The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

IN EUROPE, THE WORD “BALKANS” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability identified in chapter 2 and that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia, the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (see map on page 124), and they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable. Every one of its countries suffers from serious internal difficulties, all of them have frontiers that are either the object of claims by neighbors or are zones of ethnic resentment, few are nationally homogeneous, and some are already embroiled in territorial, ethnic, or religious violence.

THE ETHNIC CAULDRON

The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan. The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geostrategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile.

The three states of the Caucasus—Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—can be said to be based on truly historic nations. As a result, their nationalisms tend to be both pervasive and intense, and external conflicts have tended to be the key challenge to their well-being. The five new Central Asian states, by contrast, can be said to be rather more in the nation-building phase, with tribal and ethnic identities still strong, making internal dissension the major difficulty. In either type of state, these vulnerabilities have tempted exploitation by their more powerful and imperially minded neighbors.

The Eurasian Balkans are an ethnic mosaic (see preceding table and map). The frontiers of its states were drawn arbitrarily by Soviet cartographers in the 1920s and 1930s, when the respective Soviet republics were formally established. (Afghanistan, never having been part of the Soviet Union, is the exception.) Their borders were carved out largely on the ethnic principle, but they also reflected the Kremlin’s interest in keeping the southern region of the Russian Empire internally divided and thus more subservient.

Accordingly, Moscow rejected proposals by Central Asian nationalists to meld the various Central Asian peoples (most of whom were not yet nationalistically motivated) into a single political unit—to be called “Turkestan”—preferring instead to create five separate “republics,” each with a distinctive new name and jigsaw borders. Presumably out of a similar calculation, the Kremlin abandoned plans for a single Caucasian federation. Therefore, it is not surprising that, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, neither the three states of the Caucasus nor the five states of Central Asia were fully prepared for their newly independent status nor for the needed regional cooperation.

In the Caucasus, Armenia’s less than 4 million people and Azerbaijan’s more than 8 million promptly became embroiled in open warfare over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan. The conflict generated large-scale ethnic cleansings, with hundreds of thousands of refugees and expellees fleeing in both directions. Given the fact that Armenia is Christian and Azerbaijan Muslim, the war has some overtones of a religious conflict. The economically devastating war made it much more difficult for either country to establish itself as stably independent. Armenia was driven to rely more on Russia, which had provided significant military help, while Azerbaijan’s new independence and internal stability were compromised by the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan’s vulnerability has wider regional implications because the country’s location makes it a geopolitical pivot. It can be described as the vitally important “cork” controlling access to the “bottle” that contains the riches of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. An independent, Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, with pipelines running from it to the ethnically related and politically supportive Turkey, would prevent Russia from exercising a monopoly on access to the region and would thus also deprive Russia of decisive political leverage over the policies of the new Central Asian states. Yet Azerbaijan is very vulnerable to pressures from powerful Russia to the north and from Iran to the south. There are twice as many Azeris—some estimate as many as 20 million—living in northwestern Iran as in Azerbaijan proper. That reality makes Iran fearful of potential separatism among its Azeris and hence quite ambivalent regarding Azerbaijan’s sovereign status, despite the two nations’ shared Muslim faith. As a result, Azerbaijan has become the object of combined Russian and Iranian pressures to restrict its dealings with the West.

Unlike either Armenia or Azerbaijan, both of which are ethnically quite homogeneous, about 30 percent of Georgia’s 6 million people are minorities. Moreover, these small communities, rather tribal in organization and identity, have intensely resented Georgian domination. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Ossetians and the Abkhazians therefore took advantage of internal Georgian political strife to attempt secession, which Russia quietly backed in order to compel Georgia to accede to Russian pressures to remain within the CIS (from which Georgia initially wanted to secede altogether) and to accept Russian military bases on Georgian soil in order to seal the area off from Turkey.

