Adrian Pogacian's blog

Great powers rivalry in Central Asia: new strategy, old game. Did the Kazakhstan crisis change the regional chessboard?

January 18, 2022
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Preamble

In international politics, interstate rivalry involves conflicting relations between two international rivalries that are nation states. A fundamental feature of rivalry involves the willingness of the states involved to harm their opponents’ prosperity and progress only to deny a gain of the rival state. There is no public good in a rivalry. The only good during a rivalry is to hinder the progress of the rival despite the negative consequences of these efforts on internal progress. (Brandon, 2013)

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Source: Reuters

Rivalry in the international system does not mean a sudden change of the dominant state (hegemon) and does not (always) lead to war. The fact that there were no direct armed conflicts between the USSR / Russia and the US and, more recently, China, indicates that the nations cooperated on time and had common global goals, such as fighting against terrorism, drug trafficking or the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, the bilateral relations between these great powers can (should) be improved, but until then, the great power politics seems happening with, the old game, but new strategies in Central Asian region.

In the study of international relations, gaining influence over a given region assumes an asymmetric relation in which a powerful nation is able to exclusively extend its “hard”’ or “soft” power to that region. In a narrower interpretation, the exercise of military or political power, but in a wider context, economic dependence or the tightness of cultural and historical connections combined with institutions and ties of alliance and partnership can also be an essential source of controlling a given region.(Nye Jr, 2004; Armitage and Nye Jr, 2007)

The struggle for supremacy and rivalry in Central Asia

Russia has a huge surface, which for centuries, has ensured its continuity and status of great power, despite an increasingly fragile economy; and like any great power, Russia also has a space considered its own, namely - the former Soviet space and, above all, the territory of Central Asia. From Russia's perspective, its status as a great power implies rights in its immediate region, a special role in resolving international disputes, cooperation with other great powers and a higher level of autonomy or sovereignty. Medvedev justified Russia's sphere of influence based on its status as a great power, arguing that: Russia, like other countries in the world, has regions in which it has privileged interests. In these regions, there are countries with which we have traditionally had cordial friendly relations, and historically, special relations. (Clint and Andrew, 2017). In fact, Russia exerts this influence out of pride and prestige, and, as Mearsheimer points out, Washington does not seem to agree with Moscow's position, but it must understand the logic behind the decision. This is geopolitics: the great powers are always sensitive to potential threats, close to their own territory. (Mearsheimer, 2014)

Central Asia is the highest risk geopolitical region, becoming a place of interest for the great powers, as we have already mentioned: Russia, US, China, but also emerging powers such as India, Turkey, even the European Union. Energy resources are the main advantage of the area, with about 10% of the world's oil reserves and about 30-40% of global gas reserves. This is not the first time the region has played an important global role as historically it has always been at the intersection of roads, both commercial and as a meeting point for the great civilizations of the world.

It is not a novelty that in Central Asia there are two types of states: the first category of those developed from an economic and military point of view, with the advantage of population and territory: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan; the second category is that of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are less developed due to ongoing disputes over natural resources. An extremely interesting and important aspect to note as only Kazakhstan has a direct border with the Russian Federation, it acted during the three decades of independence as a buffer state, thus protecting other states from possible aggression by Russia; on the other hand, this common border also provided Kazakhstan with advantages, such as economic and political ones.

Moreover, being authoritarian regimes, the bilateral relations between all the five republics are far from being good due to several issues like border disputes(particularly between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan/Kyrgyzstan neighbors), for example. So, the following question naturally arises:

Why, nonetheless, is Central Asia important?

During the Cold War, Central Asia was characterized as a forgotten region but, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the geopolitics of this area has changed and the role of the Central Asian region in inter-national affairs has increased considerably (Zabortseva, 2012). In the last decades, Central Asia region became a geostrategic and geopolitical area of competition between old and new great powers such as Russia, European Union, United States and China.

Furthermore, these several nations have tried to exploit the power vacuum created after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Unites States, for instance, is increasingly present in the region, whose primary goal is to increase its military presence in Central Asia. Its strategic goals include the neutralization of Central Asia and offsetting the Russian and Chinese influence as well as preventing the region from religious radicalization and decreasing Iran’s influence. Other players in the race for power include Turkey, Iran and India. It is, however, undeniable that Russia and China have the greatest influence over the region and, the political and economic future will be determined by these two powerful nations (Bendarzsevszkij, 2021).

