The attacks of 9/11 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan did not start the new "Great Game" in Central Asia. Local governments had already grasped the Islamist threat, as well as Russia's neo-imperial longings to dominate the region. Central Asia's great energy stakes, meanwhile, had already determined American resistance to Moscow's policy.
However those events undoubtedly imparted a pronounced military aspect to the great power rivalry for political influence and energy access there. Since 2001, the U.S., Russia, Germany, France and India have all acquired local military bases, and their uses or potential missions have grown in importance (although France's presence at Dushanbe airport and Germany's base at Termez in Uzbekistan remain small operations). China, too, has sought bases in Central Asia, expressing interest in a Kyrgyzstan base in 2005, soon after that country's "tulip Revolution," with the clear intention of forestalling any further upheavals. And when Uzbekistan evicted the U.S. from its base at Karshi Khanabad in July 2005, China sought that base as well, although the move was ultimately blocked by Russia.[1]
The U.S. military presence in Central Asia could conceivably grow further, due to the Obama administration's declared emphasis upon winning the war in Afghanistan. The redoubled effort there could be used to justify moving U.S. supply lines from Pakistan, where they are exposed to great risk from terrorists and their supporters, to other locations in Central Asia.[2] Already, Kazakhstan has recently allowed the U.S. to use the aerodrome at Almaty for emergency landings of coalition air forces.[3] And Uzbekistan also granted the U.S. limited use of the base at Termez, which it had allowed Germany to use as a "friendship bridge" from which to deliver non-military supplies to Afghanistan. Now, "Individual Americans attached to the NATO International Staff can use the German air-bridge from Termez to Afghanistan on a case-by-case basis."[4] However, even an expanded U.S. military presence in Central Asia would not change the fact that the U.S. and Franco-German military presence there is confined to prosecuting the war in Afghanistan.
Other cases of foreign military bases reflect different considerations. India's base at Ayni in Tajikistan, for instance, owes more to the Indo-Pakistani rivalry than to anything else. While India formally eschews offensive military projections to intervene unilaterally in other countries, it had sought an air base in Central Asia -- to defend its flights and to gain a capability to threaten Pakistan from the rear -- after Pakistan closed its air space to Indian commercial flights to Europe in 2002. While little is known about the air base (India didn't announce that it had been operational until 2006), it could conceivably be used for operations against Central Asian insurgents, Pakistan, or to support a friendly government.[5]
The base may not be India's last in the region, or remain small. Indeed, it could become the spearhead of a deepening Indian involvement in Central Asian defense, as India also hopes to improve military logistics in Iran, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.[6] India's ties with Tajikistan led to joint Tajik-Indian military exercises in 2003, involving the air, airborne, and ground forces of both sides.[7] Tajikistan has subsequently appealed to India to deepen existing military ties and provide arms sales since its forces lack modern, effective weapons and equipment.[8]
Today, this base is surprisingly collocated with a Russian air base at Farkhor, Tajikistan -- surprisingly, because Russian officials have frequently and publicly opposed any foreign bases in Central Asia.[9] Specifically, in 2004, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Trubnikov, now ambassador to India, stated publicly that Russia opposes any foreign bases in Central Asia, making specific mention of Chinese bases. Subsequent official statements reiterated this point.[10]
Russia's Military Presence
Despite these modest inroads, however, the most far-reaching and comprehensive defense presence in the region remains Russia's, whose Central Asian policy is openly and frankly neocolonialist. Indeed, Putin's tenure in office since 2000 has been accompanied by a heightened interest and attention to ensuring that Central Asia remains firmly under exclusive Russian influence.[11] Even if one argues that Russia's primary goal is to stabilize the status quo, Russia approaches that objective in ways reflecting its fundamental denial of Central Asian governments' full sovereignty. Russia's "tutelage" aims not just to forestall all significant change but also to ensure that local political change does not then trigger a crisis within Russia. In other words, its regional policies are in some respects a domestic stability operation. Indeed, Russian strategists openly assume that no other power will take responsibility for providing Central Asian security.[12]
By 2003, Russia had already claimed the right to intervene in Central Asia against a threat to existing regimes there or to its vital interests as it alone defined them.[13] Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov subsequently reiterated that Russia regarded any attempt to disturb the "existing constitutional order" there as its greatest security threat.[14] Despite Russia's public support for America's bases and military presence in Central Asia, immediately after these bases were built, Moscow announced that it regarded them as temporary ones that would be removed after the end of hostilities in Afghanistan. Indeed, by 2003, Ivanov was reportedly opposing the continuation of those bases.[15] Moscow also lost no time in persuading Kyrgyzstan to grant it a different base at Kant. Since 2002, it has steadily reinforced that base and sought and obtained others, most recently the base at Giesar in Tajikistan.[16]
Russia cheered the Uzbek eviction of the U.S. from Karshi Khanabad in 2005, and then promptly negotiated a new accord with Uzbekistan, obtaining access to a base at Navoi in December 2006. While that agreement indicates that both Tashkent's and Moscow's anxieties transcend terrorist attacks, it also registered Uzbekistan's wariness of Russian intentions. Compared to an earlier, November 2005 bilateral treaty between them, which contained language enabling Moscow to aid Uzbekistan's government, the new agreement limited such aid, as well as Russian access to Navoi, to the case of emergencies or what some reports called "force majeure" contingencies.