In Central Asia, internal factors have been more significant in promoting instability. Culturally and linguistically, four of the five newly independent Central Asian states are part of the Turkic world. Tajikistan is linguistically and culturally Persian, while Afghanistan (outside of the former Soviet Union) is a Pathan, Tajik, Pashtun, and Persian ethnic mosaic. All six countries are Muslim. Most of them, over the years, were under the passing influence of the Persian, Turkish, and Russian empires, but that experience has not served to foster a spirit of a shared regional interest among them. On the contrary, their diverse ethnic composition makes them vulnerable to internal and external conflicts, which cumulatively tempt intrusion by more powerful neighbors.

Of the five newly independent Central Asian states, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan are the most important. Regionally, Kazakstan is the shield and Uzbekistan is the soul for the region’s diverse national awakenings. Kazakstan’s geographic size and location shelter the others from direct Russian physical pressure, since Kazakstan alone borders on Russia. However, its population of about 18 million is approximately 35 percent Russian (the Russian population throughout the area is steadily declining), with another 20 percent also non-Kazak, a fact that has made it much more difficult for the new Kazak rulers—themselves increasingly nationalistic but representing only about one-half of the country’s total population—to pursue the goal of nation building on the basis of ethnicity and language.

The Russians residing in the new state are naturally resentful of the new Kazak leadership, and being the formerly ruling colonial class and thus also better educated and situated, they are fearful of the loss of privilege. Furthermore, they tend to view the new Kazak nationalism with barely concealed cultural disdain. With both the northwestern and northeastern regions of Kazakstan heavily dominated by Russian colonists, Kazakstan would face the danger of territorial secession if Kazak-Russian relations were to deteriorate seriously. At the same time, several hundred thousand Kazaks reside on the Russian side of the state borders and in northeastern Uzbekistan, the state that the Kazaks view as their principal rival for Central Asian leadership.

Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia. Although smaller in size and less endowed with natural resources than Kazakstan, it has a larger population (nearly 25 million) and, much more important, a considerably more homogeneous population than Kazakstan’s. Given higher indigenous birthrates and the gradual exodus of the formerly dominant Russians, soon about 75 percent of its people will be Uzbek, with only an insignificant Russian minority remaining largely in Tashkent, the capital.

Moreover, the country’s political elite deliberately identifies the new state as the direct descendant of the vast medieval empire of Tamerlane (1336–1404), whose capital, Samarkand, became the region’s renowned center for the study of religion, astronomy, and the arts. This lineage imbues modern Uzbekistan with a deeper sense of historical continuity and regional mission than its neighbors. Indeed, some Uzbek leaders see Uzbekistan as the national core of a single Central Asian entity, presumably with Tashkent as its capital. More than in any of the other Central Asian states, Uzbekistan’s political elite and increasingly also its people, already partake of the subjective makings of a modern nation-state and are determined—domestic difficulties notwithstanding—never to revert to colonial status.

That condition makes Uzbekistan both the leader in fostering a sense of post-ethnic modern nationalism and an object of some uneasiness among its neighbors. Even as the Uzbek leaders set the pace in nation building and in the advocacy of greater regional self-sufficiency, the country’s relatively greater national homogeneity and more intense national consciousness inspire fear among the rulers of Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and even Kazakstan that Uzbek regional leadership could evolve into Uzbek regional domination. That concern inhibits regional cooperation among the newly sovereign states—which is not encouraged by the Russians in any case—and perpetuates regional vulnerability.

However, like the others, Uzbekistan is not entirely free of ethnic tensions. Parts of southern Uzbekistan, particularly around the historically and culturally important centers of Samarkand and Bukhara, have significant Tajik populations, which remain resentful of the frontiers drawn by Moscow. Complicating matters further is the presence of Uzbeks in western Tajikistan and of both Uzbeks and Tajiks in Kyrgyzstan’s economically important Fergana Valley (where in recent years bloody ethnic violence has erupted), not to mention the presence of Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan.

