used by Kazakhstan to parry Chinese pressure in other sectors.
At the same time, China’s economic and geopolitical potential is making at least two of the Central Asian states that share borders with it quite nervous. The Tajik-Chinese border is relatively short and of limited strategic importance to the Chinese, but the same cannot be said of China’s borders with both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The 2002 treaty between Kyrgyzstan and China turned into a major political crisis for President Akaev, with opposition figures accusing him of treason for signing it.
The Kazakhs and the Kyrgyzs understand that there is no way that the fate of their countries can be fully separated from that of China. Yet there is little indication that they have become more nervous about China in the past few years. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Both countries seem a little more comfortable in their ability to manage this relationship, which they see as sometimes requiring concessions on their part, as was the case with the delineation of borders. But the relationship with China is still more problematic than that with Russia, because China’s potential power seems almost limitless, and the needs of its growing population could overwhelm those of the Central Asians. For the near term, however, China’s posture toward the Central Asian states seems quite predictable and generally supportive.
The Chinese have contracted to begin moving up to 30 bcm of Turkmen gas annually in 2009 using a pipeline that will go through Kazakhstan, linking up with the existing Bukhara-Tashkent-Almaty pipeline and extending it to the border at Alashankou. The Chinese also are negotiating to have Kazakh gas shipped along this route or through a new pipeline from Ishim in Russia, to Astana, through Karaganda and eventually to Alashankou. It is hard to believe that the Chinese would support both options simultaneously, and Russia will certainly be lobbying hard for the second route to be built first, as most industry analysts do not believe that Turkmenistan will have enough production to support contractual obligations to both Russia and China.
The China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) also signed a $600 million agreement with Uzbekneftegaz for some 23 smaller oil fields in the Bukhara area. Very little information has been made public about this agreement, but the location of these fields (near the main gas pipeline) suggests that Beijing is hopeful that there will be large amounts of associated gas available from these projects.
China’s most important economic partner in Central Asia is Kazakhstan. Cooperation with China allows Kazakhstan new transit options. The Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) owns a controlling interest in Aktobemunaigaz, a production company in western Kazakhstan. But Chinese ambitions vis-à-vis Kazakhstan extend much further. In 2003, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) made a bid to buy British Gas’ share of Kazakhstan’s massive offshore Kashagan deposit, a bid that was blocked by the consortia partners, who in the end
were forced to allow Kazakhstan’s own national company (KazMunaiGaz) to acquire half the BG stake, and absorbed the other half themselves. CNPC did manage to acquire the small North Buzachi field, and then finally in 2005, CNPC purchased the assets of PetraKazakhstan, giving them the assets from the Kumkol field and shared control of the Shymkent refinery (with KazMunaiGaz). The Chinese have made a major financial commitment to securing oil from Kazakhstan, paying over $4 billion for PetraKazakhstan, and planning a pipeline that will run from Atyrau through Kenkiiak, on to Kumkol, Atasu, and then to Alashankou on the Kazakh-Chinese border. By late 2005, two stretches were already operational.
China’s rise need not be at Russia’s expense, but might well contribute to the mutual advantage of Moscow, Astana, and Beijing.
Should Russia move forward with plans to construct a new pipeline to link Western Siberian oil with China, there may well be extra capacity for Kazakhstani oil to move north to add supply to this route as well.
China, too, is an interested client for surplus electric power. The Russians are also interested in supplying this market, as are the Kazakhs, who are planning a joint project with China to develop a $4 billion coal- fired power plant at Ekibastuz, near the Russian-Chinese border.
Kyrgyzstan also is interested in selling hydroelectric power to China (which seems more interested in developing its own hydroelectric power than in buying foreign-produced electricity). And in both the Kazakh and Kyrgyz cases, the hope is that such purchases might make China less aggressive about diverting upstream water that traditionally flowed into Central Asia. Tajikistan, too, is attracted by the Chinese market, and even more so by the prospects of exporting surplus energy to Afghanistan, and then on to the large markets of India and Pakistan. The latter route is particularly interesting to US authorities. It would have a developmental impact in Afghanistan and would lead Tajikistan to diversify its resource ownership base beyond Russia.
