[Reader-list] ** Sino-Russia vs. Euro-America in Central Asia? **
Sarang Shidore
sarang_shidore at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 3 16:32:52 IST 2009
"Thus, the million-dollar question is whether the current unrest is a mere
distant echo or is tantamount to a replay of the US efforts to fund and equip
mujahideen fighters and to promote militant Islam as a geopolitical tool in
Soviet Central Asia in the 1980s. That is why Biden's remarks harking back to
Reaganism will be taken very seriously in Moscow and Beijing."
"In effect, Beijing has signaled its willingness to
underwrite the entire Moldovan economy which has an estimated gross domestic
product of $8 billion and a paltry budget of $1.5 billion.The Chinese move is undoubtedly a geopolitical positioning."
This
is an intriguing thesis from MK Bhadrakumar. Is the old nefarious
Washington-Riyadh nexus at it again; this time fanning new insurgencies
in Xinjiang and the central Asian republics in a repeat if the 1980's
buildup of an "Islamist International" in Afghanistan? Will this be in
turn countered by another slew of repressive and violent behaviour from
the authoritarian capitals of Moscow and Beijing, and the supposedly
democratic capitals of New Delhi and Islamabad? It sounds like a
continuation of the schizophrenic situation in "AfPak" - the Pakistani
army funded and armed massively from Washington, substantial elements
of which are aiding the Afghan so-called Taliban, yet at the same time,
the same combination is also supposedly fighting the "Taliban".
How
many of the conflicting threads of conflict are by design, how many by
accident, and how many by one component of a nation-state acting
differently from another? How useful is the nation-state paradigm
itself as we move into the future? As many "new paradigmers" have
argued for the past 20 years, should we pretty much discard
nation-states as primary units in the international system and replace
them with some other combinations of entities with shifting alliances -
energy lobbies, arms lobbies, climate change lobby, non-state
ideological groups, tribes, sub-nations, different components of a
common security apparatus (e.g. Pentagon vs. NATO, Pakistani army vs.
Pakistani army etc.)? How does one best analyze the evolving
international system?
Nevertheless, one thing is clear, we
must disabuse ourselves of any notions of good guys and bad guys in
this dirty and violent new world order. There is no country or set of
countries that has the moral high ground, no one who acts as the moral
arbitrer and guarantor of anything other than self-interest and a
willingness to use the most cynical means to further this
self-interest. We have indeed come very far from the attempt of Tito,
Nasser, and Nehru in the 1950's (howsoever feeble, haphazard, and
compromised it may have been) to forge some emblance of an
international order that balances self-interest and ethics...
Sarang
-----
China dips its toe in the Black Sea
By M K Bhadrakumar
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of
the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of
big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which
constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics.
It all began with United States Vice President Joseph Biden choosing a tour of
Ukraine and Georgia on July 20-23 to rebuke the Kremlin publicly for its
"19th-century notions of spheres of influence". Biden's tour of Russia's
troubled "near abroad" took place within a fortnight of US President Barack Obama's landmark visit to
Moscow to "reset" the US's relations with Russia.
Clearly, Biden's jaunt was choreographed as a forceful demonstration of the
Barack Obama administration's resolve to keep up the US's strategic engagement
of Eurasia - a rolling up of sleeves and gearing up for action after the
exchange of customary pleasantries by Obama with his Kremlin counterpart Dmitry
Medvedev. Plainly put, Biden's stark message was that the Obama administration
intends to robustly challenge Russia's claim as the predominant power in the
post-Soviet space.
Biden ruled out any "trade-offs" with the Kremlin or any form of "recognition"
of Russia's spheres of influence. He committed the Obama administration to
supporting Ukraine's status as an "integral part of Europe" and Ukraine's
Euro-Atlantic integration. Furthermore, in an interview with The Wall Street
Journal, Biden spoke of Russia's own dim future in stark, existential terms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promptly responded in an interview with
the Moscow-based Vesti news channel. He said, "I hope the administration of
President Obama will proceed from the agreements reached in Moscow. We believe
the attempts by some people from within the administration to pull all of us
back into the past, the way that Vice President Joe Biden, a well-known
politician, did it, are not normative."