Of the other three Central Asian states that have emerged from Russian colonial rule—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—only the third is relatively cohesive ethnically. Approximately 75 percent of its 4.5 million people are Turkmen, with Uzbeks and Russians each accounting for less than 10 percent. Turkmenistan’s shielded geographic location makes it relatively remote from Russia, with Uzbekistan and Iran of far greater geopolitical relevance to the country’s future. Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan’s truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country’s people.

Kyrgyzstan’s 5 million people are much more diverse. The Kyrgyz themselves account for about 55 percent of the total and the Uzbeks for about 13 percent, with the Russians lately dropping from over 20 percent to slightly over 15 percent. Prior to independence, the Russians largely composed the technical-engineering intelligentsia, and their exodus has hurt the country’s economy. Although rich in minerals and endowed with a natural beauty that has led some to describe the country as the Switzerland of Central Asia (and thus potentially as a new tourist frontier), Kyrgyzstan’s geopolitical location, squeezed between China and Kazakstan, makes it highly dependent on the degree to which Kazakstan itself succeeds in maintaining its independence.

Tajikistan is only somewhat more ethnically homogeneous. Of its 6.5 million people, fewer than two-thirds are Tajik and more than 25 percent are Uzbek (who are viewed with some hostility by the Tajiks), while the remaining Russians account for only about 3 percent. However, as elsewhere, even the dominant ethnic community is sharply—even violently—divided along tribal lines, with modern nationalism confined largely to the urban political elite. As a result, independence has produced not only civil strife but a convenient excuse for Russia to continue deploying its army in the country. The ethnic situation is even further complicated by the large presence of Tajiks across the border, in northeastern Afghanistan. In fact, almost as many ethnic Tajiks live in Afghanistan as in Tajikistan, another factor that serves to undermine regional stability.

Afghanistan’s current state of disarray is likewise a Soviet legacy, even though the country is not a former Soviet republic. Fragmented by the Soviet occupation and the prolonged guerrilla warfare conducted against it, Afghanistan is a nation-state in name only. Its 22 million people have become sharply divided along ethnic lines, with growing divisions among the country’s Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras. At the same time, the jihad against the Russian occupiers has made religion the dominant dimension of the country’s political life, infusing dogmatic fervor into already sharp political differences. Afghanistan thus has to be seen not only as a part of the Central Asian ethnic conundrum but also as politically very much part of the Eurasian Balkans.

Although all of the formerly Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Azerbaijan, are populated predominantly by Muslims, their political elites—still largely the products of the Soviet era—are almost uniformly nonreligious in outlook and the states are formally secular. However, as their populations shift from a primarily traditional clannish or tribal identity to a more modern national awareness, they are likely to become imbued with an intensifying Islamic consciousness. In fact, an Islamic revival—already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia—is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian—and hence infidel—control.

Indeed, the process of Islamization is likely to prove contagious also to the Muslims who have remained within Russia proper. They number about 20 million—more than twice the number of disaffected Russians (circa 9.5 million) who continue to live under foreign rule in the independent Central Asian states. The Russian Muslims thus account for about 13 percent of Russia’s population, and it is almost inevitable that they will become more assertive in claiming their rights to a distinctive religious and political identity. Even if that claim does not take the form of a quest for outright independence, as it has in Chechnya, it will overlap with the dilemmas that Russia, given its recent imperial involvement and the Russian minorities in the new states, will continue to face in Central Asia.

Gravely increasing the instability of the Eurasian Balkans and making the situation potentially much more explosive is the fact that two of the adjoining major nation-states, each with a historically imperial, cultural, religious, and economic interest in the region—namely, Turkey and Iran—are themselves volatile in their geopolitical orientation and are internally potentially vulnerable. Were these two states to become destabilized, it is quite likely that the entire region would be plunged into massive disorder, with the ongoing ethnic and territorial conflicts spinning out of control and the region’s already delicate balance of power severely disrupted. Accordingly, Turkey and Iran are not only important geostrategic players but are also geopolitical pivots, whose own internal condition is of critical importance to the fate of the region. Both are middle-sized powers, with strong regional aspirations and a sense of their historical significance. Yet the future geopolitical orientation and even the national cohesion of both states remains uncertain.

