Last week, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, James Appathurai, opened an Alliance office for cooperation with countries of the region in Tashkent. Appathurai noted that the bureau symbolized commitment to the development of long-term partnership relations between NATO and the strategic-value region. The new office will help cooperate with Central Asian partners in defense planning and analysis, coordinate assistance in operations of the Alliance, military education and training. NATO has been integrating into the infrastructure of Central Asian states quite actively in recent years. The U.S., some experts say, is taking the region as the central axis of its global strategy.
Andrey Grozin, deputy head of the section for Central Asia and Kazakhstan at the Institute of CIS Countries, has given his description of the activating U.S. diplomacy in Central Asia.
- Since the start of the year, the U.S. has been active in Central Asia, all secretaries of state have visited all countries of the region. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns has recently visited Kazakhstan. What is the reason for such activeness?
- There is a complex of moments. The reduction of forces in Afghanistan will form a vacuum of the American presence in Afghanistan itself, the regions adjoining it, including Central Asia. Central Asian political leaders are concerned that reduction of the U.S. presence will have a multi-sided manifestation, including its material aspect. It is clear that the American expert community is restructuring its attention from the Central Asian theme to issues of the Asian-Pacific Region, according to the new American agenda. Considering the crisis in Eastern Europe, interest in European affairs is growing too. Central Asia is becoming a periphery – there will be less money allocated, fewer forces stationed, fewer drills, less support, less of everything, even if the Americans completely leave Afghanistan, they will try to cling on to it.
Central Asian leaders are worried about this. All countries realize the foreign political concept of multi-vector, manoeuvering between world centers of power and extracting different material and non-material dividends from it. The opportunities for that are diminishing, together with a reduction in the influence of the West in the region. Consequently, it is getting harder to carry out internal and foreign political courses meeting the interests of all the countries in Central Asia.
All there is left is to choose between Russian and Chinese projects, taking into account all the consequences. It is greatly uncertain, but it is great responsibility, great obligations that need to be taken and be responsible for. The Americans in this situation are trying to pacify Central Asia, thus, their diplomacy is active.
American senators, functionaries and generals are active in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan. It is less noticeable in Turkmenistan, but, considering what was seen 3-5 years ago, it is evident that shuttle diplomacy has produced no material results yet. What can the U.S. offer Kazakhstan or other even less economically well-off states of the region? There are two economic projects: CASA-1000, an energy bridge from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the south through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India; and TAPI, a gas pipeline to Turkmenistan, Pakistan, India. The first project is more or less progressing, though I have big doubts that it will ever be realized, particularly taking into account the events in Afghanistan. The second project, the TAPI gas pipeline, in my opinion, should be closed down the way Nabucco was. The latest visit of [Turkmen President Gurbanguly] Berdimuhamedov to Beijing shows that Turkmenistan is oriented toward selling all its extracted gas to the east, to China. All plans to increase extraction in the next decades are not made for TAPI or Trans-Caspian pipelines, they are made for the real Chinese project of expanding the great gas river flowing through Central Asia from Turkmenistan.
In other words, there is no economic filling, there are attempts to seduce one leader or another in backstage negotiations to gain a presence by reminding that the U.S. remains the leading world force and using non-material agreements.
- The signing of the treaty to form the Eurasian Economic Union is approaching. What would further U.S. steps in the region be, considering this?
- The Americans have categorized the project as a target for antagonization, using all resources. The main integration link in Central Asia that integration will develop on is Kazakhstan. This is why it is given special attention, regardless of its economic and resource potential. Kazakhstan, using the most rational rhetoric, is being dragged to one’s side or at least persuaded to be less diplomatically active on the integration field. I think that Nursultan Nazarbayev will try not to ruin relations with Americans, but the treaty on Eurasian Economic Union will eventually be signed in late May.
The U.S. has little time to take action. Everything was done to drag out the process in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Pro-Western non-governmental non-commercial organizations “rose from the trenches” and went into the blogosphere to criticize the Customs Union. It is especially visible in Kyrgyzstan, where, by the way, the number of NGOs per 1,000 people is the greatest in the post-Soviet space, thanks to Askar Akayev. Kazakhstan held an anti-Eurasian forum attended, they said, by 500 people at a hall too small even for 200 people standing on each other’s heads.
Nonetheless, activeness is very evident in the blogosphere, but there is nothing besides a virtual fuss. Recently, the Kyrgyz government has published a road map to join the Customs Union. It was passed for consideration at the parliament, where things will be rather complicated because next year will see elections and the legislators of Kyrgyzstan are special people. There will probably be long bargaining, there will be lots of meetings, nice and ill-looking declarations, but in the end, the movement of Kyrgyzstan towards joining the Customs Union, as I suppose, has been clearly outlined already.
Kazakhstan lacks the network of pro-Western activists of non-governmental organizations, it is a lot more peaceful there, a lot more central-government-controlled. There are online outbursts that have no impact on the general public opinion. Today, some social services in Kazakhstan have carried out high-scale research with results very unpleasant for our Western friends. The research considered the opinions of the Kazakh public about the Ukrainian crisis. About 64% say that Russia realized its historic right by annexing Crimea and it was justified. 22% say that Russia is overall right, but could have used softer measures. About 11% of people condemn Russia.
By the way, in autumn 2008, Kazakh sociologists carried out high-scale research of public opinion of Kazakhs about the South Caucasus crisis. The figures back then were as follows: 2/3 for Russia, a quarter against, the rest were mixed. Overall, three-quarters of the Kazakh population backed Russia’s side in the August 2008 conflict in South Caucasus and in the Ukraine crisis today.
- Russian experts discuss the refusal of Nursultan Nazarbayev to attend the informal CSTO summit on May 8 to meet U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns instead. There are rather judgemental formulations, as though Kazakhstan was reframing its foreign political priorities. What do you think the Kazakh president’s refusal to attend the summit has to do with?
- Our Russian expert community has started saying: “See? Nazarbayev skipped the informal council and met Burns instead.” But they forget that a week ago Nazarbayev visited Moscow on April 28-29. Simultaneously with that, an agreement on common regional air defenses of Russia and Kazakhstan was ratified, something we lack with any other country except Belarus. Agreements were signed regarding raising issues around the future Eurasian Economic Union that had been complicating Russian-Kazakh agreements. In particular, the decision for a common Eurasian open sky, which could cause major harm to Kazakh airlines, was postponed. Fundamentally, there are no serious differences, and the fact that Nazarbayev meets Putin and Burns means that Central Asian leaders are merely trying to implement a multi-vector policy.
Though, after the Ukrainian crisis, after what has happened and will obviously continue happening in Afghanistan, the field for multi-vector moves is narrowing, it is a true-to-life process. With rising instability on the southern borders of the former Soviet Union, the field for such moves will continue to shrink.
