Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, dispels myths of great power rivalry in Central Asia, highlighting that sober, coequal engagement with the region will do Russia more good than a competition-centric approach ever could. Despite the fears, worries, and rhetoric, a new Great Game is not in sight.
As the nature of the military-political crisis in relations between Russia and the West shifts towards a new stage in the balance of power—but not a final resolution, which appears impossible—Russia’s policy in the space surrounding it to the south and south-east will be discussed with increasing intensity. The South Caucasus and Central Asia regions have traditionally, and with good reason, been regarded as relatively calm areas of Russian foreign policy engagement, where Russia’s principal adversaries either lack sufficiently important interests or are simply incapable of maintaining a physical presence that Moscow could consider a threat to its security interests.
In other words, throughout the turbulent period following the collapse of the USSR and up to the outbreak of the Conflict in Ukraine, these states lived in conditions of a relatively favourable international environment: “languishing in their own minor catastrophes”, yet not finding themselves in the crucible of an intensifying confrontation between great powers. Even now, strictly speaking, they remain quite distant from the regions where the military-political capabilities of the principal global powers—Russia, China, and the United States—might truly clash in earnest. When it comes to genuinely serious security threats that could have devastating consequences for the fate of entire peoples, the attention of the world is fixed on Europe, South-East and North-East Asia, and, to some extent, even the Middle East—but not on the notional “Russia’s soft underbelly”—or that of China, in the case of Central Asia.
Changes within these regions themselves have likewise not exerted any fundamental influence on international security, and in any case do not wield the potential to provoke a conflict between nuclear powers. That said, the South Caucasus is, after all, in dangerous proximity to the Middle East, where Israel is fighting for a fully-fledged role in regional politics. Turkey is, of course, also active there, and its prospects are extremely difficult to assess—they may prove either quite bleak or sufficiently resilient under present conditions. As for Central Asia, once local political elites managed to contain the consequences of the collapse of the USSR and set their countries on a path of stable, independent development, the region ceased to face any serious threats—apart from the consequences of its own governance errors and policy deviations, most vividly demonstrated by Kazakhstan, quite literally on the eve of the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
Against this backdrop, one increasingly hears observers outside the region argue that Central Asia may soon become an arena of serious confrontation involving not just Russia, China, and their principal rival in the United States, but also smaller actors in international politics such as Turkey or the European Union. Moreover, in recent years the region has indeed become a magnet for segments of the international bureaucracy and economic actors seeking, each in their own way, to tap into one of the last “blue oceans” of the global economy. Given that trade, economic, and technological interaction is now almost universally becoming an instrument of political struggle, all this leads experts and politicians to conclude that the period of calm in Central Asia’s development is drawing to a close.
The legend of the Great Game, as every student of international politics knows, arose in the mid-nineteenth century against the backdrop of the convergence of Russian and British imperial possessions in Central Asia. It originated in the fertile mind of a British intelligence officer—who ended up losing his head in the central square of ancient Bukhara in 1842. Yet, for all its far-fetchedness, it did prove useful in the political discourse of the two empires, which were seeking avenues for competition that would not cause significant damage to their relations in the main theatre of international politics at the time—Europe. The history of relations between Russia and Britain in Central Asia was indeed eventful and led, among other things, to Saint Petersburg ultimately deciding on occupying all of Turkestan in order to eliminate this buffer zone.
Britain offered little resistance and, in any case, lacked the resources to do so, re-entering the region only amid the collapse of the Russian Empire. Even then, however, the Great Game did not last long: the Bolshevik government quickly managed to restore control over the region, simultaneously eliminating the last relic of medieval political organisation there—the Emirate of Bukhara. Today, against the backdrop of Russia’s deep involvement in European affairs, the question of certain countries launching a new Great Game against it is being actively discussed.
However, there are no grounds to believe that all this hype will translate into practical consequences. First, the current attractiveness of Central Asia is a product of tensions between Russia and China on the one hand, and the West on the other. But not in the sense that the United States and Europe intend to move actively into the region in order to use it against Moscow and Beijing. Rather, it is because the region remains outside the geographical zones where the aforementioned conflict is most intense. In other words, the United States and Europe, like Russia, are already struggling to sustain confrontation in the existing theatres, and it is difficult to imagine them allocating any substantial resources to Central Asia.
The only real danger there would be internal destabilisation. Yet in recent years, the governments of regional states have demonstrated that they are responsible and authoritative participants in international life, maintaining control over their states and achieving progress in their socio-economic development. In other words, these are not Libya or Syria of the Arab Spring era, but far more robust political systems and economies. Secondly, external powers are unlikely to reap significant economic benefits from serious presence in Central Asia.
In reality, Central Asia is currently one of the most overrated assets in international politics and the global economy at the level of rhetoric and expert assessment. Should Eastern Europe and the Pacific stabilise even somewhat, its value could decline significantly. For Russia, this means that the chosen strategy—respect for the sovereignty of its friends and allies in the region, alongside the gradual construction of more substantive economic partnerships with them—is far more promising than attempts to engage in a phantom “struggle” for Central Asia, into which its strategic adversaries may well be seeking to draw it.
