Alexander Cooley, professor of political science at Barnard College, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, in an interview for CABAR.asia spoke about the evolution of foreign policy of Central Asian countries; the problems and challenges these countries will face in the near future and why the United States should not get involved in a new competition of great powers in the region.
CABAR.asia: Over the past 30 years, the countries of Central Asia as a whole have demonstrated what they represent. How do you think they will develop further?
Of course, it is difficult to predict, but we can think a little bit about the pathway that they’ve taken and some of the key points of evolution. I think it is fair to say that in the 1990s, all of the countries were consumed with problems of state-building and nationhood, creating individual institutions, functioning governments, bureaucracies, coping with and repurposing the Soviet legacy, finding their way in terms of foreign affairs. The 1990s were very difficult in terms of transition but foreign policy was not the intense priority that it would become later.
In the 2000s, the golden era of Central Asian foreign policy began and a concept that is developed out of th region thar we now refer to as “multi-vectorism”. So after the United States became involved in the war in Afghanistan, almost overnight you had a very dramatic change in the region’s geopolitics. The presence of the United States and NATO in the region, in terms of its military bases and access agreements but just, in general, its involvement in Afghanistan changed the complexion of the region.
It also prompted China and Russia to either mimic or speed up their methods of engagement. So in the Russian case, Vladimir Putin had wanted to become closer to Central Asia, even as soon as 2000, he wanted to resurrect security cooperation, create new regional economic architectures. China began engaging with the region in the late 1990s – 2000s. But don’t forget in the year 2000 Chinese total trade with the region was still less than a billion dollars both ways. It was very low. So the 2000s is really when China’s economic engagement took off.
The 2000s were all about intensifying Central Asia’s relations and partnerships with the outside world. Whether it was with these regional initiatives that Russia had, military cooperation and assistance with the United States and the West, or whether it was these increasing Chinese investments and also various economic infrastructure projects like gas pipelines and highways.
Now, all of the Central Asian countries played a version of this multi-vector balance. They played it in different ways, but they all wanted to keep different options open and maintain healthy relationships with external powers. I would say that this period ends in about 2014, and it ends because the United States formally leaves Kyrgyzstan. There is also a perception that the United States is going to leave the region as a result of the announced withdrawal from Afghanistan. Perhaps no one predicted the way in which the Afghan government would be collapsed seven years later, but that is maybe a follow-up question.
But both Russia and China intensified their dealings after 2014: Russia, as a result of what happened in Crimea as a result of the Maidan protetss and regime collapse in Ukraine; China, as a result of the Belt and Road Initiative. Now, of course, there are other sources of engagement: Japan wanting to counter Chinese infrastructure initiatives, South Korea, and what they’re doing through business and co-ethnic communtiies in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan is very important. The Europeans are still engaged. But my overall point is that in terms of the balance, there’s much more intensification of Russian and Chinese interests over the last 10 years than there was before.
So I think although all of the countries would still like to practice multi-vectorism, only some have the resources to be able to do it. So for instance, Uzbekistan is in a better position to be able to do it and it has been quite skillfully playing partners. Kyrgyzstan is more challenged because of its very close relationships with Russia and also the migration patterns that you see in both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
So what does this mean looking forward? It means, I think that Central Asian governments will always be on the lookout for new partners. They can’t change their geographies, so I think there is a resignation to the accommodation of China. For instance, those in the West who say we should be involved in Central Asia to try and help them balance against China, that’s just silly. China has borders with most of the Central Asian states – three out of five of them, and it’s got very close economic relations, a relationship almost of economic dependency with Turkmenistan. So the Chinese vector is there to stay. I think the challenge is how can the Central Asian governments try and use this Chinese economic engagement for their interests and also try and leverage a few issues that they care about when dealing with Beijing. But there’s no prospect of being able to compete against China. China will be in Central Asia for the longterm, very similar to Russia.
The Russian relationship as we know- it’s historical, but I think as a result also of what has happened in Afghanistan, Russia wants to reassert itself as the security guarantor in the region. So you see attempts to not only to expand the Russian military presence and CSTO bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but all also talk of trying to bring Russian border cooperation back with Uzbekistan back and Turkmenistan. So I think Afghanistan gives Russia the reason to once again be highly engaged in security affairs with Central Asia.
But I do think it’s important to realize these countries are much more globalized than they were in the past. There are additional vectors that are critical. One that we should mention is the Gulf and the Gulf states – the financing that comes from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar. There are also significant financial flows that get routed through these areas too.
Do the problems of the region as a whole coincide with the country’s problems or are there specificities for each country? What are they?