Return to Reaganism
Lavrov added, "Biden's interview with the Wall Street Journal seemed to have
been copied from the speeches by leading officials of the George W Bush
administration." However, it is difficult to be dismissive of Biden as an
unauthentic voice. It was Biden who spoke of "resetting" the US's relations
with Russia. He did raise expectations in Moscow. And Obama's visit to Moscow
early in July has been widely interpreted as the formal commencement of the
"reset" process.
Now it transpires that the "reset" might take the US's policy towards Russia
back to the 1980s and towards president Ronald Reagan's triumphalist thesis
that Russia could not be a match for the US, given its deeply flawed economic
structure and demography and, therefore, the grater the pressure on the Russian
economy, the more conciliatory Moscow would be towards US pressure.
As Stratfor, a US think-tank with links to the security establishment, summed
up, the great game will be to "squeeze the Russians and let nature take its
course".
There is already some evidence of this coordinated Western approach toward
Russia in the European Union's "Eastern Partnership" project, unveiled in
Prague in May, the geographical scope of which consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine, and which aims at drawing these
post-Soviet states of "strategic importance" towards Brussels through a matrix
of economic assistance, liberalized trade and investment and visa regimes that
stop short of accession to the EU but effectively encourages them to loosen
their ties with Russia. Indeed, the EU thrust has already begun eroding
Russia's close ties with Belarus and Armenia.
An immediate challenge lies ahead for Moscow as the parliamentary election
results in Moldova have swept Europe's last ruling communist party from power
by pro-EU opposition parties. The US and the EU have kept up the pressure
tactic of April's abortive "Twitter revolution" in Moldova to force a regime
change that puts an end to the leadership of President Vladimir Voronin, who
has pro-Moscow leanings. The EU has made generous promises of economic
integration to Moldova and Moscow made a counter-offer in June of a US$500
million loan.
However, in a stunning development, China entered the fray this month and
signed an agreement to loan $1 billion to Moldova at a highly favorable 3%
interest rate over 15 years with a five-year grace period on interest payments.
The money will be channeled through Covec, China's construction leviathan, as
project exports in fields such as energy modernization, water systems,
treatment plants, agriculture and high-tech industries.
Curiously, China has offered that it is prepared to "guarantee financing for
all projects considered necessary and justified by the Moldovan side" over and
above the $1 billion loan. In effect, Beijing has signaled its willingness to
underwrite the entire Moldovan economy which has an estimated gross domestic
product of $8 billion and a paltry budget of $1.5 billion.
The Chinese move is undoubtedly a geopolitical positioning. In an interesting
tongue-in-cheek commentary recently, the People's Daily noted that "under the
[Barack] Obama administration, the meaning and use of 'cyber diplomacy' has
changed significantly ... US authorities ... stirred up trouble for Iran
through websites such as Twitter ... [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] said
that this is the essence of smart power, adding that this change requires the
US to broaden its concept of diplomacy".
Moldova is a country where China has historically been an observer rather than
a player. This is Beijing's first leap across Central Asia to the frayed
western edges of Eurasia. Why is Moldova becoming so terribly important?
Beijing will have calculated the immense geopolitical significance of Moldova's
integration by the West. It would then be a matter of time before Moldova was
inducted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), before the Black
Sea became a "NATO lake" and the alliance positioned itself in a virtually
unassailable position to march into the Caucasus and right into Central Asia on
China's borders.
What we may never quite know is the extent of coordination between Moscow and
Beijing. Both capitals have stressed lately of increased Sino-Russian
coordination in foreign policy. The joint statement issued after the visit by
the Chinese President Hu Jintao to Russia in June specifically expressed
Beijing's support for Moscow over the situation in the Caucasus. Clearly, a
high degree of coordination is becoming visible across the entire post-Soviet
space.