Central Asia’s Role in the Broader International Community
The “great powers” may have spent the last few years jockeying for a position in Central Asia, but so too have a number of other international actors—regional powers like Turkey and Iran, and global actors like the
remaining G8 nations—each of whom has played a smaller role than the three countries discussed here.
India has been the one player largely absent from the region, despite the best efforts of all five Central Asian countries to lure it in, and Indian leaders did not participate in the Asia-focused security summit held under a Kazakh initiative in June 2006. Indian leaders have shown increased interest in securing access to Central Asia’s energy reserves, but their efforts are likely to be too little, too late, to acquire a dominant position.
Japan was initially very active in Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, in Kazakhstan, and Korea, in Uzbekistan, but none of the three had interest in expanding or consolidating its position. Of the international financial institutions, the ADB has the most active agenda in the region, and the Asian countries make their influence felt through their contributions to it.
Turkey and Iran are both very active in Central Asia, but neither power has been able to exert a decisive influence over the economic, political, or security dimension of any of the Central Asian states. The one possible exception is Iran and Tajikistan, as these two Persian-speaking countries do maintain close cultural and economic ties, despite the secular orientation of the Immomali Rahkmonov regime, and the Sunni rather than Shiia background of the Tajik population. Iran, too, is interested in investing in Tajikistan’s hydroelectric power, as Teheran has its own interest in expanding into South Asia’s hydroelectric market. Iran, with a contiguous land border with Turkmenistan, could play a greater role in the region if its international position were rehabilitated. Turkey enjoys very good ties with all of the Central Asian states, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Erzurum pipelines are likely to enhance Turkey’s role in the European energy market. Istanbul is also the jumping-off point for much international travel and business to the region, but the idea of Turkey leading a formal or informal community of Turkic states has faded from most Central Asian leaders’ (and Turkish leaders’) consciousness.
The European states, especially those that distrust Russia’s dominant position in their energy market, have expressed great interest in helping secure the independence of the Central Asian states. This is also a concern of Japanese leaders. The Europeans have sought to do this via the EU’s European Neighborhood program. But although two of the three presidents in the EU troika have made Central Asia a particular focus of their presidencies, there is little new thinking and no new resources being brought to bear to solve the region’s problems.
For all the talk of great games, the risk of global terrorism, and the
“strategic importance” of this region, from the viewpoint of the key international players, the Central Asian region is divided into states that have no pressing need for help—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—and those that are difficult to engage—Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The unstated priority of all is to try and secure access to the region’s energy resources for their national companies, and to hope against hope that the area will remain stable enough to see them fully exploited.
The Foreign Policy Orientations of Central Asian States:
Positive and Negative Diversification
Farkhod TOLIPOV
The Problem of Diversification and Geopolitical Stability
Many explain the attractiveness of this region with reference to its richness in natural resources (e.g., oil and gas, gold, cotton, uranium, and other non-mineral resources). Conventional wisdom, at first glance, dictates that world powers prioritize these natural resources to indicate their strategic interests in Central Asia and establish relations with its states. These economically motivated geopolitical activities in Central Asia were reinforced and envisaged by Western and Russian social scientists soon after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Zbigniew Brzezinski, for instance, in his brilliant book, wrote: “Access to that resource [natural gas and oil] and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations and fuel international rivalries . . . The geostrategic implications for America are clear: America is too distant to be dominant in this part of Eurasia but too powerful not to be engaged . . . Russia is too weak to regain imperial domination over the region or to exclude others from it, but it is also too
close and too strong to be excluded.”1
Many began to use the term “diversification” to explain the process of the inevitable multiplication of directions for the transportation of oil, gas and other resources of Central Asia to world markets. But this term is applied not only with respect to the transportation of the mineral resources of the Caspian region to world markets but also to indicate the foreign policy orientations of all five Central Asian countries. Thus, diversification or pluralization (the term applied by Brzezinski) is twofold: economic and geopolitical.
