The new Great Game that is not

Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba

Yet, the problem lies exactly in the fact that a metaphor, by definition, is a simplified translation of reality into figurative images. In that sense, what does the metaphor of a “game” suggest? First of all, it shows the game as an objective. Second, it suggests that the game has rules that structure and regulate it. Third, these rules are meant to ensure that the game has specific and agreed on participants. The question to ask now is: do these conditions apply to the present international political situation of Central Asia?

Beyond Afghanistan

If the game has objectives, it usually also has prizes. The US’s strategy in the region for many years has been that of linking Central Asia to Afghanistan to develop a cordon sanitaire around the war-torn state. This would be reached via a military presence as well as economic co-operation, de-militarisation of borders, creation of multilateral formats, slow transition towards more effective, transparent and democratic governance and the development of humanitarian and cultural co-operation.

Yet, this reading of Central Asia, often dubbed Greater Central Asia or the New Silk Road, does not meet the objectives of Russia and China, which for security reasons prefer to keep Afghanistan out of the regional framework. It is not by chance that Afghanistan is not part of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) as well as of the China-led Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), an international group devoted to tackling extremism, separatism and terrorism. Central Asian states seems less interested in multilateral formats, especially when it comes to Afghanistan, relying on bilateral co-operation with the southern neighbour.

Specifically, Central Asian republics have rejected an overly regional agenda, instead looking at ways to emphasise their differences and advance their own perceived country-specific interests and objectives while also asserting their own individual importance and strength. A recent Carnegie Endowment report titled “Uncertain Continuity: Central Asia and the Trump Administration” discusses how transforming Central Asian states into democratic, free-market economies knitted together by regional economic integration will remain a great challenge. Furthermore, NATO’s attractiveness as a partner to Central Asian states is likely to continue to decrease, as it shifts its attention from Afghanistan to other challenges closer to home, including Russia and Eastern Europe. Due to increased NATO-Russia tensions, close contacts with the organisation may create additional problems for some Central Asian nations as they could elicit a negative reaction from Moscow.

In this respect, US President Donald Trump has already stated that the US will not be investing in foreign aid and assistance programmes in Central Asia. In his erratic foreign policy trajectory, this seems to be a solid statement. According to the current US administration’s plans, aid to the Caucasus and Central Asia is set to be slashed by more than half, from 218.1 million US dollars in 2016 to 93.1 million dollars in 2018. The political scientist Ariel Cohen has recently argued on the pages of the National Interest that “America’s next security competition will be in Central Asia”, and that the US “needs to view the changes in Eurasia as a set of political-military, diplomatic and economic opportunities”. Yet, why the US would have to compete for security in the region where security is a goal shared by everyone, and what these opportunities are, is not explained. Today, if anything, one of the major criticisms made against US administrations, both present and past, has been that of a lack of a clear and rational policy toward Central Asia.

Mother Russia

Russia’s strategy in the region is strongly tied with the idea that Central Asia is part of the previously existing Soviet Union and hence is based on the idea of a neighbourhood. While in the 1990s Russia’s engagement with the region was limited due to unfavourable internal political and economic conditions, after September 11th 2001, it has expanded considerably. While Russia is very much aware that it is not the only great power with strong interests in the region, it has recently carried out significant steps in the fields of security, by negotiating new military base leases with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It also increased its military supplies to Kazakhstan and reinforced its economic clout in the region by including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in the Eurasian Economic Union and discussing accession procedures with Tajikistan. Moreover, Russia has sought to strengthen its economic influence in the region through several additional parallel initiatives, such as the Eurasian Development Bank, the Anti-Crisis Fund, and the Free Trade Zone Agreement of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), all featuring a strong Russian presence in terms of capital invested.