Islamists on the Silk Road
Thus, it is conceivable that Moscow would have sensitized Beijing about its
intention to set up a second military base in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, which is located
in close proximity to China's Xinjiang, and is a principal transit route for
Central Asian Islamist fighters based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There are definite signs of a revival of Islamist activities in Central Asia
and the North Caucasus. China is carefully watching its fallout on Xinjiang.
Though Western commentators take pains to characterize the renewed Islamist
thrust into Central Asia as an outcome of the Pakistani military operations
along the Pakistan-Afghan border areas which used to be sanctuaries for
militant groups, the jury is still out. Chinese experts have pointed out that
with the easing of cross-strait tensions in China's equations with Taiwan, the
scope for US meddling in China's affairs has drastically reduced and this, in
turn, has shifted US attention to China's western regions of Xinjiang and
Tibet.
There is much strategic ambiguity as to what is precipitating the fresh upswing
of Islamist activities in the broad swathe of land that constitutes the "soft
underbelly" of Russia and China. Within 48 hours of the outbreak of violence in
Xinjiang earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned
his Russian counterpart and Moscow issued a statement strongly supportive of
Beijing.
On July 10, a similar statement by the secretary general of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) followed, endorsing the steps taken by Beijing
"within the framework of law" to bring "calm and restore normal life" in
Xinjiang following clashes between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. The SCO
statement reiterated the resolve to "further deepen practical cooperation in
the filed of fighting against terrorism, separatism, extremism and
transnational organized crime for the sake of [safeguarding] regional security
and stability".
Again, China has underscored that the regional security of Central Asia and
South Asia is closely intertwined. Commenting on the SCO statement, the
People's Daily said it "demonstrated that the SCO member states understood well
that the situation in Xinjiang bears closely on that of the entire surrounding
region ... Some Central Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan also
fell victim to these evil forces ... The evil forces have also crossed the
border to spread violence and terrorism by setting up training camps. Links
have been discovered between these forces and the recent riot in Urumqi,
capital of Xinjiang. The fight against these evil forces will greatly benefit
all Central and South Asian countries as evidence has shown that the 'three
evil forces' are detrimental not only to Xinjiang but also to the whole
region."
Significantly, in another commentary, the People's Daily launched a blistering
attack on US policies in fanning unrest in Xinjiang. "To the Chinese people, it
is nothing new that the US tacitly or openly fans the winds of resentment
against China ... the US indiscriminately embraces all those forces hostile to
China ... Perhaps, it is a customary practice for the US to adopt the
double-standard when weighing its interests against others. Or, perhaps, it has
some ulterior motive behind to ensure its supreme position will not be
challenged or altered by splitting to weaken others ... Since the end of the
1980s, the US has never moderated its intention to stoke so-called 'China
issues' ... This time, in their efforts to fan feuding between Han and Uighur
Chinese by harboring and propping up separatist forces, the US is jumping out
again to be the third party that would, for the secret hope, benefit from the
tussle."
There is no need, therefore, to second-guess that China supported the Russian
initiative to call a quadrilateral regional security summit meeting in
Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Thursday, which was attended by the presidents of
Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Russian move poses a
geopolitical challenge to the US, which has been monopolizing
conflict-resolution in Afghanistan; keeping Russia out of the Hindu Kush;
attempting to splinter the SCO-driven Sino-Russian convergence over regional
security in Central Asia; stepping up diplomatic and political efforts to erode
Russia's ties with Central Asian states; and expanding its influence and
presence in Pakistan and steadily brining that country into the fold of NATO's
partnership program.
The tempo of the regional security summit in Dushanbe was set by Tajik
President Imomali Rakhmon when he told his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali
Zardari at a meeting on Wednesday that he expected to work closely with
Pakistan to prevent the rise of instability in Central Asia. "We do share
similar and close positions on these issues and our countries should have taken
coordinated actions aimed against this antagonistic phenomenon," Rakhmon said.