Yeah, I think there are specific variations. We talked for instance on the climate front. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan are especially vulnerable given their mix of very high areas without melting mountains, glaciers and also the importance of eroding arable land and rural areas there.
I also think that economic profile matters. For instance, you will see a lot increasing pressure on a country like Turkmenistan to economically diversify. The Turkmen authorities have for the longest time wanted to just rely on potential sales and natural gas revenues as a way sort of feeding the patronage machine. But it’s unclear whether that is actually sustainable as an economic paradigm. At some point, there has to be some sort of diversification of what they’re doing and revenue sources.
I also think when you look at demographic patterns, out-migration has also tended to come from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and also Uzbekistan to Russia and, increasingly, Kazakhstan.
One interesting nuance when we look at Kazakhstan is going to be the relationship between Kazakhstan within the country and Kazakhstan outside the country. And I won’t call them exiles because they’re not, there are of course some political opponents in exile, who self-style themselves as opposition figures and democrats. But I refer to the dual national Kazakhs and their families who have done very well for themselves, who live in places like London, New York, Switzerland and can move back and forth. Do they return, play a serious role in the future of Kazakhstan or do they stay put because it’s too politically volatile?
I think that’s critical to Kazakhstan’s future, in the same way that the Uzbek diaspora I think is quite important for Uzbekistan. There are now millions of Uzbeks living abroad. I believe there are about 50,000 Uzbeks or Uzbek origin citizens in New York City. So the question is do they reengage with the homeland and how? Does it become a kind of Armenian situation when Armenians came back to Armenia put of a sense of national duty for an extended period to help their country, etс? Islam Karimov, when he was president, saw the Uzbek diasporas as threats. He did everything he could to sort of cut off ties and discredit them. The current government is much more welcoming, there are regular channels, open meetings contacts, but after an initial sort of excitement, it’s not clear what the sustained engagement is going to be.
Researchers predict further rapid population growth in the region, while it is expected to reduce land and water resources, further increase in the shortage of jobs. Is it possible to predict conflicts within countries and between countries in the region for the above reasons? Do governments have the potential to adequately respond to these challenges?
I do think that while it’s hard to speculate what the hotspot for conflicts are going to be, but we can predict that we’re going to see a tension between the population’s need for out migration and the authorities’ desire to control the border and regional flows. One of the things I found in my research is that despite talks of regional cooperation and all of these different and many times externally imposed cooperation plans (New Silk Road, Belt and Road Initiative), regional mobility and formal trade are still very low from a global perspective in Central Asia.
It’s been getting a little better especially from the Uzbek perspective, which is the key when you look at Uzbekistan’s central position within the region and the importance of those border crossings. However, we are in an era exacerbated with a pandemic where border controls, migration, passports are now critical again. Authorities have to come up with some sort of safety valve, engage in serious strategic planning to allow the mobility of citizens. Now, who’s going to take them is a different story. We’re still going to have a labor shortage in Russia. So those opportunities should still be there.
But I also think that you’ll increasingly start to see also economic opportunities in Xinjiang. There is complexity there with what’s going on in Xinjiang, but there’s also kind of a class dimension here. If you’re educated, if your family is wealthy, then you will have options to pursue in different global settings, including the West. If not, your best bet is maybe to try and get to Kashgar or try and play a role in one of these kinds of Chinese economic megaprojects that will bring skills and experience.
So I think controlling and directing migration now and flows is perhaps the most important policy challenge facing these countries, but everywhere in the world, not just in Central Asia. In the last two years, we’ve seen the opposite: we’ve seen the reprioritization, the hardening of borders, state control surveillance, implementing new biometric kinds of technologies. That is likely to cut down on the informal crossings that we use to have. So it’s all related. At the time in which technologies control the border are actually the most effective they have ever been, the need to traverse borders is also becoming quite pressing now.
Will Russia (or China) keep its economic, military, political and humanitarian influence at the current level in the region in the next 30 years? Which countries will push this situation out?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, there is a wealth of interest in the country from different groups and networks from specific countries. So Turkey, for instance, will remain heavily engaged, particularly in areas like the construction sector and, of course, in some parts of the higher education sector. There is substantial and organic cooperation there that’s not going away.
I do think that the shift eastwards is real. I do think that ties to the Gulf as well as Japan and Korea are going to continue to increase within these different sort of spaces and pockets, diaspora and co-ethnic ethnic communities.
