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The New Great Game in Central Asia
Geopolitics in a Post-Western World
Alexander Cooley
August 7, 2012
Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman interviews author Alexander Cooley on
the geopolitical role of Central Asia, and how outside powers--Russia,
China, and the United States--are competing for influence in the region, as
the British and Russian empires did a century ago.
*Horsemen take part in a Kok-boru (Buzkashi) competition in Bishkek.
(Courtesy Reuters)*
In the last decade, the world has started taking more notice of Central
Asia. For the United States and its allies, the region is a valuable supply
hub for the Afghanistan war effort. For Russia, it is an arena in which to
exert political influence. For China, it is a source of energy and a
critical partner for stabilizing and developing the restive Xinjiang
province in the Middle Kingdom's west. Some commentators have referred to
Washington, Moscow, and Beijing's renewed activity in the region as a
modern iteration of the Great Game. But unlike the British and Russian
empires in their era of competition and conquest, the Central Asian
governments are working to use renewed external involvement to their
sovereign advantage, fending off disruptive demands and reinforcing their
political control at home. Accordingly, the Central Asian case today is not
a throwback to the past but a guide to what is to come: the rise of new
players and the decline of Western influence in a multipolar world.
The first lesson to take from China, Russia, and the United States'
involvement in Central Asia is that it has strengthened the hand of rulers,
who have been able to play the suitors off one another to extract economic
benefits and political support where possible. Most dramatically, in 2009,
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan, host to the Manas Transit
Center, initiated a bidding war between the United States and Russia by
threatening to close the base. He extracted hundreds of millions of dollars
from both sides, in the form of a Russian assistance package and a renewed
lease at a higher rent with the United States. Since 2008, the United
States also has paid transit fees,* about $500 million
annually*,
to the Uzbek and other Central Asian governments to ship equipment bound
for Afghanistan through the Northern Distribution Network.
The same dynamic is playing out elsewhere. The availability of alternative
patrons has made U.S. strategic engagement more expensive everywhere, both
in terms of dollars and politics. In 2008, Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa refused to extend a ten-year lease of the U.S. base at Manta, after
having been offered $500 million to upgrade the facility by a Hong Kong
port operator. Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
has *observed* that in post-revolutionary Egypt the
United States has continued to provide assistance in return for overflight
rights and access to the Suez Canal, even as U.S. leverage over the country
diminishes. And during Pakistan's seven-month fallout with Washington, in
which it closed Afghanistan-bound supply lanes, Islamabad publicly demanded
an increase in transit fees and courted China. Eventually, U.S. officials
reportedly agreed to release $1.1 billion for the Pakistani military from
the Coalition Support Fund to *get the route back open*.
Central Asian elites have grown increasingly hostile to the West's values
agenda -- promoting democracy and human rights -- and are now able to push
back against criticism.
The second lesson is that regional multipolarity has eroded Western
economic influence. Over the last decade, China has emerged as the leading
economic power in Central Asia. Chinese assistance there, as in Africa and
other developing regions, is not easy to categorize; it is usually a hybrid
of foreign aid, investment, and emergency standby loans. Beijing has
skillfully relied on a unique mix of these economic instruments with each
of its Central Asian neighbors. In 2009, it signed loans-for-energy
packages with energy-rich Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. These loans secured
supplies of oil and gas or equity in local producers. Meanwhile, Beijing
has undertaken major new oil and gas pipelines to take the Central Asian
energy eastward. These packages mirror similar loans-for-energy deals with
Angola, Brazil, Ecuador, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Venezuela.
In the poorer countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Beijing has become a
major investor and development assistance provider, focusing on power
generation, transmission, and transport, including roads and railways.
Prior to the 2012 SCO Summit in Beijing, the Export-Import Bank of China
was already Tajikistan's leading single creditor. Its holdings of the
country's overall foreign debt are now projected to reach 70 percent. Most
Western commentaries have welcomed Beijing's regional assistance and
investment, since Central Asian infrastructure remains in a state of
chronic disrepair and Chinese upgrades should improve cross-border regional
links and spur regional development.
But China's donor role also poses a number of challenges that Western
officials seem reluctant to publicly acknowledge. China's lack of
monitoring standards, its unconditional aid, and its direct dealings with
regimes reduce the transparency of its projects. In Tajikistan, for
example, a new private offshore-registered company now charges tolls on the
highway linking Dushanbe and Chanak, which was built mostly with Chinese
funds, making it practically unaffordable for lower-income Tajiks.
