The chosen instrument for accomplishing that task has primarily been the CIS, though in some places the use of the Russian military and the skillful employment of Russian diplomacy to “divide and rule” has served the Kremlin’s interests just as well. Moscow has used its leverage to seek from the new states the maximum degree of compliance to its vision of an increasingly integrated “commonwealth” and has pressed for a centrally directed system of control over the external borders of the CIS; for closer military integration, within the framework of a common foreign policy; and for the further expansion of the existing (originally Soviet) pipeline network, to the exclusion of any new ones that could skirt Russia. Russian strategic analyses have explicitly stated that Moscow views the area as its own special geopolitical space, even if it is no longer an integral part of its empire.
A clue to Russian geopolitical intentions is provided by the insistence with which the Kremlin has sought to retain a Russian military presence on the territories of the new states. Taking advantage of the Abkhazian secession movement, Moscow obtained basing rights in Georgia, legitimated its military presence on Armenian soil by exploiting Armenia’s need for support in the war against Azerbaijan, and applied political and financial pressure to obtain Kazakstan’s agreement to Russian bases; in addition, the civil war in Tajikistan made possible the continued presence there of the former Soviet army.
In defining its policy, Moscow has proceeded on the apparent expectation that its postimperial web of relationships with Central Asia will gradually emasculate the substance of the sovereignty of the individually weak new states and that it will place them in a subordinate relationship to the command center of the “integrated” CIS. To accomplish that goal, Russia is discouraging the new states from creating their own separate armies, from fostering the use of their distinctive languages (in which they are gradually replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin), from cultivating close ties with outsiders, and from developing new pipelines directly to outlets in the Arabian or Mediterranean Seas. If the policy succeeds, Russia could then dominate their foreign relations and determine revenue sharing.
In pursuing that goal, Russian spokesmen often invoke, as we have seen in Chapter 4, the example of the European Union. In fact, however, Russia’s policy toward the Central Asian states and the Caucasus is much more reminiscent of the Francophone African community—with the French military contingents and budgetary subsidies determining the politics and policies of the French-speaking postcolonial African states.
While the restoration of the maximum feasible degree of Russian political and economic influence in the region is the overall goal and the reinforcement of the CIS is the principal mechanism for achieving it, Moscow’s primary geopolitical targets for political subordination appear to be Azerbaijan and Kazakstan. For a Russian political counteroffensive to be successful, Moscow must not only cork access to the region but must also penetrate its geographic shield.
For Russia, Azerbaijan has to be a priority target. Its subordination would help to seal off Central Asia from the West, especially from Turkey, thereby further increasing Russia’s leverage vis-à-vis the recalcitrant Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. To that end, tactical cooperation with Iran regarding such controversial issues as how to divide the drilling concessions to the Caspian seabed serves the important objective of compelling Baku to accommodate itself to Moscow’s wishes. A subservient Azerbaijan would also facilitate the consolidation of a dominant Russian position in both Georgia and Armenia.
Kazakstan offers an especially tempting primary target as well, because its ethnic vulnerability makes it impossible for the Kazak government to prevail in an open confrontation with Moscow. Moscow can also exploit the Kazak fear of China’s growing dynamism, as well as the likelihood of growing Kazak resentment over the Sinification of the adjoining Xinjiang Province in China. Kazakstan’s gradual subordination would have the geopolitical effect of almost automatically drawing Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into Moscow’s sphere of control, while exposing both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to more direct Russian pressure.
The Russian strategy, however, runs counter to the aspirations of almost all of the states located in the Eurasian Balkans. Their new political elites will not voluntarily yield the power and privilege they have gained through independence. As the local Russians gradually vacate their previously privileged positions, the new elites are rapidly developing a vested interest in sovereignty, a dynamic and socially contagious process. Moreover, the once politically passive populations are also becoming more nationalistic and, outside of Georgia and Armenia, also more conscious of their Islamic identity.
