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Foul play in the
Great Game
By M K Bhadrakumar
In a landmark speech at Johns Hopkins
University in 1997, the then-US deputy secretary
of state, Strobe Talbott, said: "For the last
several years, it has been fashionable to proclaim
or at least to predict, a replay of the 'Great
Game' in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The
implication of course is that the driving dynamic
of the region, fueled and lubricated by oil, will
be the competition of great powers to the
disadvantage of the people who live there.
"Our goal is to avoid and to actively
discourage that atavistic outcome. In pondering
and practicing the geopolitics of oil, let's make
sure that we are thinking in terms appropriate to
the 21st century and not the 19th century. Let's
leave Rudyard Kipling and George McDonald Fraser
where they belong - on the shelves of historical
fiction. The Great Game, which starred Kipling's
Kim and Fraser's Flashman, was very much of the
zero-sum variety. What we want to help bring about
is just the opposite, we want to see all
responsible players in the Caucasus and Central
Asia be winners."
The chancelleries in the
region, and indeed all chroniclers of Central
Asian politics, studied Talbott's speech with
interest. Talbott's erudition as a
scholar-diplomat in Russian language and
literature, history and politics was worthy of the
highest respect. Of course, the Bill Clinton
presidency was at its high noon and it was the
first time that US policy towards the
"newly-independent states" of the Central Asian
region had been spelt out authoritatively.
Yet, eight years on, precisely what
Talbott was keen on avoiding seems to be unfolding
in Central Asia. The geopolitics in Central Asia
have lately begun to engender rivalries. The
summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) held in Astana on July 5-6
draws attention to it. The summit's call on the
US-led "anti-terrorist coalition" to define a
deadline on its military presence on the territory
of SCO member countries is a strong signal.
Washington tried to deflect SCO's call by claiming
that it was guided by bilateral agreements with
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Thereupon, the
Uzbek Foreign Ministry promptly clarified in a
statement that no future scenarios of the US
military contingent operating out of its territory
had been envisaged under its bilateral agreement
with Washington other than "the desire of
Uzbekistan as a proactive member of the
anti-terrorist coalition in Afghanistan" -
virtually echoing the SCO's call. Kyrgyzstan's
Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva also joined issue
with Washington: "All of us are part of the
anti-terrorist coalition, including our country.
However, there is a time limit for everybody who
comes to stay somewhere. We are members of the
SCO. We raised this issue together with other
member states."
Despite these blunt Uzbek
and Kyrgyz statements, US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice parried at a press conference in
Beijing on July 10. Rice said that it was for
Afghanistan to decide on the presence of US troops
and "there is still a fight going on in
Afghanistan ... there is still a lot of terrorist
activity in Afghanistan ... the terrorists still
have to be defeated in Afghanistan ... and so it
is our understanding that the people of
Afghanistan want and need the help of US armed
forces." Besides, Rice claimed that it was not a
matter of US forces alone since the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) also had contingents in
the region.
Just a day later, Kyrgyzstan
gently but firmly nudged the discussion back to
where it belonged. In his very first remarks on
July 11 after his resounding victory in the Kyrgyz
presidential election, Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek
Bakiyev said politely but firmly: "Afghanistan has
had presidential elections. The situation there
has stabilized. So now we may begin discussing the
necessity of US military forces' presence. When
and how it will happen, time will show."
The "dialogue" between Washington and the
Central Asian capitals is indeed becoming
curiouser and curiouser. The "Tulip" revolution
was supposed to have been Washington's finest hour
in Central Asia. President George W Bush
eloquently cited the "regime change" in Kyrgyzstan
as an inspiration for all freedom-loving peoples -
and as a vindication of his democracy project.
Yet, it is no longer feasible to obfuscate the
reality that Washington's influence in Bishkek has
touched its nadir.
Bakiyev won on a
platform offering "stability". His huge mandate
tapped into people's fears about a recurrence of
the upheavals that they twice witnessed in the
recent months - in their own country and in
next-door Andijan in Uzbekistan. Russia played a
crucial role in bringing together Bakiyev and the
prominent leader from the north, Felix Kulov,
which became the winning ticket in the Kyrgyz
election. Moscow is not hiding its joy in
Bakiyev's victory. Washington's best hope now
would lie in the Bakiyev-Kulov combine falling
apart. That is a pretty thin hope to cling on to,
after aspiring to be the kingmaker.
It is
extraordinary that the US's prestige and influence
as a superpower has plummeted dramatically in
Central Asia in such a short span of time since
October 2001- so much so that Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan, which used to be overtly keen to be
friendly, have today become thoroughly
disillusioned with Washington's regional policy.
How could this have happened?