However, all these are just visible manifestations, or forms, of the geopolitical transformation of Central Asia. But its essence consists in the change of geopolitical code or status of the region concerned in the international political system. Post-Soviet Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, for the first time in their history, are acting as independent actors in international relations. This very fact is either ignored by many researchers or even misrepresented in favor of traditional and obsolete perceptions based on consideration of these states only from the viewpoint of which a great power dominates here.
In a very complicated international context, the overall search for local (national) as well as what can be called “external identity” (strategic orientation) by Central Asian countries can take either positive or negative forms and meanings. I call this phenomenon positive and negative diversification. Negative diversification revitalizes the classical balance of power in international relations and the zero-sum game played between great powers usually at the expense of the Central Asian states. Positive diversification avoids the zero-sum approach and is inclusive in character:
it means not only the equal involvement of external powers but also, more importantly, a more coordinated policy among the Central Asian states.
The strategic importance of Central Asia not only lies in the economic sphere but is also predetermined from the viewpoint of regional and international security. The ongoing “war on terror” in Afghanistan, a country adjacent to Central Asia (according to some views, even part of Central Asia), is further proof of this region’s importance.
The newly independent countries of Central Asia found themselves, so to speak, doubly confused: by the process of the New World Order
1 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy аnd Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 125, 148.
formation that they have to enter on the one hand, and by the necessity to understand their selfness on the other. In other words, they are in an awkward state of confusion regarding concepts of independence and interdependence.
Moreover, during the Soviet era, there was no question of global orientation, or of their place in the world and among civilizations. Now, such choices as West or East, Asia or Europe or Eurasia, America or Russia are increasingly articulated in Central Asian scholarly and political debate.
Meanwhile, it has become a common view that the September 11 attacks in 2001 constituted a turning point in the process of reshaping the international system in the post-Cold War era. Many also argue that a strategic character of cooperation between the United States and Uzbekistan grew in the context of 9/11. It is true that following this date, international attention towards Central Asia increased considerably.
However, it should be emphasized that right after the dismantlement of the former Soviet Union, the Central Asian region suddenly found itself the focus of international attention. The old-fashioned notion of a “Great Game,” which once again has been revitalized, denotes a permanent geopolitical rivalry among global powers over Central Asia.
Today, we can firmly assume that we are witnessing a new, third reincarnation of the Great Game over this part of the world. The first two were held in the format of two actors: the Russian Empire versus the British Empire (late nineteenth–early twentieth century) and the Soviet Union versus the United States (1979–1989 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
The current Great Game is distinguished by several peculiarities.
First, it is multilevel, multinational, and multifaceted. Too many actors are playing this game. Second, if there were two actors, as was the case with the previous two major games, then the zero-sum-game rule might be the most relevant and inescapable mode of competition over Central Asia. To date, this is impossible due to the multiplication of actors, and they cannot appeal to the zero-sum modality: those who are involved, and they are either state- and non-state actors, can create alliances and counter- alliances; state interests intermingle with companies’ interests; yesterday’s adversary becomes tomorrow’s partner and vice versa. Third, Central Asians themselves have become players, and in these geopolitical circumstances are indeed entangled. The end result is a “small game” of
Central Asians among themselves against the background of the “Great Game” being played by outside powers.
So the geopolitical situation is ambiguous for all sides. Countries of the region are highly susceptible to any geopolitical influence and change.
This is why we can consider the term of geopolitical stability. It is not to say that geopolitical equilibrium should be maintained because it is an element of the obsolete balance of the power mode of international relations that we considered above. Rather, it is to say that the region should be freed from negative diversification, and its outward orientation should not obstruct and undermine its inward orientation. It goes further from the positive diversification concept to a recognition of a higher independent status for the region of Central Asia, which would possess its own system of collective security.
Meanwhile, Central Asian studies in the West are full of controversies and misperceptions. Let us look at two main misperceptions amongst many. One view is that America cannot but keep a low profile in Central Asia. The dominant analytical view about the possible US posture in the region has stemmed so far from the traditional perception that Central Asia is part of the Russian sphere of influence and even dominance. A similar approach is that any American undertaking in Central Asia should definitely be coordinated with Russia.
