This month marks the third anniversary of a dark chapter in global politics.  In May 2005, hundreds of Uzbek people took to the streets of Andijan to protest the authoritarian government of Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan and a holdover from Soviet times.  The protests followed attacks on several government buildings, including a jail from which several state prisoners were freed.  These events, unfolding in the shadow of neighboring Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution, held the promise of change for people who had been subjected to state fiat since the dawn of the modern era.  Such hopes were shattered by a hail of bullets, leaving some hundreds of Uzbek citizens dead (no ones knows how many-Tashkent claims 187 killed while Western human rights groups put the number around 750).

Certainly the Andijan Massacre, as it has come to be called, was a tragedy, but it only attained global political significance when it became an issue in the new “Great Game” for influence in Central Asia.  The killings rightly prompted a sharp criticism from the United States which, in turn, caused Uzbekistan to eject the U.S. military from its base at Karshi-Khanaba; an event considered a major strategic setback by many commentators, given the base’s role in supporting Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.  President Karimov was embraced by China during a previously planned state visit to Beijing at the end of May and also won the implicit support of regional players in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The Andijan Incident and its aftermath prompts the broader question of how the United States should approach Central Asia given its largely authoritarian politics, powerful neighbors (Russia and China), and geo-strategic importance.  America’s primary interests in the region are two-fold: energy and Islamism (sound familiar?).  According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s report on the Caspian Sea region, there are between 12 and 49 billion barrels of oil and about 232 trillion cubic feet of natural gas waiting to be exploited from Central Asia.  All of this essentially makes the region  Eurasia’s energy hub both for petroleum:

And for natural gas:

Moreover, since Central Asia is landlocked and capital starved, it is a tempting target for American investment in energy extraction, refining, and transport.

Its proximity to Afghanistan makes the region an important part of the war effort there.  Though the military has been edged out of Uzbekistan, it still makes use of Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and has agreements with other countries for overflight rights and expedited transit of war material.  In addition to its supporting role in the American War on Terrorism, Central Asia has, at times, found itself at risk from Islamic extremism.  The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been responsible for several incidents in the region (as well as making for a convenient scape-goat following Andijan) and militant Islamic forces were present amongst the anti-government opposition in Tajikistan’s five year civil war.

Central Asia is also a tempting piece of real estate for those in the national security establishment who view China and Russia with increasing apprehension and see an American military presence in the region as a hedge against the expanding influence of Eurasia’s giants.  Both countries are deepening their relationships with Central Asia through bilateral diplomacy as well as regional groupings like the SCO and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

With all of this at stake, what is the American Empire to do?  It would be a mistake to ignore Central Asia entirely.  As September 11th clearly demonstrated, turning a blind eye to even the remotest corner of the globe can have serious consequences in the 21st century.  However, I do not believe the United States must kow-tow to Eurasia’s potentates and lavish military aid on their regimes in order to secure permanent basing rights the region.

America’s fundamental interests, increasing energy exports and controlling Islamic terrorism, are already being served by the domestic policies of Central Asia’s states.  The governments therein are searching for the means to develop their energy sectors and they are secular by nature, being descended from the Soviet bureaucracy of old.

As for Russian and Chinese influence, the Soviet legacy has also imparted a keen sense of the dangers entailed by the dominance of powerful outsiders.  No Central Asian country wishes to return to a state of imperial tutelage, whether under the guise of Moscow or Beijing (or Washington, for that matter).  Central Asia’s rulers are, by and large, clever enough to play the competitors in the Great Game off one another, and the United States should facilitate that by offering its diplomatic support as a counterweight to  Russia and China while not seeking undue influence itself.  (This leaves aside the fact that the “threat” from Russia and China is largely a chimera, but that’s a different post…)

In short, America should remain engaged with Central Asia, but not through permanent military bases.  And though we must, as always, recognize the limits of American influence on the internal affairs of others, we should not hesitate to speak out against the injustices committed against the people of Central Asia.  We ought not play the Great Game, for the prize simply isn’t worth the effort.

Dimitry Medvedev’s first trip abroad as President of the Russian Federation will take him to China (with a brief stopover in Kazakhstan). It seems that since the end of the Cold War, bitter memories of the Sino-Soviet split and the 1969 border conflict that left these two Asian giants on the brink of war have been set aside in order to forge a strategic partnership that has brought both states closer to one another than at any time in the past.

The two codified their budding friendship in 2001 with a “Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendship,” which pledged both to mutual nonaggression, support for their respective hot-button issues like Taiwan and Chechnya, and various forms of consultation. China and Russia regularly exchange state visits, such as the one on which President Medvedev is soon to embark, in addition to ministerial level talks on a range of issues. Each is an active member in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a multilateral grouping that facilitates economic and security partnerships in Central Asia. Then there were the national years, with 2006 dubbed “the year of Russia” in China and 2007 “the year of China” in Russia. Moscow has even seen fit to supply its neighbor with billions of dollars of advanced weaponry to fill the gaps in China’s ambitious military modernization program.

