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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
By: Anssi Kullberg, June 2001, Tartu
At the time of the Ljubljana Summit in June, Russian analysts were boasting that the West’s hands had been bound by timing the Shanghai Summit a bit before George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin met in Slovenia. In Shanghai, the earlier loose forum of "the Shanghai Five" (China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) was replaced with the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, SCO, which many experts have seen as the emergence of a Eurasian anti-Western bloc in leadership of Moscow and Peking. Besides China and Russia, the members included the Central Asian republics Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The fifth former Soviet republic in Central Asia, Turkmenistan, has remained in her policy of neutrality between the CIS’s pro-Kremlin bloc that constitutes the CIS Collective Security Treaty and the GUUAM group that is critical at the Kremlin. In the pro-Moscow camp, besides Russia, there are Belarus, Armenia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – and recently also Moldova since communists gained power in Chisinau. The GUAM group, which shares critical attitude at Russian hegemony in the CIS, was founded by Georgia, Ukraina, Azerbaijan and Moldova, and later joined by Uzbekistan, who has own dreams of regional leadership as the most powerful state of Turkestan, and common interest with, e.g., Pakistan and the United States. GUAM became GUUAM. However, Uzbekistan’s loyalty was unders suspicion from the very beginning.
The fact that Uzbekistan joined the "Shanghai Five" in the recent summit contributed to the uncertainty of the line and alignment of the country, led by Islam Karimov in authoritarian manner. However, it made Russian analysts rejoice. Yevgeny Kuznetsov and Aleksandr Yusupovsky estimated in an interview of Rossiiskiye Vesti that Karimov’s latest turn-coat action would be a fatal blow. Last winter’s power shift in Moldova in favour of the ethnic Russian Vladimir Voronin, and the scandals shaking the throne of Ukraine’s Leonid Kuchma have played for Moscow’s benefit, and the Russian analysts think that even Azerbaijan can no longer freely act as "a U.S. vassal". Thus, also the position of Georgia, which is often considered as the most pro-Western CIS country, is increasingly difficult.
The events in Shanghai and Ljubljana are, however, too early and too eagerly seen as a victory for Putin, who is expected to return Russia into leading position in Eurasia. Bush’s compliments to Putin were seen as "the West’s submission before Russo-Chinese power", forced upon Bush by Putin and the "brilliant" timing of the Shanghai Summit. But the fact that Bush was polite and friendly towards his Russian colleague does not mean, in the Western minds, that the United States would give up in the Eurasian grand game. Besides, the West is by no means the only challenger of the Kremlin’s aspirations of power. Even if Russian rhetorics take any chance to be scornfully defiant at American and European leaders trying to please Putin, on the other hand Moscow’s relationship with Peking is witnessing a significant shift.
Kuznetsov remarks that China, not Russia, is now the superpower player that is most energetic to challenger the Western-dominated world order. Russia supports China, as they both want "multipolarism", that is, to oppose global influence by the United States and Europe. In Shanghai, Putin was noticed to stay always a little bit behind Jiang Zemin, in an honouring way, and he always approached the other participants only a bit after Jiang.
Russia would have the Shanghai bloc to include also her southern allies. Kuznetsov remarked: "What I liked especially in the Shanghai meeting was that all the members of the forum seemed eager to accept India and Iran, but rejected Pakistan, even though the latter had compiled already all the necessary documentation." For Russian ideas of Eurasian geopolitics, Pakistan and Turkey remain as those southern Eurasian powers that Moscow sees as its worst competitors and as allies of the West. Iran and India, as well as Syria and Iraq, share this idea.
If the Shanghai bloc will be formed in the way Russia likes, it would mean a final break in the long Sino-Pakistani alliance, which has already shown clear signs of diminishing in importance since the pro-Western military leader Pervez Musharraf took over in Islamabad. It would also mean that China and India reach some kind of agreement on the many disputed areas like Assam and Aksay Chin. Russia and China, according to Kuznetsov, are already reaching an agreement, which should rise the blood pressure of anyone dreaming of a pro-Western orientation of the Caspian oil states: "China is now strategically restructuring the geopolitical map in co-operation with Russia. And by the way, it is leaving the Central Asian states for Russia. This is Beijing’s way to say that these are your flock, take care of them, we have our own problems."
On the other hand, Uzbekistan’s presence in the Shanghai bloc would mean a cut in the common oil plans of Uzbekistan and Pakistan involving Afghanistan’s territory. It would pressure Uzbekistan to orientate towards Iran instead of Pakistan. While Turkmenistan is remaining neutral, this would mean actions in the flammable areas of Western Afghanistan. Judging from national interests, it seems that Uzbekistan is as weak a link in the Shanghai bloc as it has been in the pro-Western GUUAM co-operation. Iran and Turkmenistan share warm relations and the hostility of Karimov’s regime against Iran makes an approach between Tashkent and Tehran quite improbable.
The West has not stayed passive either, and it still enjoyes the position of main attractive partner in the hopes of Tbilisi and Baku to release Georgia and Azerbaijan from Moscow’s sphere of influence. The hostile attitude of both Russia and Iran towards these Transcaucasian states as well as their support to Armenia against Azerbaijan have only strengthened the Georgian and Azerbaijani aspirations to get rid of Moscow’s yoke. Therefore Georgians have forgotten their suspicions towards the Western big brother Turkey, and Azerbaijan has agreed on surprising co-operation with Israel with the result that the influential Jewish lobby in Washington, which so far had supported the Armenian lobby, moved to support Azerbaijan. Besides the Western countries, Turkey and Israel have become the most important investors in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
In a long run the patterns of Eurasia are even more influenced by Pakistan’s ability to reform and especially her ability to improve her reputation in Western eyes as a Western-oriented and democratizing powerful Muslim state of Turkish model. The question is to a large extent, how fast the Western attitudes will react to recognise the rapid change that has been taking place in Pakistan for a few years already.
In an even longer perspective there might be a more surprising major shift in Eurasian geostrategic settings. The reforms of Mohammed Khatami in Iran – or a final crisis of these reforms – may lead also Iran to the path of Turkey and Pakistan. That kind of far-reaching change in Eurasian patterns still seems to remain distant, but it is not as distant as otherwise thought, if one is listening to the true opinions of Tehran’s emerging youth, the inevitable next generation of Iranian elite, and the surprisingly secular-minded military.