It's likely that Russia wanted more access to the base than this, as Uzbekistan will probably become the regional headquarters for a unified air defense for Russia and several Central Asian governments, as it was in Soviet times. This regional system will become a component of the CIS Unified Air Defense system based upon pre-existing Soviet facilities and structures. Thus the deal represented a "reanimation" of the Soviet defense structure. Meanwhile Uzbek SU-27 and MiG-29s will be posted there as a regular peacetime deployment.
Moscow's need for the base, with its air defense capability, was evidently driven by Russia's interests in Uzbek uranium production and enrichment, which now take place at the Navoi Mining and Smelting plant. The new capability will allegedly help protect those works from air attacks -- the Taliban had its own aircraft and combat pilots -- and international terrorism.[17] Nevertheless, the idea that Afghan-based terrorists could launch air strikes in Central Asia anytime soon is far-fetched, and neither Moscow nor Tashkent is sending forces to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Which suggests that Moscow and Tashkent had other enemies in mind.
Access to Navoi enhances Russia's capability to project air and air defense assets in and to Central Asia against potential domestic insurgencies, a reflection of both the considerable Russo-Chinese anxiety over their inability to intervene in Kyrgyzstan in 2005's Tulip Revolution, and the subsequent efforts both made to achieve that power projection capability. The Navoi base is also part of Russia's broader efforts to encompass all of Central Asia in a single defense organization whose aims are both counterrevolutionary and anti-democratic. Moscow is clearly the gendarme here, on the lookout against any domestic unrest lest another "color revolution" break out, a contingency openly discussed by Russian planners with regards to Central Asia.
Some Russian military analysts consider that if Kyrgyzstan were overtaken by a complete political collapse, Russia and Kazakhstan could impose some kind of protectorate until stability could be reestablished and new elections held. In this scenario, the United States would allow Moscow to take action in Kyrgyzstan, because most of its own resources would already be mobilized in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and probably in Iran and Syria. Russian help would then be welcomed, because much preferred to that of China. Indeed, if Russia did not dare to put itself forward as a stabilizing force, China might use Uyghur separatism to do so.[18]
A second objective relates to Russian fears of U.S. air strikes originating from Central Asia or the Indian Ocean, including carrier-based air strikes against Iran. The Russian military clearly regards the United States and NATO's forces as its main enemy and largely expects any first strike to come from long-range air strikes. Since 1991, much of Russia's air defenses and early warning systems were disrupted to the point where Russia was actually often "blind" to potential attacks. To remedy this situation, "reanimating" the old Soviet air defense system is crucial, as is exclusion of U.S. forces from Central Asia. Furthermore, Russia is building an integrated land, sea and air force to project power throughout the Caspian basin, while excluding all foreign rivals by expanding existing bases or building new ones. A unified air defense is critical to the protection of all those forces. [19] Russia now has bases in 12 of the former Soviet republics.[20] This process of building an integrated power projection force possesses multiple dimensions.
Russia also champions its Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as an umbrella defense pact of all Central Asian states (except Turkmenistan) to defend against terrorism and insurgency, not to say invasion. Russia supplies the members with subsidized weapons, attempting thereby to restore the "All-Union" defense industry system. Russia also leads the CSTO in conducting exercises, building headquarters and staffs, planning for forces to man them, and in securing bases for itself in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. By 2006, Russia had begun building its integrated land, sea and air force that could be stationed in the Caspian Sea and at local airbases, while also developing a rapid power projection capability.
Efforts to integrate the region into a Russian-dominated defense architecture include a proposed Caspian naval force (CASFOR) to exclude non-littoral states, and attempts to tie local defense industries to its own. Moscow also intends to preclude Central Asian states' ability to defend themselves without -- or against -- Russia, to collaborate on their own in regional security organizations, or to be attached in some way to NATO and is utilizing its organizational resources particularly within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the CSTO, to advance its aims.[21]
Next page: Regional security arrangements. . .
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