Meanwhile, China does not coordinate with other internationals in Bishkek
or Dushanbe and its lending and assistance in Central Asia simply dwarfs
existing commitments from other international sources. This summer, China
announced that it would provide $10 billion worth of financing for
infrastructure projects in the region. If enacted, the program will make
China the region's leading foreign investor by a wide margin. At the same
time, the conditions of U.S. aid, which is now a small and declining source
of regional funds, will become less meaningful.
New economic patrons are playing similar roles in Africa and the Middle
East. In mid-July, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, in Beijing,
Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged an additional $20 billion in loans to
Africa over the next three years, seeking to secure new energy supplies. He
also pledged to refrain from insisting on conditionality, as Western
countries often impose -- something he referred to as "*the big bullying
the small* ." As with Central Asia, social and
political programs -- training for tens of thousands of African officials;
18,000 new scholarships for African students -- will accompany these
economic packages.
In the Middle East, traditional international lenders, such as the United
States and the European Union, now face competition from Gulf funders,
especially from wealthy Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
Doubts remain about these countries' commitment to follow through on their
multi-billion-dollar pledges of assistance. Even so, just as Angola and
Tajikistan have leveraged Chinese loans to eschew Western lenders' demands
for reforms, so, too, have authorities in post-revolutionary Egypt used the
prospect of securing funds from the Gulf as leverage against the IMF. Such
new forms of assistance are reorienting the region's economic development
away from the West, and the United States now lacks the soft power to check
the growing power of these new rival patrons.
The third lesson is that Central Asian elites have grown increasingly
hostile to the West's values agenda -- promoting democracy and human rights
-- and are now able to push back against criticism. The war on terrorism
gave these regimes cover to build up their security services and clamp down
on opposition. China, Russia, and the United States colluded with Central
Asian security services to render terrorist suspects, without due process
hearings, to and from the region. The United States claimed that the war on
terrorism could not be constrained by international law. Russia and China
embedded their extraterritorial actions in new regional legal frameworks
such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's Anti-Terrorism Treaty.
Central Asian elites regularly malign the West for practicing double
standards on human rights, insisting that Western violations of human
rights be as much a part of a dialogue as their own infractions. New
regional media outlets spotlight the seeming contradictions of U.S. policy
in different countries, further diminishing U.S. credibility and magnifying
the costs of a hypocritical policy. Meanwhile, Central Asian nations have
hidden their political shortcomings by hiring Western public relations
firms and by restricting the activities of foreign-funded NGOs. In response
to the wave of color revolutions in the mid-2000s that swept entrenched
leaders with ties to the Kremlin out of power, Central Asian new and
entrenched leaders alike enacted restrictive registration and funding laws
to curtail the activities of Western-sponsored NGOs. In these efforts, they
had strong support from Moscow and Beijing.
Similarly, Egypt's recent clampdown on groups such as Freedom House and the
National Democratic Institute has made for a tricky political environment
for Western NGOs in Egypt. And in countries as diverse as Azerbaijan,
Ethiopia, Ecuador, Panama, Russia, Uganda, and Vietnam, governments have
recently stoked the fear of foreign interference to justify new legal
crackdowns on civil society organizations.
Meanwhile, the Central Asian states have created organizations that mimic
the form, but not the function, of democratic election monitors. Since
2005, for example, both the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States
and the SCO have sent election monitoring teams to the region; their
observers have delivered glowing assessments of obviously flawed Central
Asian elections. Tellingly, these new election monitors do not publish
mission guides, nor have they signed onto the United Nations' 2005 Code of
Conduct for International Election Observers. By so doing, such groups have
undermined Western-backed monitors and the substance of their work.
Some commentators have called on U.S. and European policymakers to jettison
their criticism and engagement on values issues to remain relevant as
international partners in this emerging multipolar world. Yet, along with
U.S. military and economic might, engagement on values is the very thing
that has distinguished the Western-led international order -- despite all
of its well-documented inconsistencies and shortcomings. Moreover, it is
the prospect of Western engagement that confers developing countries
leverage in their own uneasy dealings with emerging powers such as Russia
and China. Downgrading or dropping normative commitments to Central Asia,
as in other areas, in the interests of geopolitical pragmatism would signal
Brussels and Washington's taming by the post-Western world, not its
successful engagement with it.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137813/alexander-cooley/the-new-great-game-in-central-asia
Geopolitics in a Post-Western World
Alexander Cooley
August 7, 2012
Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman interviews author Alexander Cooley on
the geopolitical role of Central Asia, and how outside powers--Russia,
China, and the United States--are competing for influence in the region, as
the British and Russian empires did a century ago.