Russia extends its influence in Central Asia by ensuring that domestic laws of the five regional states mirror, to the extent that it is possible, those approved in Moscow. In this regards, legislation regarding restrictions of civil and political liberties in Central Asia, for example, is often welcomed by Moscow. This legal uniformity is presented as an attempt to ensure regional order and stability, and is institutionally supported by the Interparliamentary Assembly of Member Nations of the CIS and by Article 20 of the CIS Charter, which emphasises the importance of “co-ordination of national legislations”. Finally, Russia also tries to exert cultural influence in Central Asia via media, books and other soft power tools, as well as by representing the top destination for working migrants from the region. This last aspect significantly blurs the lines between soft and hard power, as Russia often puts the “migrant question” on the table to exert political pressure on Central Asian states, in particular Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

However the region is not homogeneous. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have remained in a more marginal position with respect to multilateral formats of security, as none of them is a member either of the CSTO or the EEU. This may lead one to think that Russia’s strategy in Central Asia is best characterised by what Alexander Cooley and Marlene Laruelle have called a “more focused logic of hierarchy”, which involves deeper ties with a narrower group of states, specifically gravitating towards Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The deep pocket of China

For the time being, China is the main economic actor in the region. In other words, the game played by Beijing in Central Asia is based on a domestic need for energy resources, investments, infrastructure and development. If the US sees the region as inherently linked to Afghanistan, and Russia sees it as an appendix of its previous Soviet identity, China sees it as an extension of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a western region of China where the population is predominantly Muslim and which has several ethnic, cultural and historical ties with Central Asia.

Beijing has long sought to include XUAR in the wider security and economic framework, in order to enhance its control over the area. In recent years, demonstrations and calls for autonomy from XUAR have been more frequent and consistent, which Beijing sees as a challenge to its territorial integrity perpetuated through occasional acts of violence. Thus, the recent infrastructural project called the “Belt and Road Initiative”, aimed at linking China to Europe via Central Asia, can be seen as serving Beijing’s internal purposes. By recently including India and Pakistan in the SCO and building a strong anti-terrorism co-operation to fight extremism and separatism, China seeks to ensure greater stability around XUAR.

From a military perspective, China is keen to leave the ground to Russia. From an economic and infrastructural viewpoint, however, Beijing is becoming more assertive, to the point that some countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have seen protests and violent demonstrations against the Chinese, especially with respect to land concessions and low environmental standards. Countries like Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are now heavily dependent on Chinese demands (for energy in the case of the former and land in the case of the latter) in return for investments. This may create a relation of strong economic dependency in the future. In the Central Asian context, both Russia and China have managed to achieve their goals without clashing abrasively with one another, partially because China is interested in order and stability, which are well facilitated by the “axis of convenience” with Russia.  At least thus far, therefore, the Russo-Chinese co-operation in Central Asia has been workable and Beijing seems to have an interest in keeping the region under Russia’s political and security umbrella.

The real protagonists

The three strategies outlined above should not, however, obscure the fact that the Central Asian republics are actively engaging the great powers by relying on their sovereign prerogatives and pursuing their own strategic goals. This further weakens the notion of a new Great Game. If anything, the Central Asian states do have preferences, goals, aims and strategies, too, as well as interests and disinterests, political allegiances, regional balances of loyalties and alignments. The US has been expelled militarily from the region, both from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, in recent years, but has been kept as a security partner and provider of weapons. Russia’s influence has been diluted over the years by welcoming China as an important player which has prevented it from establishing a coherent hegemonic bloc in the region. Turkmenistan’s and Uzbekistan’s reluctance to join Russia-led multilateral formats is a case in point. Concerns about the importance of international law and territorial integrity repeatedly voiced in international fora after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine have also found more prominence in Central Asian countries’ foreign policy discourses. With respect to China, its economic interests in the region have been aligned with those of the elite and the ruling cadres in Central Asia, thus proving once again that the Central Asian republics are not passive observers in the redefinition of the regional context but rather active protagonists.

