Valdai Club

Despite the considerable success of the existing regimes in stabilizing the Central Asian Five (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), now the prospects of domestic stability are much less assured in all of them.

Not long ago, groups of gunmen attacked gun shops and National Guard barracks in the city of Aktobe in northwestern Kazakhstan, 253 km from Russian Orenburg. Several dozen people, including the attackers, were killed. Law enforcement officials openly admitted that they were at a loss over what happened. Foreign analysts predicted that the situation in Kazakhstan – long considered a model of stability in the south of the post-Soviet space – would sharply deteriorate. These developments underscore the importance of the ongoing discussion on ensuring regional stability, establishing new institutional formats and developing cooperation between the existing institutions of the CSTO and the SCO.

Central Asia is causing increasing concern among neighbors and major foreign powers. It directly borders on one of the most dangerous hotbeds of radicalism, Afghanistan, where a considerable number of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks live. After its inevitable defeat in the Middle East, ISIS may well try to establish a new Caliphate in Central Asia, especially since it would be much safer than North Africa, where they would be vulnerable to constant attacks launched from the Mediterranean. Tensions in Afghan regions bordering on Central Asian states are already rising sharply. Experts are warning of increased infiltration of extremists from Afghanistan and the Middle East, primarily Central Asian natives. According to the most conservative estimate, over 10,000 natives of Central Asia, Russia and China fought for ISIS (forbidden in Russia) in late 2015.

Despite the considerable success of the existing regimes in stabilizing the Central Asian Five (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) after the Soviet Union’s collapse, now the prospects of domestic stability are much less assured in practically all of them. The mechanisms for transferring power after the inevitable departure of the patriarchs in Astana and Tashkent are not entirely clear to foreign analysts. Valdai Club experts note that developments in Tajikistan could take an even more dangerous turn. Sometimes internal stability is compromised by flashes of violence like in Kazakhstan’s Aktobe. According to official reports, there have been 19 terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan alone since 2010, leaving 49 people dead, most of them police. The authorities also killed 59 terrorists over this period.

The SCO’s June summit in Tashkent and the Russian President’s visit to China offer good opportunities to discuss how greater multilateral cooperation, primarily between the regional superpowers China and Russia, can improve regional security. Potential instability in central Eurasia represents a kind of ideal common challenge for these two countries and can only be solved through a rational positive-sum game. This is likely for several objective reasons.

First, the region’s countries are prone to social and political upheavals at home. As distinct from Ukraine, where the domestic conflict was primarily triggered by the competition of outside powers, in Central Asia internal tensions are due to the instability of some of its government institutions, poverty, religious radicalism, and finally Afghanistan’s proximity. The combination of these factors has made the region a focus for both countries, thereby increasing their potential for cooperation.

Second, the geographical vicinity of this potentially explosive region has great import for both great powers. Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states border on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with over a million Muslims, as well as on the Urals and Central Siberia that are vital for Russia. It is clear for both states that were the security situation to deteriorate they would not be able to redirect the issue towards the other power and would therefore be compelled to cooperate. In this respect, the role of the United States may theoretically evoke much stronger concern than that of EU states, for which a potential explosion in central Eurasia would not be a major national security challenge. In this context, regional developments are viewed as part of Moscow-Beijing geostrategic cooperation, especially in the United States.

Third, Russia and China are equally interested in keeping out foreign powers, no matter where they come from. The majority of powers outside the region are interested in the developments in central Eurasia only in the international political context, because they do not represent a direct national security challenge. As such, their influence on these developments may be destabilizing for the most part because it is aimed at achieving a risky political transformation of Central Asian states. Meanwhile, these countries are far less important to the United States, Europe and their businesses than the Gulf monarchies. Therefore, the West is unlikely to refrain from using legal and values-based tools in Central Asia.

At the same time, some experts believe that Washington is considering the possibility of direct dialogue with China on regional security and economic cooperation without Russia’s participation. Such dialogue is probably already taking place. This also shows that Russia and China should strive for more transparent relations with other partners. However, authoritative experts believe that the extent of this dialogue may be restricted by the unpredictability of US policy and its reliance on “color revolutions” to achieve its ends, which is cause for alarm in China.

Russia, as the 2010 events in Kyrgyzstan showed, is fairly flexible in its response to revolutionary upheavals in neighboring states. It is often described as a “fading power” in the region, whereas China is portrayed as a “rising power” that should be working with the United States. All these discussions may be aimed at undermining trust between Moscow and Beijing. That said, the paranoid ideas of a considerable part of the Russian media are much more dangerous in this respect.

Fourth, both Russia and China may offer their neighbors fairly different formats of cooperation for domestic stabilization. Let’s consider the opposing example of the EU’s efforts to stabilize its own periphery. After its successful expansion in 2004-2007, the EU advanced the European Neighborhood Policy. This is a Europe-centric project aimed at stabilizing neighbors via their commitment to EU institutional practices and norms. This project is directed at transforming the targeted countries and incentivizing them to implement a package of requirements.

On the contrary, Russia and China are interested in the stabilization rather than the transformation of Central Asian political regimes, combined with the evolutionary improvement of their economic and social conditions for as long as possible. Russian-Chinese cooperation will play a role in countering inevitable attempts by regional countries to balance out the influence of the two great powers. Importantly, any format of Russian-Chinese cooperation on Central Asian security should be transparent and multilateral, and should by all means include the region’s countries, as well as – on a number of issues – Iran.

Efforts to stabilize the region may unite Russia and China in the broader global context. Both states have cause to be relatively calm about the political and economic components of their strategic cooperation. Now their task is to determine what institutional forms would be the best for making irreversible the development of the “community of interests and values.” To begin, internal security should become the most important practical goal of this community and its institutions, including military, police and economic cooperation and coordination.

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of researchers of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies (CCEIS HSE) Dmitry Novikov, Anastasia Pyatachkova, Andrey Skriba and Ilya Stepanov. The author is also grateful to Dmitry Suslov, Programme Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, Vasily Kashin and Igor Makarov, senior fellows at HSE, for their useful advices.