*Horsemen take part in a Kok-boru (Buzkashi) competition in Bishkek.
(Courtesy Reuters)*
In the last decade, the world has started taking more notice of Central
Asia. For the United States and its allies, the region is a valuable supply
hub for the Afghanistan war effort. For Russia, it is an arena in which to
exert political influence. For China, it is a source of energy and a
critical partner for stabilizing and developing the restive Xinjiang
province in the Middle Kingdom's west. Some commentators have referred to
Washington, Moscow, and Beijing's renewed activity in the region as a
modern iteration of the Great Game. But unlike the British and Russian
empires in their era of competition and conquest, the Central Asian
governments are working to use renewed external involvement to their
sovereign advantage, fending off disruptive demands and reinforcing their
political control at home. Accordingly, the Central Asian case today is not
a throwback to the past but a guide to what is to come: the rise of new
players and the decline of Western influence in a multipolar world.
The first lesson to take from China, Russia, and the United States'
involvement in Central Asia is that it has strengthened the hand of rulers,
who have been able to play the suitors off one another to extract economic
benefits and political support where possible. Most dramatically, in 2009,
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan, host to the Manas Transit
Center, initiated a bidding war between the United States and Russia by
threatening to close the base. He extracted hundreds of millions of dollars
from both sides, in the form of a Russian assistance package and a renewed
lease at a higher rent with the United States. Since 2008, the United
States also has paid transit fees,* about $500 million
annually*,
to the Uzbek and other Central Asian governments to ship equipment bound
for Afghanistan through the Northern Distribution Network.
The same dynamic is playing out elsewhere. The availability of alternative
patrons has made U.S. strategic engagement more expensive everywhere, both
in terms of dollars and politics. In 2008, Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa refused to extend a ten-year lease of the U.S. base at Manta, after
having been offered $500 million to upgrade the facility by a Hong Kong
port operator. Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
has *observed* that in post-revolutionary Egypt the
United States has continued to provide assistance in return for overflight
rights and access to the Suez Canal, even as U.S. leverage over the country
diminishes. And during Pakistan's seven-month fallout with Washington, in
which it closed Afghanistan-bound supply lanes, Islamabad publicly demanded
an increase in transit fees and courted China. Eventually, U.S. officials
reportedly agreed to release $1.1 billion for the Pakistani military from
the Coalition Support Fund to *get the route back open*.
Central Asian elites have grown increasingly hostile to the West's values
agenda -- promoting democracy and human rights -- and are now able to push
back against criticism.
The second lesson is that regional multipolarity has eroded Western
economic influence. Over the last decade, China has emerged as the leading
economic power in Central Asia. Chinese assistance there, as in Africa and
other developing regions, is not easy to categorize; it is usually a hybrid
of foreign aid, investment, and emergency standby loans. Beijing has
skillfully relied on a unique mix of these economic instruments with each
of its Central Asian neighbors. In 2009, it signed loans-for-energy
packages with energy-rich Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. These loans secured
supplies of oil and gas or equity in local producers. Meanwhile, Beijing
has undertaken major new oil and gas pipelines to take the Central Asian
energy eastward. These packages mirror similar loans-for-energy deals with
Angola, Brazil, Ecuador, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Venezuela.
In the poorer countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Beijing has become a
major investor and development assistance provider, focusing on power
generation, transmission, and transport, including roads and railways.
Prior to the 2012 SCO Summit in Beijing, the Export-Import Bank of China
was already Tajikistan's leading single creditor. Its holdings of the
country's overall foreign debt are now projected to reach 70 percent. Most
Western commentaries have welcomed Beijing's regional assistance and
investment, since Central Asian infrastructure remains in a state of
chronic disrepair and Chinese upgrades should improve cross-border regional
links and spur regional development.
But China's donor role also poses a number of challenges that Western
officials seem reluctant to publicly acknowledge. China's lack of
monitoring standards, its unconditional aid, and its direct dealings with
regimes reduce the transparency of its projects. In Tajikistan, for
example, a new private offshore-registered company now charges tolls on the
highway linking Dushanbe and Chanak, which was built mostly with Chinese
funds, making it practically unaffordable for lower-income Tajiks.
