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Scramble for Central Asian
bases
By Stephen Blank
Even
before September 11, Central Asia was rising in
strategic importance to nations such as Russia, Iran,
China and the United States. Since then, the region's
strategic significance has grown by orders of magnitude.
The most tangible and visible manifestation of its
new-found importance is the scramble for military bases
there.
America, Russia and India all have bases
in Central Asia, and China is evidently seeking one as
well. These bases often have military significance
beyond Central Asia. For example, India’s air base in
Tajikistan, reportedly at an operational status
according to Jane's, clearly owes much to the high
degree of bilateral military tension with Pakistan since
late 2001, not just to India's quest for enhanced
leverage and influence in Central Asia. Similarly, the
bases offered by Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to the US are
intended primarily, if not exclusively, for the
prosecution of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
However, it is clear that the foreign air and
other bases in Central Asia are connected to phenomena
beyond the region. Chinese elites see America's presence
there as possibly betokening a future "encirclement" of
China. Russia's military-political elites, who remain
defiantly unreconciled to strategic reality and the loss
of hegemony over the region, also see the American bases
as a threat to vital Russian interests and have
responded by coercing Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan into
granting Moscow air bases in their territories.
Unconfirmed reports state that either Moscow had
to coordinate acquisition of a base in Kyrgyzstan with
Beijing or that Beijing wanted this air base for itself.
Whichever account may be true, they both show the extent
of the great power scramble for air and other bases in
Central Asia as well as China's burgeoning interest in
regional military issues.
And when one examines
the circumstances surrounding these bases, the different
kinds of relationships between the host countries on the
one hand and with America and Russia on the other are
striking. In the American case, the host countries
invited American bases after September 11 knowing that
these would be reliable bases to be used against
terrorists and against Russian-Chinese efforts to
compromise their security. It should be remembered that
despite earlier promises of Russian assistance, actual
provision of weapons and training was far short of what
was needed to take on the Taliban and its proteges.
Likewise, Chinese promises to intervene under
the charter of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization
proved to be written in sand. After September 11, China
demanded prior compensations and a veto power over the
American response to those attacks, conditions that
ruled out effective provision of Chinese support to
Central Asian regimes. In any case, the prior
relationships of these states to both Moscow and Beijing
were not such as to inspire confidence in those
governments' benevolent intentions or capability to
materially assist Central Asian security.
But
whereas the American bases were the products of
invitations where governments actively solicited
Washington's involvement and presence, the Russian bases
are a rather different affair. Close examination
suggests that the outmoded and minimal air force
capabilities that Moscow is bringing to these bases
cannot be an effective force against terrorism.
While those forces are openly advertised as the
first steps toward creation of true coalition forces
among the Commonwealth of Independent States countries,
the record of Russian operations against terrorists is
not one that most of its partners would welcome for
their own territory. The forces involved apparently are
intended as much to show the flag or to provide a sign
of support for one or another domestic faction in the
host states as they are supposed to provide effective
military capability.
Moreover, reports from the
region suggest that these bases were not the product of
an invitation, rather they were the result of coercion.
Kyrgyzstan, facing massive internal unrest and being
turned down by Washington for more assistance because of
its failing democratization, was obliged to turn to
Russia and make several concessions to Moscow. It made
Russian an official language, unified its defense
industry with Russia and generally raised trade with
Moscow 49 percent in 2002. The new base in Kant is
evidently another of these concessions made to Moscow to
gain its support for an embattled regime.
Similarly, Tajikistan, which also welcomed an
American military presence after September 11, has come
under withering attacks by Russian diplomats,
politicians and media for its attempts to escape from
Moscow's shadow. Thus high-level visitors came to
Tajikistan to tell Dushanbe to convert the deployment of
the Russian army’s 201st division - a force widely
reputed to be involved with the drug trade - into a base
to provide for a more enduring deployment there.
These tactics coincide with intensified efforts
by the traditionally anti-American elites of the
ministries of foreign affairs and defense to undermine
the post-September 11 partnership with America and to
exploit the war with Iraq to that end. They also
coincide with efforts to use the security forces to
achieve greater penetration or intervention in Central
Asia, for example, the November 2002 coup in Tajikistan
which the Russian intelligence service SVR apparently
helped to facilitate. These policies comport with the
ongoing and unrelenting pressure on Georgia, most
recently manifested in signs of greater willingness to
support Abkhazia's secession and convert it into part of
the Russian Federation.
However, as has often
happened in the past, Russia's generals and diplomats
have been too clever by half. Hitherto it has been
unclear how long American forces would remain in their
Central Asian bases. It was assumed that once the war in
Afghanistan ended those forces would return home except
for retaining the right to access to those bases in
future contingencies to be specified by mutual
agreement.
But because Russia has coerced
Central Asian states into giving it bases to compete
with Washington, that outcome would now be
counterproductive. Whether Russia intends to support one
domestic faction against another in host countries,
actively prosecute a war on terrorists, or subordinate
Central Asian militaries to a new version of the Warsaw
pact, the so called Collective Security Treaty
Organization, no longer matters. What is clear is that
Moscow is as willing to threaten weak states with
coercive power even if it cannot effectively sustain
that power abroad or to threaten intervention in their
domestic politics.
Either way, it is unlikely
that Central Asian governments, understanding Russia's
game, will urge American forces to leave, even if
Afghanistan is stabilized any time soon. In other words,
Russia's heavy-handed response to the American bases in
Central Asia all but precludes the option of a future
unilateral American withdrawal form there.
Neither America nor local governments could then
accept conditions where Russia alone or together with
China can project military power into Central Asia.
Russia's effort to take counsel of its fears concerning
Washington's objectives may well bring about a true
scramble for military bases in Central Asia and a
heightened military dimension to the rivalries that now
engulf this region.
Unfortunately, such a
rivalry or heightened military competition is about the
last thing Central Asia or Russia now needs. To be sure,
a military competition for influence and presence there
benefits neither the local states' nor Russia's
interests. Rather than acting to bring about cooperative
and multilateral security in Central Asia, the great
powers now appear to be ratcheting upward the new
version of an old and ultimately futile game which could
easily end up with no winners but with many losers.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of
international security affairs residing in Harrisburg,
PA.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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