How has the war in Ukraine transformed the security landscape in the post-Soviet space, particularly in Central Asia? What new developments are we witnessing in the energy security domain, and how will they change the region? These questions to Ambassador Dr Thomas Greminger, Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) He is sharing his views on the changing security situation in Central Asia and beyond exclusively for CABAR.asia.
Thomas Greminger is a Swiss diplomat. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Zurich. He has authored a number of publications on military history, conflict management, peacekeeping, development and human rights. Greminger served as Secretary-General for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe from July 2017 to July 2020. Since May 2021, he has been the Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Central Asia (CA) traditionally has not been on the primary radar of great and emerging powers. Instead, the region has been seen predominantly through the lens of the Afghan problem or any other challenge, but not as an autonomous self-sufficing entity. Is this state of affairs changing in 2023 in light of growing interest from China, Russia, EU, Turkey and even India, which are reconsidering their approaches?
If you had looked at the world through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) lens, you would have had Central Asia, not exclusively through the Afghanistan issue only. I perceive Central Asia as a region that is becoming more relevant, more dynamic, and more interested in regional cooperation. For instance, I have been in all five countries in my previous function as the OSCE head. And in the eyes of major stakeholders, CA’s role is seen to be more important and a general trend over the last decade. In this sense, the ongoing war in Ukraine only reinforced that trend. The interest of the American administration, the EU, the EU’s Special Representative especially, who has been allocating more and more resources, political attention, the interest in the ‘C5+1’ both by the Americans and by Brussels more recently – these are the trends we have seen even before the war.
The war has reinforced political competition, and the perception is that Russia is now weakened and distracted by the war. At the same time, I see contradictory trends – on the one hand, I see Russia wanting to keep Central Asia within its orbit politically. High Russian officials’ unprecedented number of visits during the year the region is a clear sign of that. The trade is increasing, as is the volume of remittances coming from Russia. So, the effect of sanctions was to intensify the economic relations between the region and Russia. But at the same time, Central Asian states have distanced themselves from Russia, from the war against Ukraine, nor any of the five has supported the war.
Central Asian states more or less follow Western sanctions. CA leaders at least implicitly criticised the war. They allowed demonstrations in their countries, less so in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, but, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, two major states of the region, distanced themselves.
It is also worth noting that Russia’s big integration projects have suffered major setbacks – both CSTO and the EEU. After the relatively successful January intervention of the CSTO forces in Kazakhstan, a dream scenario for the CSTO, there was a decline – the October exercises were called off in Kyrgyzstan. There is now a clear distancing from the CSTO by its CA members. As for the Eurasian Economic Union, there was a good chance for Uzbekistan to join, which is now completely off the table. So politically, Russia is losing its grip on the region. Its soft power is dissipating. So, to reiterate, on the one hand, there is an intensifying economic relationship between Moscow and Central Asian capitals, at least for the time being. But the main question is, what would be the medium-term perspective? For instance, the World Bank forecasts a decrease in remittances in the future, which is quite interesting. But at the same time, we have seen quite an increase instead, so we will have to see. Also, international financial institutions are relatively skeptical about the war’s unpredictability to international economic relations and investments. We also need to consider the long-term economic impacts of sanctions on the Russian economy, which will have its toll on Central Asia.
On the contrary, Turkish opposition leaders have a different view of their country’s strategy toward Central Asia. But CA is a traditional proponent of multivector foreign policy, so the region is interested in balancing different partners, not just two ‘biggies’, Russia and China. How much Central Asia, beyond politics, takes advantage of its multivectorism though, remains a question.
How do you see the war impacting the security infrastructure of the Central Asian region, given the recent news about Tajikistan’s new Military Doctrine adoption and revision of Kazakhstan’s Concept of National Security? What lessons have the CA regimes learned from the Ukrainian events that they considerably amended their fundamental security documents? What, in your opinion, caused the rapprochement between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which recently announced the establishment of “allied relations”?
The pattern here is relatively clear.
I think CA states came to the conclusion that they need to be more self-reliant. And we should also not ignore China’s increasingly assertive stance toward the region. Some ten years ago, China’s topic was not comparable to what we observe now.