Nevertheless, the rules of the game in the region tend to be interpreted differently by each participant. The US, which for a long time has favoured a liberal and integrationist approach to Central Asia, sees the region as a group of states willing to deal multilaterally and to reach agreements over matters of security and energy resources on a regional basis, as exemplified by the Central Asia+1 platform set up by the Obama administration. In addition, at least up until the election of Donald Trump, the US has favoured a reading of the region which is inclusive of Afghanistan and based, ideally, on a neoliberal understanding of economics and security. It stressed the protection of human rights, granting political and civil rights and fostering the enhancement of local economies along neoliberal lines.

With respect to Russia, several commentators, such as Marlene Laruelle and Alexander Cooley, have put into question the influence that it can project in the region. Yet Russia is still able to create leverage on the Central Asian states, with which it retains considerable ties especially in the economic, security and cultural domains. In terms of rules, Russia seems to favour a mix of multilateralism and bilateralism, with the former exemplified by the operation of the CSTO in the security field and the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union, and the latter carried out via a series of meetings devoted to the discussion of security provision and economic aid. Such rules, to be sure, are based on a strong statist reading both of security and the economy, privileging regime stability and territorial integrity over human welfare and the development of civil society.

China, for that matter, is adopting a mix of multilateralism and bilateralism as well, but relying far more on the latter. While multilateralism is performed through the SCO, bilateralism is much stronger especially from an economic perspective, with China signing deals and agreements with Central Asian republics to secure undisturbed energy flows for itself (mainly oil and gas from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and to ensure commercial penetration for its much-voiced infrastructural project, the Belt and Road Initiative. However, this is not the end of the story.  In his highly influential and well-researched book Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley has shown how the great powers are not the only rule-setting players in this alleged new Great Game. Local and regional elite, such as those of the Central Asian states, are able to shape the contours of the game as well, by dictating rules that grow out of their domestic policies and the nature of Central Asian society, such as security entrenchment of local regimes, economic benefits for internal cadres and repression of domestic dissent. In other words, they are able to diversify the set of rules of the game, and in fact to entrench them for their own benefit.

A game with more players

The Great Game narrative sees Central Asia as a playing field for the US, Russia and China. Yet other states have also been active in the region, mostly in the economic realm, and have forged solid ties with the Central Asian states, thus diversifying their foreign policy options and alleviating excessive reliance on the three great powers. Turkey, Iran, India and Pakistan are now willing to play their own role in the region. While these countries lack Russia’s political and military links with the region and China’s economic might, they nonetheless rely on a mix of ethno-linguistic (in the case of Turkey), economic (in the case of Pakistan, India and Turkey), historical (Turkey, India, Iran) and religious affinities (Turkey, Iran) to achieve their own strategic goals in the region, in close partnership with the Central Asian governments.

The increased co-operation with these actors has been made possible thanks to two events: the ascension to power of Shavkat Mirziyoyev in Uzbekistan, who seem keener than his predecessor Islam Karimov to open up the country’s economy to foreign investments; and the inclusion of India and Pakistan in the SCO as permanent members last June. Turkey is particularly interested in reviving ethno-cultural links with the region by investing in tourism and education. Iran for its part is slowly resuming religious ties with the region, in particular with Uzbekistan, after Presidents Rouhani and Mirziyoyev met on the sides of the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Countries in September in Astana, Kazakhstan. India and Pakistan, conversely, are looking for investments and co-operation in the fields of transportation, energy and water resources.

Crucially, the plurality of actors interacts and operates in the region with different sets of goals and without eliciting strong competition or overly hostile dynamics. Therefore, rather than blunt competition and adversarial politics, relations between Central Asian states and great powers are best described as tactical partnerships with different normative templates, new platforms for co-operation and evolving structures for dialogue.

Thus, the use of the Great Game narrative in relation to Central Asia is a game in itself. As the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur once said: “The key to metaphor is the perception of a resemblance between two ideas”. Yet the metaphor of the new Great Game, rather than faithfully representing, clarifying and resembling the complex regional dynamics of Central Asia, obscures them like the worst of clichés.

Filippo Costa Buranelli is a lecturer in international relations at University of St Andrews specialising in Central Asia.

Central Asia, China, Great Game, Iran, Russia, turkey, United States