Another persistent stereotype emanates from the view that Central Asia is a conflict-prone region, and that there is a deep distrust among Central Asians, especially the struggle between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for domination of the region. An even bigger and more widespread misperception is that of Uzbek expansionism in Central Asia.
Meanwhile, there is one common response to all contemporary challenges, including geopolitical ones, and one way to correct misperceived stereotypes about the region, which is the regional integration of all Central Asian countries.
There is also another reason that integration in Central Asia is very much needed: there is a strong trend toward economic and political regionalization across the world that makes Central Asian regional self- determination vitally important. Central Asian countries are all involved (to different degrees and for different reasons) in all sorts of regional state alliances such as the CIS, GUUAM, the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), the Organization of Islamic Conference
(OIC) and, finally, the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO).
It seems that the CIS and the CACO and the processes taking place between them will determine the very near future. Analysis of integration/reintegration processes across the former Soviet territory has demonstrated that their efficiency and prospects will depend less on economic than on security factors. In fact, in the context of varied economic options embraced by the CIS countries and of the growing contradictions between integration within the post-Soviet territory and integration into the world community, the principle allowing different countries to integrate into the CIS at their own pace (the principle used as an excuse for all sorts of alliances among two, four, etc. states) proves to be vulnerable.
In conclusion, the destructive geopolitics of outside powers and mutual mistrust of states within the region serve as a token of negative diversification. But constructive geopolitics, which is equal to inclusion of outside powers in Central Asian affairs and full integration of countries within the region serve as a token of positive diversification. So it is the responsibility of Central Asians to choose a way to better diversify their foreign policies.
Central Asia between the EEC, SCO and GCA
The Central Asian region finds itself locked between three major organizations: the EEC, SCO, and the Greater Central Asia (GCA). The last is not an organization but a conceptual project, which tends to challenge the former two.
The EEC is the latest model in the 15-year-long process of reintegration modeling in the post-Soviet space. There are two-, four-, six- and twelve-state model integrations within the CIS, including the Commonwealth itself. This kind of experimentation looks as if it copied the European different-speed approach to the overall integration process.
This means that among the CIS countries, some have decided on so-called deeper integration (reminiscent of a European first echelon), while others are supposed to join later. By the content of the economic agenda, declaration of goals and political character, this organization is not distinctive compared to the CIS itself. Indeed, the EEC just duplicates, to a great extent, what exists in the CIS, namely the custom union, free trade
zone, energy and transport projects. In 2004, the secretary general of the EEC, Grigorii Rapota, stated that “energy and transport, being the basic infrastructure elements, can spur the development of national economies and the integration of member countries in general.”2
Yet, interestingly, the custom union, planned for 2005–2006, remains a project so far. But it is symptomatic that this process goes in parallel with another process: the creation of a Single Economic Space (also duplicating an analogous idea of the CIS, by the way), this time by Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. I believe that the different patterns of reintegration of former Soviet states discredit the very idea of integration because these states split from a single super-state simultaneously and cannot apply a different-speed model; this is in stark contrast to Europeans who are moving towards creating such a super-state.
Side by side with this integrationist experimentation, six CIS states have been engaged in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that was created on the basis of the 1992 CIS Treaty on Collective Security. Uzbekistan, which was initially a part of the Treaty, did not prolong its participation in the Treaty in 1998. However, recent geopolitical trends in the post-Soviet space and the democratic revolutionary wave that alarmed the current regime in Uzbekistan compelled the president of this state to return to the CSTO. On June 23, 2006, an announcement was made at the CSTO summit in Minsk that Uzbekistan had become a [seventh] full-fledged member of the Organization.3
Meanwhile, during the last summit of the Central Asian Cooperation Organization held in St. Petersburg on October 6, 2005, the member states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia—
announced that the CACO had merged with the EEC. In fact, this event was the third strike on Central Asian regional unity since their independence. The first strike took place when the Russian Federation became a full-fledged member of CACO in 2004. Russia’s membership distorted the geographical configuration and natural political composition of Central Asia’s attempts at regional organization. The second strike took place with the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization ultimatum to the
2 “Rapota: EvrAzES iavliaetsia deistvuiushei model’iu budushchego Evraziiskogo Soiuza gosudarstv,” RIA Novosti, June 18, 2004.
