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presence with great distrust and would welcome U.S. withdrawal and can support Taliban if Taliban assures them not to support militant or separatist groups. India would try to convince U.S. to continue to make presence but would also try to influence current ruling setup with the help of Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan group but if this equation would not be possible, India may also support Taliban participation in government if Taliban assure not to provide any support to anti-Indian elements on Afghan soil. Turkey may emerge a facilitator with the help of Pakistan and Iran. U.S. would also welcome Turkey's engagement.
"Rossiisky akademichesky zhurnal," Moscow, 2013, No 1, January - March.
S. Nikolayev
Political analyst
DILEMMA OF "VALUES AND INTERESTS" IN
U.S. POLICY IN CENTRAL ASIA
Today, the geopolitical map of the Central Asian region is distinguished by enviable variety. It is in the focus of attention of many influential world players.
Russia holds traditionally firm positions in Central Asia. China is strengthening its positions in it. The European Union carries on its own strategy of "new partnership" in the region. The mechanism of "Dialogue Japan - Central Asia" is also working. Apart from that, Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, and a number of Arab countries are actively developing cooperation with Central Asian countries.
Such powerful country as the United States is not standing on the side of this process. It is striving to expand political and economic ties
with Central Asian countries and interacts with them on the questions of ensuring security in the region. Cooperation with a view to solving a whole range of problems connected with a settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan has acquired a special significance.
In the first half of the 1990s Central Asia was not viewed by Washington as a zone of well-formulated American interests.
From about 1995 the political course of the United States towards Central Asia began to change. This was due to the impact of a whole number of different factors. The "inclination" of Russian foreign policy toward the preferential development of connections with the West began to balance. On September 14, 1995, the then President B. Yeltsin endorsed the "Strategic course of Russia to states - participants in the Community of Independent States." In accordance with it, the strengthening of Russia as the leading force in the formation of a new system of interstate, political and economic relations in the post-Soviet Union area was proclaimed the main task of Russian policy in the CIS. This was interpreted by the United States administration as a manifestation of "neo-imperial ambitions."
As a result, at the beginning of the second term of Bill Clinton's presidency in 1997 a new sphere of tension between Washington and Moscow emerged in the former Soviet republics. From that time on, it is possible to speak of the transfer of the American administration to rivalry with Russia for influence in Central Asia.
During President Clinton's stay in the White House the "democratization" and "human-rights-protection" components of the U.S. policy in Central Asia noticeably strengthened. Various forms of economic and financial assistance to the states in the region were tied up, in one way or another, with the progress they reached in these spheres. In view of the fact that progress in these spheres was assessed as insufficient, the volumes of real American assistance were
comparatively small. Thus the dilemma of "values and interests" characteristic of the entire foreign-policy strategy of Washington in Central Asia at the time was solved in favor of universal values. Taking into account local specific features, this reduced the force of attraction of American policy. Time will show how this dilemma will continue to influence the U.S. relations with Central Asian countries, presupposing its inevitable "ups" and "downs."
The tragic events of September 11, 2001, served as a powerful catalyst of the sharply growing attention to the Central Asian region which was in the forefront of the fight against terrorism. These events led to an essential reappraisal by Washington of the place of Central Asia in the system of its foreign-policy priorities, inasmuch as it acquired crucial importance for the operations in Afghanistan.
The United States received real opportunity for broadening its cooperation with the states of Central Asia.
The military campaign for combating and destroying terrorists in Afghanistan, whose rear support was coming from Central Asia, forced the United States to tackle the problems of ensuring stability in the region very seriously. In 2002 - 2003 Washington actively developed cooperation with the countries of the region in the sphere of defense, and political relations were also developing quite well (except with Turkmenistan).
