World Powers Woo Central Asia
BRUSSELS, Dec 11 (IPS Asia-Pacific) - The world's economic and political superpowers have been making a beeline for Central Asia, eyeing long-term agreements with the region.
The region made up of the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — 'borderlands' of the former Soviet Union — have evolved into full-fledged states nearly two decades after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and is thus acquiring increasing influence.
"Once considered to be candidates for state failures, these countries are increasingly becoming a group of actors, not a group of territories or natural resources areas, but countries that are taking themselves more seriously," Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said at a seminar in the 'Asian Voices in Europe' series here, jointly organised by the European Policy Centre and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
The landlocked region enjoys close proximity with powers such as China, India and Russia, and is considered to have a strategic place in Asia's political and economic development.
Sixteen years after the Central Asian states came into their own, political analysts like Eugene Rumer say that the world is now dealing with an increasingly mature, fully functioning and developing states. "This is a testimony that the region has succeeded beyond expectations of the expert community," said the senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the National Defence University in Washington DC.
Of particular interest to observers are the Central Asian states' relationship with Russia, the United States, and the European Union (EU), as well as their growing interaction with China.
"I think the so-called expert community really was quite ignorant about Central Asia for a long time, as these countries were separated from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain. The emergence of the five states was quite new to the policy-making community in Washington, which was more familiar with the balance of forces in Central Europe than the peculiarities of the historical development of Central Asia," explained Rumer.
EU special representative for Central Asia Pierre Morel admitted that, like the United States, European assessment of Central Asia was delayed and there was a "belated understanding of what is now going on over there".
With Kazakhzstan taking an active role in international foreign relations and with Turkmenistan having huge gas and oil reserves, for instance, this region of more than 80 million people looks ready to deal with the rest of the world.
"There was an opportunity then for European countries to build closer relations with the region but they missed that chance. Nobody cared for Central Asia at the time when they were ready to build a partnership," said Morel, who added that a long-term assessment of the situation is needed.
But Morel explained that Europe has not totally ignored the region, citing direct investments, poverty alleviation programmes, and technical assistance in the last 15 years, albeit on a limited basis.
Morel cautions the EU, which is now looking at a renewed partnership, from approaching the region with a one-size-fits-all approach. "This will go against the region's goal to be themselves and to affirm their own identities. We've to answer to respect these aspirations and adopt a specific approach for each country," said Morel, adding that about 750 million euros (1.1 billion U.S. dollars) have already been earmarked for the region from 2007 to 2013.
Russia partly contributed to the region's rise and independence, Trenin says. "By trying to wriggle out of the shell of the then Soviet Union, Russia's policy towards Central Asia was predominantly that of abandonment. The Russians believed that the sooner they deal with the burden of the former empire, the sooner they will be able to march into Europe or the West," he said.
But, continued Trenin, this policy took a turn somewhere between 2003 and 2005 when Russia "essentially decoupled itself from the west and started its own trajectory as a self-reliant great power".
Being a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an intergovernmental mutual-security body comprising Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Russian government further asserted itself against the United States when the body released a statement in 2005 "denouncing U.S. military presence in the region". The last U.S. air force base in Uzbekistan, set up soon after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in New York, closed in November 2005.
Defending the U.S. position, Rumer said that there was never a time when Washington desired to expand its military presence in the region and become a dominant power. "If you look at the first major statement from the U.S. since the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was a very explicit rejection of the raw geopolitical approach in the region," he pointed out.
Rumer, however, noted that the United States remains unclear about the kind of partnership it wants to pursue with Central Asia. "We're in a state of strategic flux in a sense because of the 'end of administration' fatigue and the issues have been overshadowed by more important concerns. We're back to square one," he said.
With Russia's resurgence and aggressive dealings with Central Asia, as well as China's huge presence in the region, all eyes are on how Central Asian "states in construction" will position themselves in the coming years.
Said Morel: "Events in the region are not a revival of the past, and outside powers must treat the region with a mixture of competition and cooperation." (END/IPSAP/LLC/JS/130208)