But we need to be careful about the inevitability of certain forms of engagement. So when I hear that India is going be a massive player in the region in 20-30 years, well, maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But let’s face it: Indian trade with Central Asia is 2-5% of what Chinese trade is. So they’re not really competing. They’re not even the same kind of magnitude. There are a lot of barriers to more Indian involvement in the region. Now perhaps Afghanistan gives a renewed impetus for this kind of cooperation to Delhi. A similar argument to be made with Iran. The Central Asian states have always been distrustful of Iran, though are likely to support Iran’s bid to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Dushanbe’s relations with Tehran have gone up and down, it’s a little bit better lately. It is not at all clear what the areas of cooperation are in part, because both neither Iran nor India are providing the types of unique investments that the Central Asian states can’t get from elsewhere. So for instance, in the construction sector, Iranian firms can’t out-compete Chinese firms. The same with Indian energy projects, they tend to be outcompeted and outbid by China that can leverage more pressure to award Chinese firms tenders. So I would question this idea that inevitably we will see comprehensive regional development. Who knows, I just don’t see it in the sectoral patterns so far.
Meaningful regional integration would help solve some problems, not all of them. But if we can get to the stage that it’s not viewed as sort of foreign imposition, that we can achieve more regional liberalization in terms of investment, migration, temporary work visas.
But I think we’re still ways away. I don’t think this is inevitable. I think we need to get through this bout of internal kind of nationalism first. I suppose when thinking about the US, and whether the US will be involved, I think they say that they’re going to be involved, but I don’t know what that means in practice. I don’t know what that means in terms of aid budgets, security partnership, people flows. You still have certain niche areas in which the US is very active – education and professional standard-setting, for instance, across the region, but you can’t say that the US is a prime economic investor.
Do you think the US will reassess its strategy on Central Asia after the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
I think it already has. The USA will want to remain engaged. But the problem with the US is now it is its strategic concept, the idea of “great power” or “strategic” competition. We’ve moved from 20 years of the global war on terror, which justified engagement with Central Asia, to now an era of great power competition. So my fear is that engagement with Central Asia will be framed once again, as competing with China and Russia. I think that would be a mistake. The US needs to be engaged and selectively involved, but it can’t start doing something just because China is there. As I said before, I don’t think you can outcompete China. This is China’s neighborhood and these are Chinese borders. The worst thing that we could do is have Washington put pressure on Central Asian policymakers to act provocatively towards China.
So I think there’s a desire to remain engaged, I just don’t see what the compelling reason is to make the case to lawmakers and policymakers who are tiring of external commitments and that’s the problem. With Afghanistan, you had a reason and, of ocurse, we used to criticize Washington because it only cared about Central Asia because of Afghanistan, which happened to be true. American officials would be like “no, we care about Central Asia, their development, sovereignty, independence, etc.” Now absent in Afghanistan, it’s not at all clear what the rationale is. I’m very much in favor of keeping instruments, like Central Asia C5+1 forum and vaccine diplomacy. All these things I think are good and helpful and certainly keeping student visas open to allow young Central Asians to pursue studies and opportunities. That’s the best thing we can possibly do. But the alternative, which is a geopolitically based kind of strategizing, I don’t think would be very beneficial to Central Asia as a whole.
Are the CA countries keeping up with world processes in the economy, education, in socio-cultural aspects? Considering the current processes in the region and the world, how do you see the countries of Central Asia in a couple of decades?
I don’t think the world is globalizing anymore in the same way as it was in the 1990s or 2000s. I think the world is becoming more insular. It’s de-globalizing, possibly becoming more regionalized.
One of the things that pandemic has shown a light on is public health capacity. Can you deliver basic services like testing and sfaety protocols or improitant medical goods like vaccines? What are your COVID rates? Some Central Asian countries have done a little bit better than others, but the denialism that you saw in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan initially undoubtedly cost thousands of lives. But I do think that there is less of an inevitably globalizing ideal than there used to be.
I think the biggest asset that Central Asia that countries and the people have is this openness to different sort of cross-influences – whether it’s legal standards, languages, social media, culture, values and national origins. We talk about Central Asia as a crossroads and most of the time I don’t know what that actually means. But I do think this is a place where different influences and ideas and hopefully opportunities circulate. Especially Central Asian young people are open and fluid in their understanding of different identities and global spaces. How do things work here? How do I adjust or position myself? They are always sort of figuring out. That kind of flexibility, that kind of adaptability is I think a real asset going forward. In this world of hybrid influences, Central Asia is quite well-positioned to be able to harness what’s going on in China, Korea, Europe, Russia, etc, and hopefully, take the best from each place. At least that would be the ideal.