Turkey, a postimperial state still in the process of redefining its identity, is pulled in three directions: the modernists would like to see it become a European state and thus look to the west; the Islamists lean in the direction of the Middle East and a Muslim community and thus look to the south; and the historically minded nationalists see in the Turkic peoples of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia a new mission for a regionally dominant Turkey and thus look eastward. Each of these perspectives posits a different strategic axis, and the clash between them introduces for the first time since the Kemalist revolution a measure of uncertainty regarding Turkey’s regional role.

Moreover, Turkey itself could become at least a partial victim of the region’s ethnic conflicts. Although its population of about 65 million is predominantly Turkish, with about 80 percent Turkic stock (though including a variety of Circassians, Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, and Arabs), as much as 20 percent or perhaps even more are Kurdish. Concentrated in the country’s eastern regions, the Turkish Kurds have increasingly been drawn into the struggle for national independence waged by the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds. Any internal tensions within Turkey regarding the country’s overall direction would doubtless encourage the Kurds to press even more violently for a separate national status.

Iran’s future orientation is even more problematic. The fundamentalist Shiite revolution that triumphed in the late 1970s may be entering its “Thermidorian” phase, and that heightens the uncertainty regarding Iran’s geostrategic role. On the one hand, the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union opened up Iran’s newly independent northern neighbors to religious proselytizing but, on the other, Iran’s hostility to the United States has inclined Teheran to adopt at least a tactically pro-Moscow orientation, reinforced by Iran’s concerns regarding the impact on its own cohesion of Azerbaijan’s new independence.

That concern is derived from Iran’s vulnerability to ethnic tensions. Of the country’s 65 million people (almost identical in number to Turkey’s), only somewhat more than one-half are Persians. Roughly one-fourth are Azeri, and the remainder include Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmens, Arabs, and other tribes. Outside of the Kurds and the Azeris, the others at present do not have the capacity to threaten Iran’s national integrity, especially given the high degree of national, even imperial, consciousness among the Persians. But that could change quite quickly, particularly in the event of a new political crisis in Iranian politics.

Furthermore, the very fact that several newly independent “stans” now exist in the area and that even the 1 million Chechens have been able to assert their political aspirations is bound to have an infectious effect on the Kurds as well as on all the other ethnic minorities in Iran. If Azerbaijan succeeds in stable political and economic development, the Iranian Azeris will probably become increasingly committed to the idea of a greater Azerbaijan. Thus, political instability and divisions in Teheran could expand into a challenge to the cohesion of the Iranian state, thereby dramatically extending the scope and increasing the stakes of what is involved in the Eurasian Balkans.

THE MULTIPLE CONTEST

The traditional Balkans of Europe involved head-on competition among three imperial rivals: the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. There were also three indirect participants who were concerned that their European interests would be adversely affected by the victory of a particular protagonist: Germany feared Russian power, France opposed Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain preferred to see a weakening Ottoman Empire in control of the Dardanelles than the emergence of any one of the other major contestants in control of the Balkans. In the course of the nineteenth century, these powers managed to contain Balkan conflicts without prejudice to anyone’s vital interests, but they failed to do so in 1914, with disastrous consequences for all.

Today’s competition within the Eurasian Balkans also directly involves three neighboring powers: Russia, Turkey, and Iran, though China may eventually become a major protagonist as well. Also involved in the competition, but more remotely, are Ukraine, Pakistan, India, and the distant America. Each of the three principal and most directly engaged contestants is driven not only by the prospect of future geopolitical and economic benefits but also by strong historical impulses. Each was at one time or another either the politically or the culturally dominant power in the region. Each views the others with suspicion. Although head-on warfare among them is unlikely, the cumulative impact of their external rivalry could contribute to regional chaos.

