By Joshua Kucera, on 24 Jul 2013, Briefing
Photo: Cargo plane refuels at Manas International Airport, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (U.S. Air Force photo).
On June 26, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev formally signed a law “annulling” the country's agreement with the U.S. to host an air base in his country. The true significance of the law is unclear, and it could be a bargaining ploy to gain more favorable terms for a new agreement on the base, which has been the United States’ most conspicuous presence in Central Asia since being established shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Regardless, the passage of the law has highlighted how U.S. interest in Central Asia is destined to diminish as the U.S. extracts itself from Afghanistan. In the short term, U.S. interest in Central Asia will remain keen. As the Pentagon pulls out its forces and equipment from Afghanistan,
it is setting up transit agreements with neighboring states to allow materiel to be transported across their territory back home. While the U.S. already has such agreements for cargo going into Afghanistan—the so-called Northern Distribution Network (NDN)—there are unique wrinkles with respect to cargo going out, requiring a new burst of U.S. diplomatic effort in Central Asia.
That will include efforts to prolong the presence of the U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan, formally called the Transit Center at Manas. Its primary mission is to host and process U.S. and NATO forces heading into and out of Afghanistan, and as such it will play a vital role in the pullout. U.S. officials are likely to lobby Kyrgyzstan hard to allow the base to stay, if only for a short time, past the expiration of the current agreement in July 2014.
In the longer term, however, Central Asia seems fated to decline in importance for the U.S. For years, U.S. government officials have described their policy in Central Asia as based on three pillars: energy, security and democracy. In each of those areas, however, it is becoming clear that, in the long run, Central Asia has little to offer the U.S.
Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, and especially since the U.S. refocused its attention there toward the end of the past decade, security has dominated U.S. relations with Central Asia. In addition to Manas, the U.S. maintained another air base in Uzbekistan until being kicked out in 2005. Keeping the NDN running smoothly has dominated U.S. regional diplomacy for the past few years. And the amount of aid to the region's militaries and other security forces has dramatically increased over the past decade.
But with the pullout from Afghanistan underway, it's not clear what security interest the U.S. will have in Central Asia after the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan concludes at the end of 2014. The circumstances that originally brought the U.S. to the region—a spectacular but in many ways lucky attack organized by a terrorist group temporarily based in Afghanistan—seems unlikely to be repeated. NATO membership for Central Asian countries is not in the cards, and efforts to build up military units to participate in U.S.-led military coalitions or United Nations peacekeeping efforts have been consistently frustrated.
Relatedly, the second pillar of U.S. policy in the region—energy—has declined in significance to the U.S. Since leading the construction in the late-1990s of oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea to Europe, the U.S. has had very little success in the region's pipeline politics. In fact, the most significant development in the regional energy picture has been the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China, and U.S. hopes that Turkmenistan would consent to a gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea to Europe have faded. Meanwhile, the estimates of the region's overall petroleum resources have declined from the optimistic projections of the 1990s. While the State Department had a special envoy for Eurasian energy for several years, when the last envoy left the position last year, it was left unfilled.
Finally, efforts by the U.S. as well as other countries to promote democracy and human rights in the region have failed. When Central Asian countries became independent in 1991, the hope was that they would join the political and geopolitical West. But two decades later autocrats are as entrenched as ever. The view of the region as “in transition” has begun to fade, as scholars and policymakers increasingly accept that the politics of the region are what they are and some Western democracy-promotion organizations quietly scale back their efforts.
As 2014 approaches, the U.S. has developed a new strategy for Central Asia, called the New Silk Road Initiative. The idea is that promoting regional and intercontinental trade through the region around Afghanistan will bring stability and prosperity. The policy— centered on transforming a violent, mountainous country with no roads into a transportation and trade hub—would be a long shot even with a huge effort. But two years after the policy was rolled out, it's not clear what has actually been done to implement it; the “initiative” seems to be little more than a talking point, a rhetorical fig leaf to make it appear that the U.S. is not abandoning the region after 2014.
One element that all of these policies have had in common is that they attempted, implicitly, to reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. In the 1990s, as Russia struggled with its internal problems, Central Asia seemed geopolitically ripe for the picking. But now a resurgent Russia has roared back and has been re-establishing its hold on the region, and correspondingly weakening the U.S. hand there. Indeed, Russian promises to help build a hydroelectric plant in Kyrgyzstan, as well as to forgive $500 million in debt, appeared to play a role in the Kyrgyz parliament's overwhelming 91-5 vote to pass the law annulling the Manas agreement. Meanwhile, China has been aggressively increasing its economic presence in Central Asia, eager both to develop the region’s resources and to preclude its use as a rear base for Uighur separatists. In that context, and without a compelling rationale for involvement, we may in the future see 2014 as the twilight of U.S. involvement in Central Asia.
Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist specializing in Central Asia and the Caucasus. He blogs at the Bug Pit. You can follow him on twitter at @joshuakucera.
Photo: Cargo plane refuels at Manas International Airport, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (U.S. Air Force photo).
Read more: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13113/as-afghanistan-war-draws-down-u-s-interest-in-central-asia-fades
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