Foreign Correspondence

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Good analysis: The bar of democracy for Central Asia

Excerpts:

The main problem with the US policy toward Central Asia is that it emanates out of malignant intentions. Central Asia's strategic importance for Washington would in essence seem to lie (apart from the region's energy reserves) in the region's potential to lend itself as a geopolitical pressure point against Russia and China. Create a handful of Shakashvilis and Yushchenkos, let the noisy little fellows loose on the borders of Xinjiang and the Caspian basin, and sit back and watch the fun - if they are attired in "moderately enlightened" Islamic gowns and skull caps, so much the better. This seems to be the quintessence of the United States' Central Asia policy.

Thus the various Western outfits on the ground in the Central Asian region - be it the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or the sundry so-called non-governmental organizations - could not substantially infiltrate the "civil society" in these countries to anywhere near the pervasive extent they could in the favorable climes available in Tbilisi or Kiev. (In fact, after the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, Uzbekistan promptly asked the Soros Foundation to pack up and leave Tashkent.) Kyrgyzstan is perhaps a solitary exception. But it is highly doubtful whether even in Bishkek the US can mobilize its foot soldiers with such alacrity as in Tbilisi and Kiev. Significantly, Kyrghyz President Askar Akayev has been lately in the forefront of Central Asian countries calling for vigilance against US-sponsored subversion of the "civil society", as in Ukraine and Georgia. The pro-government Kyrgyzstan Slovo newspaper commented on the Ukraine events: "The big players in world politics are showing their true colors - the usual diplomatic speeches about non-interference in the affairs of a sovereign state have been abandoned." The presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took an open stance against the US-engineered developments in Georgia and Ukraine.

The very real danger of the infiltration of ‘civil society’ is the reason I believe Putin had no choice but to stop the election process for regional governors. To not do so would leave Russia vulnerable to disintegration through infiltration.

In fact Putin did not make any marked moves against Russian democracy until he was forced at the approximate time of the arrest of Khordorkosky.

The U.S./Khodorkoysky incident was in reality an invasion attempt by the United States to gain control of Russia’s energy reserves.
#msg-4661342

-Am

The bar of democracy for Central Asia
By M K Bhadrakumar

December 11, 2004

It can sometimes happen that on the sidelines of an event that might otherwise be merely an asterisk of history, the veil lifts somewhat to reveal the possibilities of something greater. The ceremony in Kabul on December 7 for the swearing-in of Hamid Karzai as the elected head of state of Afghanistan was one such event.

Apart from US Vice President Dick Cheney, the presidents of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan also attended the ceremony heralding the advent of democracy in the Hindu Kush. Thereby, in a noteworthy way, the Central Asian leaders quietly indicated that, despite the manifest deficiencies of the Afghan presidential election of October 9, they accepted the electoral verdict - as it was illogical that any outside power could unilaterally set the bar of democracy for such rugged regions as Afghanistan (or Pakistan).

Equally so, the presence of the two Central Asian heads of state - and of the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and India - in Kabul underlined the primacy attached to regional stability by these "local" players. Clearly, they signaled that this was not the time to quibble over the anemic standards of democracy. For them, regional security and stability were the first priority. If the ceremony in Kabul was embellished as a fine hour of neo-conservative triumphalism, they barely noticed it.

These salients assume importance in the backdrop of the current happenings in Ukraine, now that sustained propaganda has begun about the democracy "deficit" in the Central Asian region. Indeed, in the coming three-month period, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan are heading for parliamentary elections. Like the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia last December or the "Orange Revolution" currently being played out in Ukraine, can there be a revolution - let us say, an "Oil Revolution" - in the Central Asian steppes? Seems unlikely, for three good reasons.

First, the Central Asian leaderships are vastly different from Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia or Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine. Both Shevardnadze and Kuchma had pursued an overtly pro-Western course through the better part of their reign. They were past masters in calibrating their antipathy toward Moscow - to the utter delight of the West. In the process, they willingly provided a window of opportunity for the United States substantially to penetrate the "civil society" in their countries. Their fatal mistake, despite their formidable track record in power politics, was that they put all their eggs in the American basket. So, at a late stage when they began to veer toward Moscow in the overall interest of stabilizing their economies, they paid a price for their inconstancy. If Shevardnadze's fall came from a Greek tragedy, Kuchma steps neatly out of a morality play.

Russia, on its part, was inveigled into countless petty squabbles with Shevardnadze and Kuchma that were endemic to old relationships gone sour. It was only over the last two to three years that Russia began to take a "holistic" view of the strategic challenges posed in the long term by the pro-American swing along its soft underbelly, in Tbilisi and Kiev. And, to quote the People's Daily, Moscow is paying the price precisely for its "laissez-faire attitude toward neo-interventionism".

The Central Asian leaderships, on the other hand, were never "pro-Western" in the Shevardnadze-Kuchma sense. Of course, they too eagerly sought cooperative relationships with the West. That was important for them for the gradual transformation of their transition economies and for a judicious diversification of their external relations - preparing the ground for their inevitable graduation towards full-throated globalization.

But the Central Asian leaderships, unlike Shevardnadze or Kuchma, did not regard their lurch toward the West in zero-sum terms - at the cost of rupturing their closely intertwined relations with Russia. Curiously, their "grievance" about Russia through the Boris Yeltsin years was that Moscow was adopting an attitude of benign neglect toward them. Often enough, they resorted to overt displays of their "grievance" by criticizing Moscow's lackadaisical approach to the region's issues of security and stability. Paradoxically, even in their drive toward the West, they often thought they were only emulating the Yeltsin-Kozyrev team in Moscow in the early and mid-1990s.