For the Russian Federation, this region is the sphere of traditional influence, and for many Russians, Central Asia is around Russia, hence it shows a special interest in the development of this region. Vladimir Putin tried to reconfirm the influence, but especially the Russian authority in the region, thus reducing the influence of the United States. However, China's ambitions for the area's economic potential, but especially the lack of clarity of Russia's foreign policy in anticipating the region's future development, make the Russian president's efforts difficult.

These are not the only causes that prevent Russia from achieving its goals; Moscow's effort for hegemony in Central Asia is complicated by the desire of some of the region's leaders to gain special status as secondary leaders under Russian general rule. Indeed, almost all the leaders of the region, no matter how subordinate to Moscow, strive to gain some influence against Russia. One factor that offers, for some regimes, this opportunity, is the oil and gas from the Caspian Sea. The main beneficiaries are Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (Donaldson, Vidya 2014). This desire of local leaders to get out (but not totally) of the sphere of influence of Moscow, is one of a personal nature, because they were not consulted about the dissolution of the USSR; the reason seems somewhat bizarre, but pride in this region is an extremely sensitive issue.

For the achieving their interests Russia is attempting to combine both defense presence and economic suzerainty through selective integration, boosting ties among a core group of states (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan) while pursuing a more limited set of aims elsewhere (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) (Mankoff, 2012).

But, despite its ‘return’ to Central Asia in the 2000s, Moscow no longer has a monopolistic hold over the region. The Kremlin has not tried to reintegrate with the Central Asian states politically. Though Moscow wishes to remain Central Asia’s ‘number one’ partner, it no longer imagines that its presence can be exclusive (Emerson and Boonstra, 2010).

On the other hand, western scholars recognize that for the United States, Central Asia is both strategically and commercially important. During President Clinton's tenure, the first diplomatic, political, and economic ties were established. But after almost 30 years, the United States is perceived as a distant power (in international terms), even if it has invested billions, for example, only in the education of thousands of students in the region.

As a result, for both Russia and the United States, Central Asia is a sphere of strategic influence from a commercial, economic and political point of view. In this competition both states have common interests such as security, economic and energy development, the fight against terrorism and arms and drug trafficking; but, as expected, they also disagree on the promotion of liberal and democratic principles, different definitions of terrorism, and the duration of the existence of US military bases.

The surprise element (?) China

Central Asia has always been important to China’s imagination of and action toward its neighbors and the larger world beyond. As the vast middle section of the ancient Silk Road dating back to the Han Dynasty (207 BCE–220 CE), Central Asia connected and bridged China’s long-distance overland trade with Europe and the Middle East for many centuries (Chen and Fazilov, 2018). As a historical consequence, China was the second country to recognize the independence of the post-Soviet Central Asian states in early January 1992, following the United States. China’s eagerness was mainly attributable to its desire to ensure a stable periphery and maximize its influence with its new and nascent neighbors (Thornton, 2020).

Therefore, with Western powers unable to make sufficiently attractive proposals, given the political and geographical uncertainty of operating in Central Asia, many leaders in the region saw China as a potential alternative to growing Russian influence (Mankoff, 2012: 255). Like Russia, with a common border, China has grown in the trust of regional leaders, thus becoming the most important pole of attractiveness. In addition to economic, energy and trade interests, China will also have its own military bases, somewhere around 2024. This is an interesting fact, because China is Russia's main economic partner and the most important ally in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Indeed, China does not want the United States to be able to bring its western borders closer. Moreover, Russia appreciates the fact that, so far, China's expansion into the Central Asian region has been limited to the economic and cultural spheres - those that Moscow believes, either because of its geography or history, can counter them. Moscow has paid very little attention to the possibility of China relying on its soft power in Central Asia to establish security relations or even bases and thus accelerate the decline of Russian influence there. (Goble, 2019) Precisely this strategy of using power soft brought China's influence, but nevertheless the conclusion and the opinion of specialists is that in the issue of security of the region, the leaders of the Central Asian states feel more secure in the responsibility of Moscow.

Is there an European Union influence in Central Asia?

The European Union must apprehend the security related issues as a geographic and conceptual continuum. From geographic point of view, this is applied from the closest frontier from Balkans up to the Caucasians, all along Central Asia and until the Middle East. From conceptual point of view, it includes issues related to political corruption, criminality, ethnic conflicts, local terrorist attacks within the Union and at the outskirts of the Union, up to the global terrorism. (Pogacian, 2015).