3 For details of this event, see: http://www.centrasia.ru, June 30, 2006.
West, primarily the US, to shut down military bases in Central Asia, followed by Uzbekistan’s direct demand for the withdrawal of these contingents. The third strike—merging CACO with the EEC—threatens the self-value and independent existence of Central Asia. It raises the question of whether this third strike on Central Asia represents the genuine end of its newly gained independence.
The SCO is another organization focused in its activity mostly (not to say exclusively) on the region of Central Asia. Analysis of the process of SCO evolution reveals the existence of a certain geopolitical intention.
This can be traced to a consideration of two dimensions of the organization: its geographical configuration and political composition. It consists of two global powers and four relatively small, weak Central Asian states. These are not just six states but rather, six unequal states, from the viewpoint of political, economic, military, demographic and social potential. So in reality, the SCO is a politically asymmetric organization.
More important is that another dimension, the geographical dimension, plays a critical role. The appearance of the SCO was possible only after and only in connection with the dissolution of the former Soviet state that brought about the geopolitical transformation of the post-Soviet space. At the same time, its appearance was stipulated by the character of the ongoing formation of the post-Cold War new world order. These two factors of post-Soviet geopolitical transformation and the new world order provide the key to “unraveling the mystery” of the SCO.4 As a result, the security problematique that was put on its agenda recently has not been free from geopolitical distortions. The perception prevails nowadays among politicians and analysts that this is something like a Russian- Chinese joint project to establish control over Central Asia and prevent the entrance of the United States. In any case, however, with or without the US presence, Russian-Chinese geopolitical control of this kind is just another form of external dominance of the region’s countries and of their falling into a new form of dependence.
Meanwhile, although the SCO is not a military bloc, many believe that the organization pretends to play the role of security provider for the region. They point to the SCO Convention on fighting terrorism, religious
4 Farkhod Tolipov, “On the Role of the Central Asian Cooperation Organization within the SCO,” Central Asia and Caucasus 27, no. 3 (2004).
extremism and separatism adopted in 2001 and the Regional Anti-terrorist Structure (RATS) created a year later as tools of the organization to provide security. At the same time, one can observe a strange phenomenon: a juxtaposition of multilateral, bilateral and unilateral mechanisms of fighting terrorism in the SCO area.5
By and large, the SCO geopolitical message to the international community regarding its intention to deal with security is regularly sent each year. In their last summit on June 15, 2006, SCO members adopted a traditional declaration in which they stated that the Organization possesses the potential to play an independent role in maintaining stability and security in its zone of responsibility. In case of extraordinary situations threatening peace, stability and security in the region, the Declaration says, the SCO member states will immediately start contact and consultation regarding joint operational reaction aiming at protecting the interests of the Organization and member states. The Declaration also announced that a mechanism of regional conflict prevention within the SCO would be created.6
The GCA is a multifaceted, multipurpose macro-project aimed at bringing Central Asian countries and Afghanistan together for the realization of a huge set of social and economic development objectives as well as tasks involved with democratic transformation. This project was advanced by the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University in 2005. Frederick Starr in his conceptual article on the GCA argued that it would demonstrate the existence of long-term US interests in Central Asia. It would be a reflection of the fact that for the promotion of peace and development, Central Asia should be regarded as a single region united by common interests and needs. The emergence of such a zone of cooperation that deters extremist forces and manifests itself as an attractive model for other Muslim societies would produce serious benefits both for the region and for the United States.7
According to the GCA project, its purpose is multiple by character. It implies: counter-terrorism; security assistance; the fight against extremism
5 For details, see: Farkhod Tolipov, “Multilateralism, Bilateralism and Unilateralism in Fighting Terrorism in the SCO Area,” The China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 3, no. 5 (2006).
6 http://www.centrasia.org, June 16, 2006.
7 S. Frederick Starr, “A Partnership for Central Asia,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 4 (2005).
