In contrast, although Turkish aspirations for regional influence retain some vestiges of an imperial, albeit more dated, past (the Ottoman Empire reached its apogee in 1590 with the conquest of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan, though it did not include Central Asia), they tend to be more rooted in an ethnic-linguistic sense of identity with the Turkic peoples of the area (see map on page 137). Given Turkey’s much more limited political and military power, a sphere of exclusive political influence is simply unattainable. Rather, Turkey sees itself as potential leader of a loose Turkic-speaking community, taking advantage to that end of its appealing relative modernity, its linguistic affinity, and its economic means to establish itself as the most influential force in the nation-building processes underway in the area.
Iran’s aspirations are vaguer still, but in the long run no less threatening to Russia’s ambitions. The Persian Empire is a much more distant memory. At its peak, circa 500 B.C., it embraced the current territory of the three Caucasian states, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, as well as Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Although Iran’s current geopolitical aspirations are narrower than Turkey’s, pointing mainly at Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, the entire Muslim population in the area—even within Russia itself—is the object of Iranian religious interest. Indeed, the revival of Islam in Central Asia has become an organic part of the aspirations of Iran’s current rulers.
The competitive interests of Russia, Turkey, and Iran are represented on the map on page 138: in the case of the geopolitical thrust of Russia, by two arrows pointing directly south at Azerbaijan and Kazakstan; in Turkey’s case, by a single arrow pointing eastward through Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea at Central Asia; and in Iran’s case, by two arrows aiming northward at Azerbaijan and northeast at Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. These arrows not only crisscross; they can collide.
At this stage, China’s role is more limited and its goals less evident. It stands to reason that China prefers to face a collection of relatively independent states in the West rather than a Russian Empire. At a minimum, the new states serve as a buffer, but China is also anxious that its own Turkic minorities in Xinjiang Province might see in the newly independent Central Asian states an attractive example for themselves, and for that reason, China has sought assurances from Kazakstan that cross-border minority activism will be suppressed. In the long run, the energy resources of the region are bound to be of special interest to Beijing, and direct access to them, not subject to Moscow’s control, has to be China’s central goal. Thus, the overall geopolitical interest of China tends to clash with Russia’s quest for a dominant role and is complementary to Turkish and Iranian aspirations.
For Ukraine, the central issues are the future character of the CIS and freer access to energy sources, which would lessen Ukraine’s dependence on Russia. In that regard, closer relations with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have become important to Kiev, with Ukrainian support for the more independent-minded states being an extension of Ukraine’s efforts to enhance its own independence from Moscow. Accordingly, Ukraine has supported Georgia’s efforts to become the westward route for Azeri oil exports. Ukraine has also collaborated with Turkey in order to weaken Russian influence in the Black Sea and has supported Turkish efforts to direct oil flows from Central Asia to Turkish terminals.
The involvement of Pakistan and India is more remote still, but neither is indifferent to what may be transpiring in these new Eurasian Balkans. For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan—and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan—and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea. India, in reaction to Pakistan and possibly concerned about China’s long-range influence in the region, views Iranian influence in Afghanistan and a greater Russian presence in the former Soviet space more favorably.
Although distant, the United States, with its stake in the maintenance of geopolitical pluralism in post-Soviet Eurasia, looms in the background as an increasingly important if indirect player, clearly interested not only in developing the region’s resources but also in preventing Russia from exclusively dominating the region’s geopolitical space. In so doing, America is not only pursuing its larger Eurasian geostrategic goals but is also representing its own growing economic interest, as well as that of Europe and the Far East, in gaining unlimited access to this hitherto closed area.
Thus, at stake in this conundrum are geopolitical power, access to potentially great wealth, the fulfillment of national and/or religious missions, and security. The particular focus of the contest, however, is on access. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, access to the region was monopolized by Moscow. All rail transport, gas and oil pipelines, and even air travel were channeled through the center. Russian geopoliticians would prefer it to remain so, since they know that whoever either controls or dominates access to the region is the one most likely to win the geopolitical and economic prize.
It is this consideration that has made the pipeline issue so central to the future of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. If the main pipelines to the region continue to pass through Russian territory to the Russian outlet on the Black Sea at Novorossiysk, the political consequences of this condition will make themselves felt, even without any overt Russian power plays. The region will remain a political dependency, with Moscow in a strong position to determine how the region’s new wealth is to be shared.
Conversely, if another pipeline crosses the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and thence to the Mediterranean through Turkey and if one more goes to the Arabian Sea through Afghanistan, no single power will have monopoly over access.
The troubling fact is that some elements in the Russian political elite act as if they prefer that the area’s resources not be developed at all if Russia cannot have complete control over access. Let the wealth remain unexploited if the alternative is that foreign investment will lead to more direct presence by foreign economic, and thus also political, interests. That proprietary attitude is rooted in history, and it will take time and outside pressures before it changes.
The Tsarist expansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia occurred over a period of about three hundred years, but its recent end was shockingly abrupt. As the Ottoman Empire declined in vitality, the Russian Empire pushed southward, along the shores of the Caspian Sea toward Persia. It seized the Astrakhan khanate in 1556 and reached Persia by 1607. It conquered Crimea during 1774–1784, then took over the kingdom of Georgia in 1801 and overwhelmed the tribes astride the Caucasian mountain range (with the Chechens resisting with unique tenacity) during the second half of the 1800s, completing the takeover of Armenia by 1878.
The conquest of Central Asia was less a matter of overcoming a rival empire than of subjugating essentially isolated and quasitribal feudal khanates and emirates, capable of offering only sporadic and isolated resistance. Uzbekistan and Kazakstan were taken over through a series of military expeditions during the years 1801–1881, with Turkmenistan crushed and incorporated in campaigns lasting from 1873 to 1886. However, by 1850, the conquest of most of Central Asia was essentially completed, though periodic outbreaks of local resistance occurred even during the Soviet era.
The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a dramatic historical reversal. In the course of merely a few weeks in December 1991, Russia’s Asian space suddenly shrank by about 20 percent, and the population Russia controlled in Asia was cut from 75 million to about 30 million. In addition, another 18 million residents in the Caucasus were also detached from Russia. Making these reversals even more painful to the Russian political elite was the awareness that the economic potential of these areas was now being targeted by foreign interests with the financial means to invest in, develop, and exploit resources that until very recently were accessible to Russia alone.
Yet Russia faces a dilemma: it is too weak politically to seal off the region entirely from the outside and too poor financially to develop the area exclusively on its own. Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia’s entire southern frontier. Russia’s experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya could be repeated along the entire borderline that stretches from the Black Sea to Mongolia, especially given the national and Islamic resurgence now underway among the previously subjugated peoples.
It follows that Russia must somehow find a way of accommodating to the new postimperial reality, as it seeks to contain the Turkish and Iranian presence, to prevent the gravitation of the new states toward its principal rivals, to discourage the formation of any truly independent Central Asian regional cooperation, and to limit American geopolitical influence in the newly sovereign capitals. The issue thus is no longer that of imperial restoration—which would be too costly and would be fiercely resisted—but instead involves creating a new web of relations that would constrain the new states and preserve Russia’s dominant geopolitical and economic
