Biden Meets With Heads of Central Asian Countries
Washington Throws Its Hat In The Ring To Counterbalance Russia & China
Central Asia is the only region of the world where an American president has never set foot. It is unlikely that Joe Biden will change this, but his meeting with the heads of Central Asian republics on the margins of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly is a truly historic event.
The C5+1 format (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan + the United States), was launched in 2015 under President Obama. It had previously met only at the ministerial level, most recently in Astana in late February this year. The meeting of the five Central Asian (CA) heads of state with the US President in New York demonstrates Washington’s seriousness about the region. In today’s circumstances, this means the United States wants to reduce the balancing power of the Central Asian republics.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 are believed to be the beginning of a serious reflection of American policy in the region. Prior to that, Central Asia was viewed mainly in the context of energy supplies from the Caspian Sea. However, assessments of Central Asia as a grey security zone and a geopolitical vacuum had also appeared in the Washington expert community in the 1990s. The membership of some states of the region in the CSTO and the SCO was considered insufficient to ensure the security of this part of Eurasia. All this, of course, took on new meanings after the United States launched a war against global terrorism first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. The Bush administration began consultations with the Kremlin and negotiations with the leaders of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the use of two military facilities for air bases Karshi-Khanabad and Manas airfields.
The history of the U.S. military presence in Uzbekistan was short-lived. The then President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov not without reason decided that the U.S. had a hand in the protests that swept the country in May 2005, and ordered the cancellation of the agreement on the lease of the airbase. In November of the same year, the last US military aircraft left Karshi.
The U.S. presence in Kyrgyzstan lasted much longer. In the early 2000’s the Kremlin believed that Russia and the U.S. would fight terrorism together, so President Putin gave his blessing to the deployment of the U.S. military at the Manas base. For nearly 14 years, it served as the largest military transport hub for the US and allies in the Afghan campaign. During that time, some 5.3 million Western troops and tens of thousands of military and civilian cargo shipments passed through it. But the deterioration of relations with Washington, accelerated dramatically by Euromaidan, prompted Moscow to reconsider its attitude to the U.S. presence near its borders. As a result, the U.S. left Manas in the summer of 2014. President Obama presented this departure as part of the winding down of the Afghan campaign, saying that it was time to leave. However, after that the U.S. stayed in Afghanistan for nearly ten more years.
To show the local elites that the United States is still interested in the region, the then US Secretary of State, John Kerry went on a tour of Central Asia in 2015. Five years later, Mike Pompeo opened a new page in the history of the states’ exploration of Central Asia. The voyage of the Trump Secretary of State had a pronounced anti-Chinese orientation. But both the agenda with which Pompeo arrived and the pressure with which he promoted it were not to the liking of local foreign policy chiefs.
However, both the visit itself and the Trump administration’s 2015-2019 strategy for Central Asia sent a clear message: the region seems key to Washington in light of the great-power confrontation with China and Russia.
The strategy has since been modified by the Democrats: everything the US wants from the five Central Asian republics can now be found in the Integrated Country Strategies section of the State Department’s website. The objectives presented for each of the countries are even more detailed and broken down into thematic blocks. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are presented there not in the Europe and Eurasia part, but in the South and Central Asia section, which says a lot about the United States goal-setting.
For a long time, the idea of not including Central Asia in the context of confrontation with China and Russia in official papers was discussed in the United States. In the integrated strategies this idea is reflected in the form of the US offering itself as a key partner in developing local economies and democratic institutions, attracting investment and technology, opening markets and other bonuses of friendship. But the leitmotif of all the documents is that the sovereignty of the Central Asian states depends on their ability to guarantee the security and well-being of their citizens without excessive dependence on any external partner. Who exactly is meant by this partner is easy to guess.
Meanwhile, during his visit to Astana, current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a new US approach to Central Asia. According to him, in a situation of strategic competition America sees its task as helping Central Asian governments achieve balance in their relations with external players, rather than choosing sides. In practice, however, the United States pursues a completely different goal.
They are hardly more interested in the region itself than they were in the 1990s or 2000s. But today relations with Russia and China have become tense, and in such conditions Washington cannot give Central Asia to its adversaries. Comprehensive counteraction to Russian, Chinese and (partly) Iranian influence is a long-term priority.
Work in this direction is being carried out on different tracks. Diplomatic: visits of important officials have become more frequent, the C5+1 format is being transferred from the level of foreign ministers to the level of presidents. Military: the withdrawal from Afghanistan has actualised the problem of the US military presence in the heart of Eurasia.
Trade and economic: stimulating alternative trade and investment projects to those of Russia and China, reorienting the region’s transport and communications infrastructure to routes that bypass Russia and Iran, increasing the interconnectedness of Central Asia with South Asia, finding and punishing banks, companies and individuals who help Russian counterparts despite US sanctions, and so on. However such behaviour can be expected to meet resistance from well-established Central Asia trade ties – all have significant bilateral trade ties with Russia and would be unhappy to see that disrupted, especially as trade has boomed since the Ukraine conflict. It is also not seen as a Central Asian issue of concern but rather crude attempts to contain their largest trade partner – Russia.
In terms of the ‘humanitarian’ issue – this direction is most eloquently illustrated by the dynamics and priority areas of funding for the non-governmental sector, including media and human rights organisations, through US government programmes, with particular emphasis on countering mass disinformation.
US Presidential National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan said that “The first C5+1 Presidential summit provides an opportunity to discuss a range of issues from regional security to trade and connectivity, climate change, and ongoing reforms to improve governance and the rule of law.”
In other words, the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, makes it clear that America will take no prisoners in the great-power battle: no one will be able to avoid choosing a side in this conflict, and multi-vectorism will have to be forgotten. Europe has already realised all this and submitted to fate; now it is Central Asia’s turn to make fateful decisions. Source: AsiaIs
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