In the case of the Russians, the attitude of hostility to the Turks verges on the obsessive. The Russian media portrays the Turks as bent on control over the region, as instigators of local resistance to Russia (with some justification in the case of Chechnya), and as threatening Russia’s overall security to a degree that is altogether out of proportion to Turkey’s actual capabilities. The Turks reciprocate in kind and view their role as that of liberators of their brethren from prolonged Russian oppression. The Turks and the Iranians (Persians) have also been historical rivals in the region, and that rivalry has in recent years been revived, with Turkey projecting the image of a modern and secular alternative to the Iranian concept of an Islamic society.

Although each of the three can be said to seek at least a sphere of influence, in the case of Russia, Moscow’s ambitions have a much broader sweep because of the relatively fresh memories of imperial control, the presence in the area of several million Russians, and the Kremlin’s desire to reinstate Russia as a major global power. Moscow’s foreign policy statements have made it plain that it views the entire space of the former Soviet Union as a zone of the Kremlin’s special geostrategic interest, from which outside political—and even economic—influence should be excluded.

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 position.

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

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:

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 of Ukraine and Uzbekistan even engaged in the highly symbolic act of issuing a declaration, demanding that henceforth CIS summits not be chaired by Russia’s president but that the chairmanship be rotated.

The example set by Ukraine and Uzbekistan has had an impact even on the leaders who have been more deferential to Moscow’s central concerns. The Kremlin must have been especially disturbed to hear Kazakstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev and Georgia’s Eduard Shevardnadze declare in September 1996 that they would leave the CIS “if our independence is threatened.” More generally, as a counter to the CIS, the Central Asian states and Azerbaijan stepped up their level of activity in the Organization of Economic Cooperation, a still relatively loose association of the region’s Islamic states—including Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan—dedicated to the enhancement of financial, economic, and transportation links among its members. Moscow has been publicly critical of these initiatives, viewing them, quite correctly, as diluting the pertinent states’ membership in the CIS.

In a similar vein, there has been steady enhancement of ties with Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Iran. The Turkic-speaking countries have eagerly accepted Turkey’s offers of military training for the new national officer corps and the laying down of the Turkish welcome mat for some ten thousand students. The fourth summit meeting of the Turkic-speaking countries, held in Tashkent in October 1996 and prepared with Turkish backing, focused heavily on the enhancement of transportation links, on increased trade, and also on common educational standards as well as closer cultural cooperation with Turkey. Both Turkey and Iran have been particularly active in assisting the new states with their television programming, thereby directly influencing large audiences.

A ceremony in Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakstan, in December 1996 was particularly symbolic of Turkey’s identification with the independence of the region’s states. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Kazakstan’s independence, the Turkish president, Suleyman Demirel, stood at the side of President Nazarbayev at the unveiling of a gold-colored column twenty-eight meters high, crowned with a legendary Kazak/Turkic warrior’s figure atop a griffinlike creature. At the event, Kazakstan hailed Turkey for “standing by Kazakstan at every step of its development as an independent state,” and the Turks reciprocated by granting Kazakstan a credit line of $300 million, beyond existing private Turkish investment of about $1.2 billion.

While neither Turkey nor Iran has the means to exclude Russia from regional influence, Turkey and (more narrowly) Iran have thus been reinforcing the will and the capacity of the new states to resist reintegration with their northern neighbor and former master. And that certainly helps to keep the region’s geopolitical future open.

NEITHER DOMINION NOR EXCLUSION

The geostrategic implications for America are clear: America is too distant to be dominant in this part of Eurasia but too powerful not to be engaged. All the states in the area view American engagement as necessary to their survival. Russia is too weak to regain imperial domination over the region or to exclude others from it, but it is also too close and too strong to be excluded. Turkey and Iran are strong enough to be influential, but their own vulnerabilities could make the area unable to cope with both the challenge from the north and the region’s internal conflicts. China is too powerful not to be feared by Russia and the Central Asian states, yet its very presence and economic dynamism facilitates Central Asia’s quest for wider global outreach.