Thus, when Russian policy began to focus on the region with purpose in the late 1990s, the Central Asian leaderships welcomed this "homecoming". They keenly sought a deeper engagement by Russia in the affairs of their region. They instinctively warmed up to the coherent Central Asian policy in Moscow after President Vladimir Putin's consolidation of power.

Unlike Shevardnadze and Kuchma, the Central Asian leaderships' political engagement with the West had been only skin-deep. The US had only itself to blame for wrongly estimating that the Central Asian leaderships were queuing up to climb aboard the US regional strategy boat. It must be remembered that it was four years ago, two-and-a-half years prior to the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, that Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev summed up the Central Asian understanding of the equation while addressing the Eurasian Economic Summit in April 2000: "Here in Central Asia, we are not going to pull up our trousers and run after the United States begging for democracy. We will accept no criticism of the policy we are implementing, no interference in our domestic affairs under the pretext of democracy."

Thus the various Western outfits on the ground in the Central Asian region - be it the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or the sundry so-called non-governmental organizations - could not substantially infiltrate the "civil society" in these countries to anywhere near the pervasive extent they could in the favorable climes available in Tbilisi or Kiev. (In fact, after the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, Uzbekistan promptly asked the Soros Foundation to pack up and leave Tashkent.) Kyrgyzstan is perhaps a solitary exception. But it is highly doubtful whether even in Bishkek the US can mobilize its foot soldiers with such alacrity as in Tbilisi and Kiev. Significantly, Kyrghyz President Askar Akayev has been lately in the forefront of Central Asian countries calling for vigilance against US-sponsored subversion of the "civil society", as in Ukraine and Georgia. The pro-government Kyrgyzstan Slovo newspaper commented on the Ukraine events: "The big players in world politics are showing their true colors - the usual diplomatic speeches about non-interference in the affairs of a sovereign state have been abandoned." The presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took an open stance against the US-engineered developments in Georgia and Ukraine.

Second, the so-called "multi-vector approach" in the foreign-policy course pursued by the Central Asian leaderships has led to the presence of several non-Western collective regional bodies such as Central Asia Cooperation Organization, Common Economic Space, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). CSTO and SCO have just been accorded observer status by the United Nations. Again, Russia has an established military presence in the region on the basis of formal treaties and governmental protocols.

On the other hand, the existential choice being posed to Ukraine and Georgia currently is whether or not they would like to become members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The point is, thanks to the pro-Western course plowed by Shevardnadze and Kuchma, these countries went far out on a limb. In comparison, the Central Asian countries have secured much more strategic space to maneuver if they are unduly pressured from any quarter.

Third and most important, there is an unspoken, unfathomable civilizational angle. Both Georgia and Ukraine are part of the Christian world. But the negative impact of the perceived "crusade" by the administration of US President George W Bush against Islam has left its mark on the Central Asian region - extensively in the popular perceptions and even among the elite and intelligentsia. It will be a formidable challenge for the US embassies in the Central Asian capitals to recruit volunteers in the near future for unfolding the banner of revolution for the sake of Western values.

Moreover, political contracts in the Central Asian countries stem from a complex mix of kinship forged in the family from time immemorial that has remained largely intact through 70 years of Soviet rule.

The Western fallacy to gain strategic control of the Central Asian region by injecting an anti-Russia (and anti-China) virus into their mindset has clearly not worked. Nor has the sustained attempt to subvert established political power by developing counterpoints in the political elite and the government. Therefore, there is a high degree of frustration in Washington about the curious ways of Central Asian societies. This is understandable. Meanwhile, there is growing impatience that Russia and China are expanding their influence in the region. Yet the prospects of success will be dim for bullying these countries in the near future into the corridors of Western geostrategy simply on the Georgian-Ukrainian pattern.

The international community cannot underestimate the depth of the primacy attached by the Central Asian countries to stability and an orderly transformation of their life within traditional modes of attitude and behavior. The Tajik civil war, Afghanistan's collapse as a failed state, and the discontent of globalization that Russia went through - the Central Asian elites have been mute witnesses to all that. Therefore, Washington must realistically adjust the bar of democracy for Central Asia - as it gracefully did for neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Central Asian countries have a point in pondering why the US adopts "double standards". Arguably, they might have condoned US intrusiveness, if the US were a particularly active participant on their economic landscape - as China and Russia increasingly aspire to become. All that the US is doing, in Central Asian perception, is ceaselessly ridiculing Chinese or Russian policy towards the region, but without offering an alternative constructive engagement of its own. Why not conceive a Marshall Plan for Central Asia on a scale that Russia or China cannot possibly compete with? If there is difficulty to measure up to such a vision, the US could set a more modest target - that it will earmark as an annual grant to Central Asia an amount equivalent to what its military would be spending on any single day in Iraq.

US interest in Central Asian economies is paramountly restricted to the "strategic" sectors such as oil, gas, gold or other rare earths. There is no interest to build up Central Asia's manufacturing base or its dilapidated industries and infrastructure or to assist these countries to create employment opportunities for their trained manpower. Central Asia's disdain toward US moralizing is thus largely well founded. The fact remains that without following the International Monetary Fund prescriptions about market reforms, the Central Asian economies have begun registering appreciable progress lately.

The main problem with the US policy toward Central Asia is that it emanates out of malignant intentions. Central Asia's strategic importance for Washington would in essence seem to lie (apart from the region's energy reserves) in the region's potential to lend itself as a geopolitical pressure point against Russia and China. Create a handful of Shakashvilis and Yushchenkos, let the noisy little fellows loose on the borders of Xinjiang and the Caspian basin, and sit back and watch the fun - if they are attired in "moderately enlightened" Islamic gowns and skull caps, so much the better. This seems to be the quintessence of the United States' Central Asia policy.

M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian career diplomat who has served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and Moscow.

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