Russian Geopolitics in Central Asia: Recent Developments
Obtained courtesy of Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons under an Attribution 4.0 International License.
Russia has a long history of involvement in Central Asia, having colonised parts of it as early as the nineteenth century. Still, for years now, the Russian Federation’s power in the area has been melting away. We can observe several different factors at play which are causing this gradual decline.
China
A major challenger to Russian clout in the region has been China. The launch of its One-Belt-One-Road (OBOR) initiative in 2013 included that of the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), a project aimed specifically at Central Asia. Russia’s foreign-policy elite asserted there was no cause for alarm, claiming such infrastructural cooperation would coexist with Russia’s continued control of the region through its function as a provider of security. At the same time, however, Russia shored up its military presence on Central Asia’s periphery, suggesting a perception of threat. China really is unlikely to become engaged in Central Asia militarily, since it follows a doctrine of avoiding all military involvement abroad. However, this is not an entirely positive predicament for Russia. In a way, it amounts to Russia’s maintaining order in the region, partly because its security interests force it to do so, while China takes advantage of a peace to which it does not contribute to gain increasing control over local states’ economies.
One writer suggests that China may partially displace Russia in the region by dominating the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). To an extent, it already does this, and Russia was only temporarily able to stall a shift in the organisation’s focus from security to economic matters. Although it may be argued that military power trumps economic influence, the reason why security provision is so important in the region is its lack of security, which could be alleviated through some development or other. To speculate, China could bankroll military fortification in the Central Asian states, like it already funds infrastructure through OBOR. Still, the Russian public, Russian government officials and pundits cling to a more sympathetic view of China than of the West, and the Russian response to China’s burgeoning pull in Central Asia was kept mild by a cultural indifference towards the region. Military forces created to maintain the peace in this unstable international theatre were relocated west in conjunction with Russia’s escapade in Ukraine. Clearly, Russia has dangerous (for itself) blind spots regarding both China and Central Asia.
Belarus
Recent shifts further jeopardise Russian power over Central Asia. The protests in Belarus remain at boiling point, gravely destabilising the Lukashenko regime. Any, even partial, defection from Russia’s orbit could be assumed to hurt Russia’s credibility as a great power overall, but this seems especially true of Belarus. Zbigniew Brzezinski has argued that, in the long term, Russia will be unable to assert its primacy in Central Asia without controlling Ukraine, the logic being that the Central Asian states will refuse to submit to a Russia which cannot even keep Ukraine at heel. That ship has sailed, but a disloyal Belarus will likely put a greater blemish on Russia’s standing among the post-Soviet states, since the two states had a closer relationship than that of Russia with Ukraine. Furthermore, part of Russia’s power in Central Asia hinged on Belarus. Thus, according to Lukashenko himself, Kazakhstan waited for Belarus’s reaction to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to guide its own response. Belarus was also one of the three founding members of the Eurasian Economic Union, an integral component of Russian influence in Central Asia.
Soft Power
Russia’s soft power in Central Asia, a major asset, is in danger. Marlène Laruelle writes in a 2010 book chapter that Russia had a clear edge over its competitors for preeminence in Central Asia. In large part, she put this down to soft power (without using that term). One factor she names is that Russia has garnered the region’s esteem through its influential position in international affairs, which ties into Joseph Nye’s statement that having power can itself be attractive and contribute to soft power. Yet now, as mentioned above, events in Ukraine and Belarus may lead states to question Russia’s strength.
Laruelle also identified Russia’s success in reframing its history as a regional imperialist power into a source of shared identity with the Central Asian states. This, too, is likely to change: as Slavomír Horák observes, these states’ education systems now focus on Russia’s misdeeds in the region when they discuss the country. Additionally, he predicts that the tendency of Central Asian migrants to Russia to be less skilled than their predecessors will probably result in increased xenophobia on the part of the Russian population and government publications, which will probably heighten ethnic tensions. Horák’s article also mentions the ongoing replacement of Communist-era policymakers in these countries by newcomers without ties to the Russian Federation. The presence of those deciders with personal relationships to Russia is another pillar of Russian influence in Laruelle’s analysis. The general picture is therefore of a diminishment of Russian soft power in Central Asia. Kazakhstan’s adoption of the Latin alphabet can be seen as representative of this reorientation.
Ukraine
Russia, through its invasion of Ukraine, appears to have instilled distrust of itself in its Central Asian neighbourhood. Although the initial reactions by the states in question were both reserved and mixed, their actions provide evidence of great concern over occurrences in Ukraine, reasons one analysis: several of them adopted security precautions designed to prevent exactly the events which they had seen transpire in Ukraine, implying a fear that the same could be inflicted on them. Bayram Balci makes a similar argument, emphasising that two major stated motives for the annexation of Crimea are present in the greater number of these countries, namely ethnically Russian populations as well as Russian army bases. Russia has allowed more outside powers to exert sway in Central Asia in recent years, a policy it deems necessary to increase its freedom of action. Clearly, its position has weakened. Based on the above facts, it seems that this trend became serious a few years into the 2010s, with the creation of the SREB, followed by the annexation of Crimea. Russia, an erstwhile imperial power in Central Asia and elsewhere, is losing its grip on the area. Its continued imperialism and its unwillingness to stand up to China are not helping it.