It follows that America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it. Geopolitical pluralism will become an enduring reality only when a network of pipeline and transportation routes links the region directly to the major centers of global economic activity via the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas, as well as overland. Hence, Russian efforts to monopolize access need to be opposed as inimical to regional stability.

However, the exclusion of Russia from the area is neither desirable nor feasible, nor is the fanning of hostility between the area’s new states and Russia. In fact, Russia’s active economic participation in the region’s development is essential to the area’s stability—and having Russia as a partner, but not as an exclusive dominator, can also reap significant economic benefits as a result. Greater stability and increased wealth within the region would contribute directly to Russia’s well-being and give real meaning to the “commonwealth” promised by the acronym CIS. But that cooperative option will become Russia’s policy only when much more ambitious, historically anachronistic designs that are painfully reminiscent of the original Balkans are effectively precluded.

The states deserving America’s strongest geopolitical support are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and (outside this region) Ukraine, all three being geopolitically pivotal. Indeed, Kiev’s role reinforces the argument that Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia’s own future evolution is concerned. At the same time, Kazakstan—given its size, economic potential, and geographically important location—is also deserving of prudent international backing and especially of sustained economic assistance. In time, economic growth in Kazakstan might help to bridge the ethnic split that makes this Central Asian “shield” so vulnerable to Russian pressure.

In this region, America shares a common interest not only with a stable, pro-Western Turkey but also with Iran and China. A gradual improvement in American-Iranian relations would greatly increase global access to the region and, more specifically, reduce the more immediate threat to Azerbaijan’s survival. China’s growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area’s independence are also congruent with America’s interests. China’s backing of Pakistan’s efforts in Afghanistan is also a positive factor, for closer Pakistani-Afghan relations would make international access to Turkmenistan more feasible, thereby helping to reinforce both that state and Uzbekistan (in the event that Kazakstan were to falter).

Turkey’s evolution and orientation are likely to be especially decisive for the future of the Caucasian states. If Turkey sustains its path to Europe—and if Europe does not close its doors to Turkey—the states of the Caucasus are also likely to gravitate into the European orbit, a prospect they fervently desire. But if Turkey’s Europeanization grinds to a halt, for either internal or external reasons, then Georgia and Armenia will have no choice but to adapt to Russia’s inclinations. Their future will then become a function of Russia’s own evolving relationship with the expanding Europe, for good or ill.

Iran’s role is likely to be even more problematic. A return to a pro-Western posture would certainly facilitate the stabilization and consolidation of the region, and it is therefore strategically desirable for America to encourage such a turn in Iran’s conduct. But until that happens, Iran is likely to play a negative role, adversely affecting Azerbaijan’s prospects, even as it takes positive steps like opening Turkmenistan to the world and, despite Iran’s current fundamentalism, reinforcing the Central Asians’ sense of their religious heritage.

Ultimately, Central Asia’s future is likely to be shaped by an even more complex set of circumstances, with the fate of its states determined by the intricate interplay of Russian, Turkish, Iranian, and Chinese interests, as well as by the degree to which the United States conditions its relations with Russia on Russia’s respect for the independence of the new states. The reality of that interplay precludes either empire or monopoly as a meaningful goal for any of the geostrategic players involved. Rather, the basic choice is between a delicate regional balance—which would permit the gradual inclusion of the area in the emerging global economy while the states of the region consolidate themselves and probably also acquire a more pronounced Islamic identity—or ethnic conflict, political fragmentation, and possibly even open hostilities along Russia’s southern frontiers. The attainment and consolidation of that regional balance has to be a major goal in any comprehensive U.S. geostrategy for Eurasia.