Central Asia’s ‘Great Game’ Intensifies…
The ‘Great Game’ for mastery of Central Asia appears to be moving in Russia’s favour, with Kyrgyzstan recently having decided to evict US military forces from its air base at Manas. While a final decision still hangs in the balance, the move, if implemented, would be a clear reversal for US policy in the region (the two main contestants for regional hegemony, the US and Russia, consider the struggle a zero-sum game).
Central Asia’s Importance
One of the most dramatic developments in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks was the deployment of US troops to Central Asia, specifically Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, which was virtually unthinkable previously and marked the first American military presence on former Soviet territory. Indeed, some described it as the boldest advance by a Western power into the region since Alexander the Great 2,400 years earlier. However, the US was subsequently forced out of Uzbekistan in 2005 after it criticised President Islam Karimov’s massacre of dissidents at Andijan, leaving Kyrgyzstan its main regional outpost.
Central Asia matters to the Great Powers for two main regions:
• Its adjacency to the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea.
• The fact that all the region’s main powers perceive it to be important.
Regarding the second point, the main contestants for influence besides the US and Russia are Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, and China.
Turkey shares considerable ethnic and linguistic ties with the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Turkmens; Iran shares linguistic and cultural ties with the Tajiks and Afghans; Pakistan sees an opportunity to build pipelines that would allow Central Asian oil and gas to be pumped to its ports, as does China; and India sees interests in competing in wherever Pakistan has interests. Meanwhile, the US, Russia, and India all have interests in ensuring that Islamic fundamentalism remains in check.
So overall, Central Asia is a very crowded arena.
In recent years, Russia and China have sought to minimise everyone else’s influence through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a sort of Eurasian version of NATO that includes Central Asian states as its members. Moscow and Beijing both dislike the idea of a permanent Western military presence in the region, lest it be used to ‘contain’ them geopolitically.
Thus, if the US is evicted from Kyrgyzstan, it would be a setback for Washington – although it could deal itself firmly back in the game if it patches things up with Uzbekistan, the most populous state in the region. But once the US is out, this could increase competition between Russia and China. (Those who have seen Season Six of ‘24’ will recall that Russia was on the verge of attacking US bases in Central Asia because it perceived the US to have leaked sensitive Russian defence technology to China. This was a reasonably entertaining interpretation of the three-way struggle in the region.)
For now, Russia has the edge, given its historical and institutional ties with the Central Asian states. However, in the long term, with Central Asia’s combined population approaching Russia’s by the mid-21st century (the UN’s median variant forecasts Central Asia’s population rising by 29% to 80 million by 2050, while Russia’s shrinks by 36% to 89 million under the low variant scenario), and China’s economic power rising rapidly, it is difficult to see how Moscow can retain dominance. In the meantime, I expect Central Asian leaders fully to take advantage of Great Power rivalry by playing them off against the other, thereby maximising economic rewards and their political independence.