However, there is also an enhanced interest in regional economic and even military cooperation. And let us face it – there is a huge potential for Central Asian cooperation. There have been some leap stories over the past years, but the biggest boost so far has been triggered by the political transition in Uzbekistan. This gave a big boost to regional cooperation. Two rivals in the region – Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – are partnering much more closely is a reflection of their common threat perceptions. I was talking to the Kazakh security experts lately, who told me there is a question, ‘Are we going to be next?’ in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This question was unthinkable even two years ago. So, this has dramatically changed. Again, as I said before, the listed trends were, to some extent, visible before, but the war intensified them. Particularly regarding the security policies of the CA states and their threat perception, which changed quite radically.
Please, share your vision of China’s role in the regional security of the Central Asian countries, taking into account the military base in Tajikistan, the supply of arms through humanitarian aid, and the foundation of the quadripartite format – China – Tajikistan – Pakistan – Afghanistan. China is already actively creating institutional structures to support CA’s regional security. Will this trend intensify against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, and will the region’s countries be interested in such cooperation?
I do not see China as the main security guarantor for the Central Asian region. The main driver of the Chinese policies toward the region is economical. And everything else comes much later. However, China is becoming more interested in the region’s other dimensions, and the military base you mentioned is one indication of that. I think CA states are relatively wary – on the one hand, they see China as a potential security provider in the logic of a multivector foreign policy, where you would avoid being dependent on one power. And China’s readiness to engage in security might come in handy. But at the same time, there is a mutual awareness between Russia and China. For me, a bigger question is – do Russia’s presence and capabilities to project military power in the region invite China to also be present in the region? Is it a complementary approach in the framework of a strategic partnership between the powers? I tend to believe that China is potentially deeply interested in exerting more influence on the security policy of the region, but the main driver is still economical. And China has a lot on its plate at the moment, so it cannot simply redirect major resources to CA, which is just one of many constraints.
And one remark on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). I was observing SCO’s work quite closely because of my work as a Secretary General of the OSCE. And I was encouraged to intensify dialogue and cooperation with the SCO. And I think, while the organisation is a politically very visible regional actor, it is essentially absent when it comes to a concrete impact on the ground. There is an Office to combat terrorism in Tashkent (The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) Executive Committee, headquartered in Tashkent) that has some practical repercussions – they are doing some valuable solid work. So there is a discrepancy between the high-level meetings and summits on various levels, but what is really happening on the ground? Just look at the structure of the Secretariat and its capacities – both are very limited. I regularly tried to cooperate with the SCO, but it was very challenging work because the decision-making procedures were complicated, and there were few resources in the Secretariat. So at the end of the day, beyond some workshops and seminars and joint capacity building in combating terrorism and violent extremism, there was nothing substantial.
Let’s discuss energy security to move away a bit from the ‘hard’ security issues. Central Asia is rich in energy resources – fossils, nuclear, and renewables. Yet, this winter, we witnessed a considerable energy crisis in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The experts say this crisis will seriously impact the ruling regimes in the mid-term. At the same time, Europe is highly interested in Central Asia’s energy potential, having been a stable investor in the energy sector. How do you see this discrepancy, where on the one hand, the regimes are doing poorly in providing their public with stable energy during the critical winter time and, on the other, going overboard to aid the EU’s growing energy needs?
Let us differentiate two things in the question – energy security worldwide and energy security domestically. The war in Ukraine triggers energy insecurity in the world, and Central Asia is no exception. Taking advantage of the high prices benefits some of the region’s economies. Speaking economically, there will always be winners and losers. The fossil-exporting economies of Central Asia are winners because Europe needs alternative energy sources and wants to move away from Russian gas. Of course, delivering more energy from the CA to the EU takes a huge amount of investment into infrastructure and time.