Meanwhile, China does not coordinate with other internationals in Bishkek
or Dushanbe and its lending and assistance in Central Asia simply dwarfs
existing commitments from other international sources. This summer, China
announced that it would provide $10 billion worth of financing for
infrastructure projects in the region. If enacted, the program will make
China the region's leading foreign investor by a wide margin. At the same
time, the conditions of U.S. aid, which is now a small and declining source
of regional funds, will become less meaningful.
New economic patrons are playing similar roles in Africa and the Middle
East. In mid-July, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, in Beijing,
Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged an additional $20 billion in loans to
Africa over the next three years, seeking to secure new energy supplies. He
also pledged to refrain from insisting on conditionality, as Western
countries often impose -- something he referred to as "*the big bullying
the small* ." As with Central Asia, social and
political programs -- training for tens of thousands of African officials;
18,000 new scholarships for African students -- will accompany these
economic packages.
In the Middle East, traditional international lenders, such as the United
States and the European Union, now face competition from Gulf funders,
especially from wealthy Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
Doubts remain about these countries' commitment to follow through on their
multi-billion-dollar pledges of assistance. Even so, just as Angola and
Tajikistan have leveraged Chinese loans to eschew Western lenders' demands
for reforms, so, too, have authorities in post-revolutionary Egypt used the
prospect of securing funds from the Gulf as leverage against the IMF. Such
new forms of assistance are reorienting the region's economic development
away from the West, and the United States now lacks the soft power to check
the growing power of these new rival patrons.
The third lesson is that Central Asian elites have grown increasingly
hostile to the West's values agenda -- promoting democracy and human rights
-- and are now able to push back against criticism. The war on terrorism
gave these regimes cover to build up their security services and clamp down
on opposition. China, Russia, and the United States colluded with Central
Asian security services to render terrorist suspects, without due process
hearings, to and from the region. The United States claimed that the war on
terrorism could not be constrained by international law. Russia and China
embedded their extraterritorial actions in new regional legal frameworks
such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's Anti-Terrorism Treaty.
Central Asian elites regularly malign the West for practicing double
standards on human rights, insisting that Western violations of human
rights be as much a part of a dialogue as their own infractions. New
regional media outlets spotlight the seeming contradictions of U.S. policy
in different countries, further diminishing U.S. credibility and magnifying
the costs of a hypocritical policy. Meanwhile, Central Asian nations have
hidden their political shortcomings by hiring Western public relations
firms and by restricting the activities of foreign-funded NGOs. In response
to the wave of color revolutions in the mid-2000s that swept entrenched
leaders with ties to the Kremlin out of power, Central Asian new and
entrenched leaders alike enacted restrictive registration and funding laws
to curtail the activities of Western-sponsored NGOs. In these efforts, they
had strong support from Moscow and Beijing.
Similarly, Egypt's recent clampdown on groups such as Freedom House and the
National Democratic Institute has made for a tricky political environment
for Western NGOs in Egypt. And in countries as diverse as Azerbaijan,
Ethiopia, Ecuador, Panama, Russia, Uganda, and Vietnam, governments have
recently stoked the fear of foreign interference to justify new legal
crackdowns on civil society organizations.
Meanwhile, the Central Asian states have created organizations that mimic
the form, but not the function, of democratic election monitors. Since
2005, for example, both the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States
and the SCO have sent election monitoring teams to the region; their
observers have delivered glowing assessments of obviously flawed Central
Asian elections. Tellingly, these new election monitors do not publish
mission guides, nor have they signed onto the United Nations' 2005 Code of
Conduct for International Election Observers. By so doing, such groups have
undermined Western-backed monitors and the substance of their work.
Some commentators have called on U.S. and European policymakers to jettison
their criticism and engagement on values issues to remain relevant as
international partners in this emerging multipolar world. Yet, along with
U.S. military and economic might, engagement on values is the very thing
that has distinguished the Western-led international order -- despite all
of its well-documented inconsistencies and shortcomings. Moreover, it is
the prospect of Western engagement that confers developing countries
leverage in their own uneasy dealings with emerging powers such as Russia
and China. Downgrading or dropping normative commitments to Central Asia,
as in other areas, in the interests of geopolitical pragmatism would signal
Brussels and Washington's taming by the post-Western world, not its
successful engagement with it.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137813/alexander-cooley/the-new-great-game-in-central-asia