Insofar as foreign affairs are concerned, both Georgia and Armenia (despite the latter’s dependence on Russian support against Azerbaijan) would like to become gradually more associated with Europe. The resource-rich Central Asian states, along with Azerbaijan, would like to maximize the economic presence on their soil of American, European, Japanese, and lately Korean capital, hoping thereby to greatly accelerate their own economic development and consolidate their independence. To this end, they also welcome the increasing role of Turkey and Iran, seeing in them a counterweight to Russian power and a bridge to the large Muslim world to the south.
Azerbaijan—encouraged by both Turkey and America—has thus not only rejected Russian demands for military bases but it also defied Russian demands for a single pipeline to a Russian Black Sea port, opting instead for a dual solution involving a second pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. (A pipeline southward through Iran, to be financed by an American company, had to be abandoned because of the U.S. financial embargo on deals with Iran.) In 1995, amid much fanfare, a new rail link between Turkmenistan and Iran was opened, making it feasible for Europe to trade with Central Asia by rail, skirting Russia altogether. There was a touch of symbolic drama to this reopening of the ancient Silk Route, with Russia thus no longer able to separate Europe from Asia.
Uzbekistan has also become increasingly assertive in its opposition to Russia’s efforts at “integration.” Its foreign minister declared flatly in August 1996 that “Uzbekistan opposes the creation of CIS supranational institutions which can be used as instruments of centralized control.” Its strongly nationalistic posture had already prompted sharp denunciations in the Russian press concerning Uzbekistan’s emphatically pro-West orientation in the economy, the harsh invective apropos integration treaties within the CIS, the decisive refusal to join even the Customs Union, and a methodical anti-Russian nationality policy (even kindergartens which use Russian are being closed down)…. For the United States, which is pursuing in the Asia region a policy of the weakening of Russia, this position is so attractive.[1]
Even Kazakstan, in reaction to Russian pressures, has come to favor a secondary non-Russian route for its own outflows. As Umirserik Kasenov, the adviser to the Kazak president, put it:
It is a fact that Kazakstan’s search for alternative pipelines has been fostered by Russia’s own actions, such as the limitation of shipments of Kazakstan’s oil to Novorossiysk and of Tyumen oil to the Pavlodar Refinery. Turkmenistan’s efforts to promote the construction of a gas line to Iran are partly due to the fact that the CIS countries pay only 60 percent of the world price or do not pay for it at all.[2]
Turkmenistan, for much the same reason, has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, in addition to the energetic construction of new rail links with Kazakstan and Uzbekistan to the north and with Iran and Afghanistan to the south. Very preliminary and exploratory talks have also been held among the Kazaks, the Chinese, and the Japanese regarding an ambitious pipeline project that would stretch from Central Asia to the China Sea (see map on page 146). With long-term Western oil and gas investment commitments in Azerbaijan reaching some $13 billion and in Kazakstan going well over $20 billion (1996 figures), the economic and political isolation of this area is clearly breaking down in the face of global economic pressures and limited Russian financial options.
Fear of Russia has also had the effect of driving the Central Asian states into greater regional cooperation. The initially dormant Central Asian Economic Union, formed in January 1993, has been gradually activated. Even President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan, at first an articulate advocate of a new “Eurasian Union,” gradually became a convert to ideas of closer Central Asian cooperation, increased military collaboration among the region’s states, support for Azerbaijan’s efforts to channel Caspian Sea and Kazak oil through Turkey, and joint opposition to Russian and Iranian efforts to prevent the sectoral division of the Caspian Sea’s continental shelf and mineral resources among the coastal states.
Given the fact that the governments in the area tend to be highly authoritarian, perhaps even more important has been the personal reconciliation among the principal leaders. It was common knowledge that the presidents of Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan were not particularly fond of one another (which they made eminently plain to foreign visitors), and that personal antagonism initially made it easier for the Kremlin to play off one against the other. By the mid-1990s, the three had come to realize that closer cooperation among them was essential to the preservation of their new sovereignty, and they began to engage in highly publicized displays of their allegedly close relations, stressing that henceforth they would coordinate their foreign policies.
But more important still has been the emergence within the CIS of an informal coalition, led by Ukraine and Uzbekistan, dedicated to the idea of a “cooperative,” but not “integrated,” commonwealth. Toward this end, Ukraine has signed agreements on military cooperation with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Georgia; and in September 1996, the foreign ministers