However, there are clouds on the Eastern horizon. China has a population of nearly 1.5 billion people and a GDP of about $3.4 trillion at official exchange rates, a value that grows by 8 to 10 percent a year. Russia has a population of about 140 million, one which has been declining in recent years, and a nominal GDP of $1.3 trillion which is growing, but is heavily dependent on energy exports. All this means that over the next twenty to thirty years, China will almost certainly exceed Russia in every measure of national power, except, perhaps, the size of its nuclear arsenal. This certainly does not portend conflict as a matter of course, but it is enough to make Russian strategists lose sleep over the future.

In a Moscow Times opinion piece, author Richard Lourie says as much, commenting on a lingering sense of “Sinophobia” amongst many Russian officials who are wary of the stirring giant on their southern frontier. Siberia is the source of their angst, according to Lourie:

Geography abhors a vacuum every bit as much as nature. The Russian Far East, which is two-thirds the size of the continental United States, has only 7 million people. On the other side of the Russian border, in the three northeastern Chinese provinces, there are 100 million people in an area one-eighth the size of the Far East.

The fear, fed in part by Russian xenophobia, is that those 100 million Chinese will spill across the border and submerge the sparsely populated, resource-rich lands of eastern Russia. Border areas are already marked by tensions between native Russians and Chinese migrant laborers.

Again, this is not a forecast of an inevitable Sino-Russian war; such a prospect is remote. I do, however, think that the geopolitics and geoeconomics of Northeast Asia cast doubt on the longevity of a Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Such a relationship remains valid only so long as the two are on a relatively equal footing and share mutual interests. The future of both these prospects is questionable at best.

On the sixty-third anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, Russia is looking toward the future through the lens of its Soviet past. For the first time since 1990, Moscow staged a parade through Red Square replete with all of its latest military hardware, including T-90 tanks, Topol-M road mobile ICBMs, and Sukhoi fighter aircraft. Reviewing the scene from on high were Russia’s new president Dimtry Medvedev and its familiar patriarch, now in the guise of Prime Minister: Vladimir Putin. It was Putin who decided to blend old-style Soviet authoritarianism and militaristic symbolism with a (relatively) capitalist economy buoyed by windfall energy revenues.

Now, the fruit of that strategy, renewed Russian power incarnated in a metal tank hull, is on display for all to see…or is it? As most of the coverage of these festivities points out, the event was in many ways a Potemkin rally, showcasing a few big-ticket items in what is still a largely dysfunctional Russian military. Long range bomber patrols and talk of a “new Cold War” may give some leaders pause, but Germany’s Der Spiegel is on the money when it writes:

In reality, Western capitals have no need to panic because of the saber rattling on Red Square. After all, France celebrates its Bastille Day every year with a military parade including tanks on the Champs Elysees and fighter aircraft flying across the Arc de Triomphe. Nations who once played a far greater role on the world stage need to bask in the glory of historical uniforms, machine guns and bombast. It eases the nagging pain of lost territories and influence.

The reality is that the Russian army is plagued by poor quality conscripts who are often abused by their officers in brutal hazing rituals. Its arms industries are advanced but highly inefficient. Its once vaunted navy is a shadow of its former self and its strategic patrols are in decline.

Russia has come a long way from chaos of the early 1990s; it has gained a tremendous amount of wealth and power in the years since the Soviet empire’s demise. Moreover, even a cursory reading of European history will show that one should never dismiss the capacity for Russia to overcome disaster and take back its place on the world stage. Still, it hasn’t reclaimed its mantle of world power yet and isn’t likely to do so for some time.

Photo Source: AP.

Earlier this month, heads of state and government from member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered in Bucharest to discuss the future of the Cold War era alliance. On the table were Membership Action Plans (MAPs) for the former Soviet Republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Though NATO’s leadership decided more dialogue was needed before incorporating the two countries, Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated that the two “will become members of NATO.”

Here’s why this is a bad idea:

This video appears to show a Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft shooting down a Georgian reconnaissance drone over Georgian territory over the weekend. Why would Russia do this? Broadly speaking, Russia is not very pleased with its current status vis á vis its former imperial dominions from the Soviet era. It has taken steps to try to recover some of its influence, and in Georgia this has taken the form of tacitly supporting the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and Ossetia. Both are now effectively autonomous from the government in Tiblisi and are occupied by Russian “peacekeeping” troops.

The drone shoot down is only the latest of a number of provocative steps taken toward the Caucuses republic by outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin that some have argued are trending toward the annexation of the two troublesome regions. All this begs the question, why should NATO guarantee the security of a strategically insignificant country that is constantly at loggerheads with its nuclear-armed neighbor? Is NATO willing to treat an attack on Georgia as an attack on all its members, a la Article 5?

Certainly, there is no question which side would prevail if war between Russia and NATO ever broke out (conventional war, anyway). And, likely, continuing the eastward crawl of NATO’s boundaries would result only in more diplomatic wrangling and anti-Western invective. But why complicate things? What, exactly, do the core members of NATO gain by taking on the burden of dysfunctional Eastern European states with marginal military capability? Simply put, expansion is diluting the effectiveness of an already troubled alliance and saddling it with unnecessary liabilities. It needs to come to an end before NATO does.