It was at that time that the period of U.S. certain distancing from Central Asian affairs came to an end. The White House policy in the region became more dynamic and energetic, which gave grounds to some American experts to call it "aggressive realism." Central Asia was not regarded as Russia's "backyard" any longer, but had definite significance for Washington now. In the view of Professor Charles Zigler of Louisville University (U.S.A.), the U.S. government under President Bill Clinton and President George Bush, Jr. had to work a
great deal, trying to combine its efforts in order to draw Central Asian countries in cooperation on the problems of security with bringing pressure to bear on them in the sphere of human rights and economic and political reforms. In doing this, approaches and methods of the Department of State and the Secretariat for Defense did not coincide. The former believed that assistance to the development of democracy in the region was more important precisely at the time when the region was in the forefront of the fight against terrorism. The Department of State programs were aimed at supporting and financing political pluralism, the independent mass media, , supremacy of law, and religious freedom. Its reports on the human rights situation in Central Asian countries were full of harsh criticism, whereas the military paid attention primarily to cooperation with them in the sphere of security and tried to tone down critical remarks of diplomats. Professor Zigler believes that the U.S. administration, either republican or democratic, will hardly be able to reconcile contradictions between the requirements to ensure security and desire to follow the ideals of democracy and human rights, all the more so since this conflict existed long before the beginning of the fight against terrorism.
In 2003-2005 the United States tried to extricate itself from the most difficult situation in the following way. It took the thesis that success of American policy in the region would depend primarily on the development of democracy as the basis there. This was why it was decided to step up democratic processes in Central Asian republics. Simultaneously, it was stated that these processes would strengthen regional security and yield greater results of the struggle with the international terrorist network in Afghanistan.
The well-known Russian scholar Gennady Chufrin notes that western countries headed by the United States and inspired by the "color revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine tried to use discontent of
the broad masses of the population in Central Asia caused by their poor living conditions for changing the existing ruling regimes to openly pro-western ones under democratic slogans.
Experienced political analysts from the leading American government and public bodies specializing in the popularization of democratic values all over the world have been drawn to the implementation of this task.
In March 2005, as a result of the "tulip revolution" President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, who was considered by Washington an exemplary liberal leader, was overthrown.
Soon after that, in May 2005, mass disorders broke out in Andizhan, the Uzbek part of the Ferghana Valley. The rebels connected with the Islamist "Akramiya" organization, seized arms and hostages. The authorities of Uzbekistan had to use military force to suppress the revolt and restore law and order.
The events in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have confirmed that challenges to stability in the region come not only from Islamic extremism and international terrorism, but also from the United States which stepped on the path of exporting democracy and directly assisting "color revolutions." This has caused justified alarm in the ruling elites of Central Asian countries.
Certain leading U.S. research centers have worked out the concept of "Greater Central Asia" at the time. It presupposed the formation of a uniform area of Central and South Asia, which would include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Much has already been said and written about this concept. We shall now dwell on the point of view of the authors of the book entitled "Years That Changed Central Asia," which came off the press in Moscow in 2009. They maintain that the United States needs Greater
Central Asia not so much for developing democracy as for completely controlling all economic and political processes in the region without interference on the part of other actors, such as Russia and China, or international organizations such as CSTO and SCO. Meanwhile, the democratization of Central Asia by western standards resulted in lowering their economic performance, inasmuch as the transit economies of the countries of the region require other measures and approaches.
In our view, several key aspects can be singled out with regard to the situation in and prospects for Central Asia.
Within the framework of the "aggressive realism" doctrine Washington proved unable to resolve the dilemma of "values and interests." The priorities of U.S. policy in Central Asia have constantly been changed, which prevented to create their clear-cut hierarchy. The question remained open as to what the United States valued most of all: energy resources or military presence and cooperation in the sphere of security, or transparency of elections and freedom of the mass media. Meanwhile, as long as discussions were taking place overseas about Moscow's weakness in the region, it suddenly became clear that Russia became a member of such integration structures as EuroAsEC, CSTO and SCO. Besides, the United States has no mechanism for interaction with Central Asian countries on a permanent basis. The course to speedy democratization of the countries of the region has not proved viable because it did not take into account their age-old traditions and world outlook. Oriental societies have always been distinguished by gradual and slow changes.
"VestnikMoskovskogo Universiteta," Series 12.
"Politicheskiye nauki," Moscow, 2012, No 3, pp 84-88.
