Eurasia A New World Order?

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What Next?
Current U.S. policy in the new Eurasia puts democracy promotion at the top of the list.¹² In the wake of three revolutions—Rose, Orange and Tulip—prospects for consolidation and expansion of democratic gains in the region hinge more on slow, evolutionary development of institutions of civil society, free press, independent judiciary, etc., rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, consolidation of revolutionary gains through evolutionary change requires major resources, which throughout most of the region can only come from the outside at a time when U.S. attention and resources are drawn elsewhere—Iraq, North Korea, Iran, the greater Middle East.

To complicate matters even more, U.S. promotion of democracy is at odds with the interests and policies of two other major powers—Russia and China. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the regional forum where China and Russia play the leading role and which includes four out of five Central Asian states,¹³ as well as Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia as observers, has appealed to the United States to clarify its timetable for withdrawing from Central Asia.

	Armenian separatists seized the town of Lachin in Nagorno-Karabakh, (pictured), during their war for independence from Azerbaijan.

The SCO, initially established in 1996 by Russia and China, as well as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to manage post-Soviet borders in Central Asia, has grown into an important regional forum where the major powers—Russia and China—sit at the same table with their junior regional partners. Its capacity for action—to provide resources for economic development or as a regional security organization—are still very limited at best. However, for the countries of Central Asia especially, long cut off from the outside world and still lacking a clear framework for integration in the international arena, the SCO is an important destination. Of all the major actors in Central Asia the United States is the only one without a seat at the SCO either as a member or as an observer. Moreover, SCO member states have made it quite clear with their appeal for U.S. withdrawal that the United States is not welcome in the organization, which has long been used by Russia, as well as China, as a counter to U.S. influence in Central Asia.

Still, the United States has important cards in its hands. Its presence in Afghanistan is not lost on China, Russia, Iran or any other country whose security interests would be badly damaged by premature U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or failure to complete the mission there. Neither Russia nor China is up to the task of stabilizing that country.

Moreover, Russia and China, united in their opposition to U.S. policy in the new Eurasia, are hardly each other’s natural allies. Russian-Chinese relations, normalized and much improved in the 1990s after a protracted period of tensions in the 1960s, 1970s and much of the 1980s, harbor the seeds of future tensions that are coming to the surface. In the simplest terms, Russia is a declining power. Its population is shrinking and its eastern provinces are becoming depopulated. The topic of Chinese expansion has become routine on the pages of Russian newspapers and academic publications. How to manage its relations with China—the rising giant of Eurasia—is Russia’s biggest foreign policy headache.¹⁴ Increasingly, Russian foreign policy experts view this challenge as exceeding Russia’s capacity to handle it alone.¹⁵ The prospect of junior partnership with China, be it in Central Asia, or in Russia’s own Far East, is hardly an attractive one for them.

But what are the alternatives? The United States is the only other power with the resources needed to play a major role in the fortunes of the new Eurasia. The question that has yet to be answered definitively is whether it has the will and the interest to do so.

Russia’s staying power in the new Eurasia is a pale ghost of what it once was, but due to a combination of geography, history, economics and politics, its decline as a regional power is likely to be protracted, while there will remain significant pockets of Russian influence. It will therefore remain a presence to be reckoned with in the new Eurasia for a long time.

Unlike Russia’s, whose interests in the region are strategic and long-term, U.S. interests appear to be cyclical and global in nature. It appears that reconciling U.S. global interests with Russia’s regional interests is the major stumbling block for both nations. Their ability to do so is the key to future security, stability and progress in the new Eurasia.

The outlook, however is not encouraging at least in the near term. The major fault line dividing the United States from virtually every other country in or near the new Eurasia is U.S. commitment to democracy promotion as the major organizing principle of U.S. policy in the region. The United States, Russia and China agree that stability in Central Asia is an important interest they all share. The United States sees the path to stability in political, as well as economic, reform. China and Russia view political reforms as destabilizing and prefer to maintain the status quo for as long as they can.

The record of the three revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan offers plenty of arguments for both sides of this debate to make their points. Kyrgyzstan is a country teetering on the brink of being ungovernable, as competing factions maneuver to consolidate their control on key government institutions and the country’s meager resources. Georgia, despite areas of progress, is facing an uphill struggle to consolidate its independence, sovereignty and launch itself on the path to prosperity, while increasingly concerns are being raised about the quality of its democracy. Ukraine, despite its size, proximity to Europe and resource wealth has stumbled from one crisis to another since the Orange Revolution, occasionally raising questions whether anyone can govern it in the aftermath of that dramatic event.

U.S. policymakers view these three countries as representing hopeful, albeit difficult progress toward democracy and stability. Russian and Chinese foreign policy experts take the opposite view; they see nothing there but the threat of chaos, which holds the danger of cross-border spillover.

A very recent innovation in U.S. policy entails breaking up the new Eurasia into two separate parts. The five former Soviet Central Asian countries¹⁶ have been moved out of the European and Eurasian bureau at the Department of State into the Bureau for South Asian Affairs, renamed as the Bureau for South and Central Asian Affairs. While this change is likely to de-emphasize the Russian aspect of U.S. policy in Central Asia, it is unlikely to diminish the role that Russia continues to play in the region. This change is equally unlikely to bridge the gap between U.S. policy, driven by a strong commitment to democratic change and the region’s ruling elites who fear its destabilizing consequences.

Given Russia’s limited reach and systemic constraints on its foreign policy, it is likely to continue in its role of a reactive, rather than proactive force in the region, whose actions are driven by opportunities that present themselves rather than a clear strategic vision. For the United States then the main challenge is not Russia, but a clear sense of its own priorities and interests in the new Eurasia.

¹² Daniel Fried, “A Strategy for Central Asia,” Statement Before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia of the House International Relations Committee, Washington, D.C., 27 October 2005, http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/55766.htm.

¹³ Turkmenistan abstains, claiming neutrality.

¹⁴ See discussions of the Nikitskiy club in Moscow “The Chinese Factor in the New Structure of International Relations and Russia’s Strategy,” http://www.nikitskyclub.ru/article.php?idpublication=4&idissue=32

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

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