The other issue is providing public goods for the people. An obvious answer is that there is a lack of accountability pressure in the region. In democracies, if you want to get re-elected, you better provide the expected services to your population. Hence the pressure in an authoritarian system is less. We know in terms of democracy, Central Asia is a bit complicated region. The long-term trend in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is positive. Turkmenistan is still a closed authoritarian system. Kyrgyzstan has a vibrant civil society but is unstable. Formerly, it was the most democratic, but as we have seen, it can be changed relatively easily, so we will have to see how the Kyrgyz democracy will evolve. Tajikistan is somewhere in between – still relatively authoritarian, I would argue. So very different trajectories. And the levels of accountability by the Central Asian governments to their people differ. This would be my explanation.
The region is famous for being at the bottom of rankings of rights and freedoms annually. Even Kyrgyzstan is now experiencing severe democratic backsliding, where the incumbent regime persecutes activists, jails journalists, and strips them of citizenship. Other Central Asian regimes are consolidated autocracies that routinely violate the human rights of their citizens. In this vein, what are the prospects for democratic growth in Central Asia? Are there enough sources for that within Central Asian civil societies? Why, despite 30 years of support in building democratic reforms, do they not take root qualitatively?
This may sound a bit simplistic, but in all those countries, the ruling elites have been shaped by the Soviet system. Now slowly and slowly, new generations are coming to power, and there is a certain level of emancipation. The transition from Nazarbayev to Tokayev is one illustration of that. But it is very slow and gradual.
I am relatively optimistic regarding Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. I witnessed the transition in Uzbekistan, which is still ways from a full democracy. But there has been a major opening as compared to the Karimov regime. President Mirziyoyev and his team came to understand that for their country to have economic growth of significance, there needs to be the rule of law in place. If the rule of law is in place, you need to respect human rights to an extent. This also has a bearing on democratic institutions and accountability and the interlink between the two. President Mirziyoyev is not inspired by the Chinese model. He is trying to conceive an ‘Uzbek model’ that is something in between. So far, even the trend has not been entirely positive, but if we compare it to before and after, I am relatively optimistic.
Regarding Kyrgyzstan, there is a vibrant civil society, but the system has not been particularly stable in general. So, this instability is a risk factor for democratic institutions. It makes them particularly vulnerable to populism.
We covered Turkmenistan earlier. In my conversations with the former Turkmen president, I tried to present him the Uzbek example of a ‘controlled opening’. I got the impression that he became interested, but we have not seen any moves in that direction. Now we have to see if the current president, whom I knew as a Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, if he dares and if he has a margin for moving into some opening steps or not.
And in Tajikistan, we will have to see what the transition into the post-Rakhmon world brings. Will it bring a positive change? This question remains in the air.
Another domain of security concerns in Central Asia is human security, an overarching concept that includes many aspects such as economic, environmental, personal, food and other types of security. The region has been considerably affected by COVID-19 and other pre-existing threats. How do you see the role of multilateral institutions and development agencies in alleviating the challenging conditions and supporting the human security agenda in the region?
You are right in pointing out the impact of COVID-19, which brought massive ramifications to Central Asians. There is an interest from the side of major multilateral institutions to intensify cooperation. It is difficult to assess the future of it, though, amidst the Ukraine war and its ‘crowding-out’ effect. Ukraine certainly crowds out a lot of resources mainly for relief for the time being and for military support, because the money has to come from somewhere out of the state budget. But then, once we see the reconstruction, will we see an even more massive ‘crowding-out’ effect? How will this affect Central Asia? I am not sure.
At the same time, when I try to look at the last decade’s trends, there has been an increasingly clear interest from organisations such as the European Union to invest heavily in Central Asia. The OSCE, a much smaller player, is still interested in expanding the cooperation. But one of the key constraints was OSCE participating States (pS) not being able to agree on budgets. This transition in Central Asia needed to be perceived more as an opportunity by the Western pS of the OSCE. So I had huge problems mobilising additional funds.
At the same time, if you look at the US resource allocation in Uzbekistan, it went steeply up. Bilateral money is also available for human security purposes writ large. So, again, while I find it difficult to charge the ‘crowding-out’ effect of Ukraine, generally, I see interest from major multilateral institutions investing in Central Asia. And this trend goes hand-in-hand with the opening up of the Central Asian states for cooperation.