The
fundamentals of the US policy in Central Asia as
spelt out by Talbott eight years ago identified
four dimensions: promotion of democracy; creation
of free market economies; sponsorship of peace and
cooperation within and among the countries of the
region; and the integration of the countries of
Central Asia and the Caucasus with the larger
international community.
But what has
changed is that the Bush administration has
surreptitiously redefined the thrust of priorities
towards the region in terms of its global
policies. The result is that the US no longer has
a policy intrinsic to the pressing demands of the
transition economies in the Central Asian region -
the substantive theme in Talbott's speech. Today
everything has become relative in the US calculus
- everything in Central Asia needs to be factored
into the priorities of policy toward Russia or
China. By "promotion of democracy", for example,
Talbott envisioned a slow and gradual process of
the US assisting Central Asian countries in
evolving the "requisite institutions and
attitudes" conducive for the growth of a
democratic culture. He admitted candidly that this
would be a long haul as "the very newness of
democracy was itself a major obstacle to the
process of democratization" in Central Asia.
There was, evidently, no scope for "color
revolutions" in Talbott's scheme of things when he
involved civil society in the Central Asian region
and the Caucasus as the handmaiden of the
democratization agenda. Again, with regard to the
security dimension of US policy, Talbott
emphasized American assistance in "the resolution
of conflicts within and between countries and
peoples in the region". Regional stability and
reconciliation had a centrality in Talbott's
policy framework, whereas they took a back seat in
the Bush administration's priorities.
Interestingly, Talbott pinpointed "internal
instability and division" as having historically
provided "a pretext for foreign intervention and
adventurism" in the region.
Thus, though
the US had profoundly differed from the Russian
perspectives on the Tajik civil war (1992-96) and
would have had some good reasons to work against
the Tajik settlement in 1996 (put together by
Russia and Iran), Talbott said, "The difficulties
in implementation are sobering, but the recent
accord provides a real opportunity for
reconciliation, not only within Tajikistan, but
with benefits for the surrounding countries as
well."
In the period of the Clinton
presidency, US prestige and influence in Central
Asia peaked. The Bush administration, ironically,
reaped a good harvest of this legacy. The
openhearted welcome that Central Asian leaderships
extended to the US military presence in their
region in 2001 testifies to that. But the ease
with which Washington squandered such enormous
goodwill is appalling.
The "Rose"
revolution in Georgia in December 2003 was the
turning point. It usually takes 10 years'
hindsight to cast an aspersion on current history,
but a question is bound to come up: what,
ultimately, has the US gained by deposing Eduard
Shevardnadze? Do the gains outweigh the losses?
It was in Georgia that the cutting edge in
the Bush administration's regional policy came
into full view - aimed at dominating the region;
establishing unilateral advantage over other
powers no matter their legitimate interests; and,
shepherding the region into a security
architecture notionally headed by NATO but firmly
under US command. Russia's Security Council
Secretary Igor Ivanov and then-US secretary of
state Colin Powell worked in tandem behind the
scenes to ensure that the transfer of power from
Shevardnadze to Mikheil Saakashvili did not
degenerate into a Caucasian street brawl. (They
had a similar compact in ensuring the transition
in Baku from the late Hydar Aliyev to his son.)
But once Saakashvili was safely ensconced in power
in Tbilisi, Washington left Moscow high and dry.
The "Rose" revolution showed that the Bush
administration preferred to compartmentalize the
relationship with Russia. This impacted on Russian
policy.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said recently, "We do not accept the
attempts to place post-Soviet states before a
false choice ... either with the US or with
Russia. We are ready for cooperation on a basis of
mutual consideration of interests ... We
understand the West's objective interests in the
CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] space and
only want that the methods of realization of these
interests should also be understandable,
transparent, that they would rest on the
universally recognized rules of international law,
and not infringe either on the rights of the
peoples of the CIS countries to decide their
future themselves, or on the lawful rights and
interests of Russia in this space, where we want
to develop equal, mutually beneficial cooperation
with our neighbors."
Shevardnadze's fall
sent shockwaves through Central Asia. He was an
iconic figure, a tough veteran of Kremlin politics
- by far senior to the CIS leaders in the Soviet
hierarchy. And how Washington rubbished its old,
time-tested ally ("Shevvy") was for Central Asian
leaderships a morality play about the ephemeral
nature of American friendships. Such betrayals do
not look good in the Orient. The Central Asian
leaderships began edging away from the US and
closer toward Russia and China. In the face of
this, the US response was to push for "regime
change" in Central Asia as well. But the macabre
events in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in March and
May this year had a totally unexpected outcome.
The indications are that a review of
American policy toward Central Asia is underway in
Washington. It cannot be a difficult exercise. It
is easy to pinpoint when things go horribly wrong.
A good starting point would be Talbott's prescient
speech exactly eight years ago.
M K
Bhadrakumar is a former Indian career diplomat
who has served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and
Moscow.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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