Along these lines, from the European Union point of view, the situation in the Central Asian region is viewed with some concern because it is not a politically and economically homogeneous region. While Turkmenistan remains one of the most authoritarian states in the world, with a terrible human right records, Kyrgyzstan stands out for its more advanced democracy. Moreover, all Central Asian states have multidimensional foreign policies, aiming in particular to balance relations with Russia, China, the EU and the US. Relations with Turkey and Iran are also important.

These efforts to strengthen the EU-Central Asia partnership have resulted in what has become the new EU Strategy for Central Asia - Connectivity in Support of Sustainable Development. An ambitious initiative and approach, in which the EU recognizes the strategic role of the Central Asian region in global efforts to promote connectivity between Europe and Asia and stressing that these efforts should benefit the region, the Council states that it looks forward to intensifying cooperation with Central Asia to promote sustainable, comprehensive and rules-based connectivity.

Despite the geopolitical rivalry between the great powers, the EU should continue to expand educational, cultural and research linkages with the Central Asian stakeholders. These areas of cooperation are most likely to have a long-term impact and they do not risk turning into politically sensitive challenges.

Instead of conclusions - Central Asia where to?

The Americans are not loved, the Russians are not believed, and the growing influence of China scares declaring an international observer of the area. At the same time, it must be said that the political elites in Central Asia seem to benefit the most from the growing interest of the great powers in the region, which is not only determined by energy reserves.

In this context, the recent events in Kazakhstan highly disturbed the delicate regional security context. There are more lessons that have to be learned from this reality:

Firstly, as I mentioned before, the Central Asia countries played the score of balancing within the great powers influence and this is something naturally; but this approach is irritating for the great powers strategies and forecast on the medium and long time period.

Secondly, Russian Federation has a problem to deal with. The events took part on its area of influence and affected that so called belt of security and Kremlin doesn’t want and need a new context like in the case of the former Eastern Europe.

Thirdly, it is very interesting that NATO and not US are the first to support the interest of the citizens both in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Nevertheless, NATO means US interests in the sphere of security issues, for majority of Russian political experts, but dealing with NATO instead is something new and Moscow has to adapt its strategy to regional realities and perceptions.

References:

  1. Donaldson H. Robert, Nadkarni Vidya, The foreign policy of Russia. Changing systems, enduring interests, fifth edition, M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2014, 215
  2. Emerson, M. and Boonstra, J., 2010, Into Eurasia monitoring the EU's Central Asia strategy. Brussels: Centre for European policy studies (CEPS)
  3. Goble, Paul, China Will Have Military Bases in Central Asia Within Five Years, https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/04/09/china_will_have_military_bases_in_central_asia_within_five_years_114317.html
  4. Keohane, R.,The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in the International Economic Regimes, 1967-1977. Boulder: CO: Westveiw Press, 1980
  5. Kortunov, Andrey, How to stop NATO, https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/how-to-stop-nato/
  6. Mankoff Jeffrey, Russian Foreign Policy. The return of great power politics, Rowman&Littlefield Publishers, 2012, 255
  7. Mankoff, Jeffrey, The United States and Central Asia after 2014, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C, 2012, 1-31
  8. Mearsheimer, J. John, Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin, Foreign Affairs, Septemer/October 2014, available https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault
  9. NYE, Joseph. S., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York, Public Affairs, 2004
  10. Pogacian, Adrian, European Union’s uncertain future. The state of Romanian – Russian relations and the importance of a bilateral dialogue, paper presented at the RAPN Congress, Moscow, 2015
  11. Reach Clint, Radin Andrew, Russian views of the international order, RAND Report 2017, 17
  12. Thornton, S., 2021. China in Central Asia: Is China winning the “new great game”?. Brookings. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-in-central-asia-is-china-winning-the-new-great-game accessed 14 February 2021
  13. Valeriano, Brandon, Becoming rivals : the process of interstate rivalry development, Taylor&Francis, 2013, 5
  14. Zabortseva, Yelena Nikolayevna, From the“forgotten region”to the“great game”region: On thedevelopment of geopolitics in Central Asia, in Journal of Eurasian Studies, no. 3, 2012, 168-176
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