Conceivably, China will also use its influence on Pakistan to nudge it in the
direction of regional cooperation rather than passively subserve the US's
regional policies. Zardari's initial remarks at Dushanbe, though, have been
non-committal. He blandly responded to Rakhmon, "We will stand together against
the challenges of this century."
Moscow tabled as an agenda item for the Dushanbe summit a proposal for regional
cooperation that involves selling electricity from Tajikistan's Sangtudinskaya
hydroelectric power plant (in which Russia has invested $500 million and holds
a controlling 75% equity) to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ironically, the idea was
originally an American brainwave aimed at bolstering the US's "Great Central
Asia" strategy that hoped to draw the region out of the Russian and Chinese
orbit of influence.
Russia draws a Maginot Line
Equally, it is all but certain that while China is not a member of the
Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Beijing will draw
satisfaction that Moscow is building up the alliance's presence in Central Asia
as a counterweight to NATO. After the unrest in Xinjiang, Beijing has a direct
interest in the Russian idea of creating an anti-terrorist center in Kyrgyzstan
and advancing the CSTO's rapid-reaction force (Collective Operational Reaction
Forces) in Central Asia.
No doubt, the outcome of the CSTO summit meeting in the resort town of
Cholpon-Ata in Kyrgyzstan this weekend will be keenly watched in Beijing. On
the eve of this summit, an aide to the Russian president revealed in Moscow on
Wednesday that an agreement had been reached in principle about the opening of
a Russian base in Osh under the CSTO banner. A Kremlin source also told the
Russian newspaper Gazeta that the summit meeting would discuss the situation in
Afghanistan.
Viewed against this backdrop, the joint Russian-Chinese military exercises,
dubbed "Peace Mission 2009", held on July 22-26, cannot be regarded as a mere
repetition of two such exercises held in 2005 and 2007. True, all three
exercises have been held under the framework of the SCO, but this year's has
been in actuality a bilateral Russian-Chinese effort with other member states
represented as "observers".
Major General Qian Lihua of the Chinese Ministry of Defense claimed that the
drills were of "profound significance" when the forces of terrorism, separatism
and extremism are "rampant nowadays". He said that apart from strengthening
regional security and stability, the exercises also symbolized the "high-level
strategic and mutual trust" between China and Russia and became a "powerful
move" for the two countries to strengthen "pragmatic cooperation" in the field
of defense.
Taking stock of the military-to-military cooperation between China and Russia,
Qian said: First, high-level exchanges have become frequent. It has
become a routine for the two nations to arrange an exchange between defense
ministers or chiefs of general staff at least once a year. Frequent exchanges
between defense departments and high-level military visits have effectively
driven the smooth development of bilateral military relations between China and
Russia.
Second, strategic consultation has become a routine mechanism. Since 1997, the
militaries of China and Russia established a mechanism to hold annual
consultations between the two sides' leadership at the level of deputy chief of
the general staff. So far, 12 rounds of strategic consultation have been held,
which has promoted mutual trust and friendly cooperation.
Third, exchanges between professional groups and teams have become pragmatic.
The militaries of China and Russia have conducted pragmatic exchanges and
cooperation in many forces and corps including communications, engineering and
mapping. Qian anticipated that with the Peace Mission 2009,
the "strategic mutual trust and the pragmatic cooperation between the two
militaries will enter a new stage".
China's concern is palpable in the face of the rise in militant Islamist
activities in Central Asia. "The terrorists are quietly trying to take cover in
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ... They've lived in Afghanistan for a
long time," as Tajik Interior Minister Abdurakhim Kakhkharov put it recently.
The Rasht Valley in the Pamir Mountains where the terrorists are gathering is
only "trekking distance" from the Afghan (and Chinese) border.
There are reports of famous Tajik Islamist commander Mullo Abdullo having
returned from Afghanistan and Pakistan with his followers after nearly a decade
and that he is trying to recruit militants in the Rasht Valley. From various
accounts, militant elements from Russia's North Caucasus, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang are linking up.
To quote the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, "The Afghanistan situation is
affecting not only Kyrgyzstan but Central Asia as a whole. People have come
here to carry out acts of terror." Bakiyev added ominously, "There are still
forces out there that we do not know about, who are here and who are ready to
indulge in illegal activities. They have one aim: to destabilize Central Asia."
Yet, NATO has pleaded helplessness in stopping the movement of the Taliban in
the direction of the Tajik border.
Thus, the million-dollar question is whether the current unrest is a mere
distant echo or is tantamount to a replay of the US efforts to fund and equip
mujahideen fighters and to promote militant Islam as a geopolitical tool in
Soviet Central Asia in the 1980s. That is why Biden's remarks harking back to
Reaganism will be taken very seriously in Moscow and Beijing - that the Russian
economy is a wreck, Russia's geography is ridden with a range of weaknesses
that are withering, and the US should not underestimate its hand. China's bold
move in Moldova shows that it may have begun regarding the post-Soviet space as
its own "near abroad".
End of Chimerica?
The point is, there is a hefty economic angle to the maneuverings. The US's
Eurasia energy envoy Richard Morningstar bluntly admitted at a Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing two weeks ago that China's success in gaining
access to Caspian and Central Asia energy reserves threatened the US's
geopolitical interests.
Interestingly, the renewed spurt of unrest in Central Asia (including Xinjiang)
- which Russian intelligence has been anticipating since end-2008 - is taking
place along the route of the 7,000-kilometer gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and leading to Xinjiang that is expected
to be commissioned by year-end. No doubt, the pipeline signifies a historic
turning point in the geopolitics of the entire region.
Well-known economic historian Niall Ferguson has compared "Chimerica" - the
thesis that China and America have effectively fused to become a single economy
- to "a marriage on the rocks".
Ferguson anticipates, in the context of the Group of Two "strategic dialogue"
between the US and China that took place in Washington this week, that a point
will be reached when instead of continuing with the "unhappy marriage", China
may decide to "got it alone ... to buy them global power in their own right".
Factors influencing this are US saving rates soaring upwards and US imports
from China significantly reducing; the Chinese feeling they have had enough of
US government bonds, with the specter of the price of US Treasury bonds falling
or the purchasing power of the dollar falling (or both) - either way China
stands to lose.
Ferguson sees that China may have already begun doing this and its campaign to
buy foreign assets (such as in Moldova), its tentative movement toward a
consumer society, its growing embrace of the special drawing rights idea of a
basket of currencies to replace the dollar - all these are signs of an
impending "Chinmerica divorce". But what does it entail for world politics?
Ferguson says: Imagine a new Cold War but one in which the two
superpowers are economically the same size, which was never true in the old
Cold War because the USSR was always a lot poorer than the USA.
Or, if you prefer an older analogy, imagine a rerun of the Anglo-German
antagonism of the early 1900s, with America in the role of Britain and China in
the role of imperial Germany. This is a better analogy because it captures the
fact that a high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the
growth of strategic rivalry and ultimately conflict.
We are a long way from outright warfare, of course. These things build quite
slowly. But the geopolitical tectonic plates are moving, and moving fast. The
end of Chimerica is causing India and the United States to become more closely
aligned. It's creating an opportunity for Moscow to forge closer links to
Beijing.Surely, a major difference will be that while this
month's solar eclipse is not expected to be surpassed until June 2132, there
are no such certainties in the shifty world of big-power politics, especially
the tricky triangular relationship involving the US, Russia and China. But one
thing is certain. Like in the case of the solar eclipse that was gazed at from
all conceivable corners of the Earth, the shift in the geopolitical tectonic
plates and the resultant realignment of the co-relation of forces across
Eurasia will be watched with keen interest by countries as diverse as India and
Brazil, Iran and North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, Syria and Sudan.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service.
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