BACKGROUND: Sources disagree as to who was behind the summit’s communiqué concerning the bases, attributing the initiative either to Karimov, Russian President Vladimir Putin or to China’s President, Hu Jintao. However it is clear that several weeks if not months of Sino-Russian pressure upon Central Asian governments lay behind it. Russia has consistently and publicly sought to limit the duration of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia to the war in Afghanistan. And since the Ukrainian and Kyrgyz revolutions, its rhetoric about American ideological warfare and instigation of revolutions throughout the CIS has become quite shrill. Moscow has also brought considerable pressure to bear upon Kyrgyzstan and other local regimes to distance themselves from Washington. Then the Andijan violence and the subsequent hysterical charges emanating from organizations in Washington who have a rather incomplete picture of what happened there only infuriated Islam Karimov and made him more susceptible to Sino-Russian professions of support for his bloody repression of the insurgency in Andijan. At the same time, there has been a mounting apprehension among Central Asian governments concerning America’s failure to stop the burgeoning drug trade from Afghanistan that is corroding Central Asian governments security as well. From this vantage point, it appears that Moscow and Beijing have both fostered and fanned this apprehension about American support for democratization movements and policies and issues of the drug trade in Afghanistan to advance their own agenda of ousting Washington from Central Asia. America’s divided and ambivalent response to the Andijan violence has only played into this gambit. Thus it is not surprising that at the earlier Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) summit, Putin charged that the American conduct of the war in Afghanistan was of an inferior quality and not improving local security. This wholly unjustified assertion reflects not just Russia\'s opportunism but also its larger apprehensions because the call for democratization threatens its regime as well as that of it neighbors in Central Asia, whom it, like China, hopes to dominate. Both these states are in fact busily trying to expand their own presence in the area through blocs like the SCO or CSTO or the expansion of their overall military presence. Russia has just announced plans to double its military presence in Kyrgyzstan and its treaty with Uzbekistan in 2004 mentioned airfields as potential bases. Subsequent press reports around the time of the Astana summit suggested another bilateral agreement between Moscow and Tashkent that could lead to Russian air bases in Uzbekistan. China has also mentioned the possibility of a base in Kyrgyzstan only to retract it once the ensuing negative publicity became visible. In other words, the SCO summit was an effort to link together strategic and ideological rivalry in Central Asia. The strategic rivalry is the competition among Washington, Moscow, and Beijing for bases, influence, energy, etc. The ideological battle is fought over the terrain and issues of democratization and human rights, and in both cases Washington has found that Moscow and Beijing have made common cause against it and its policies favoring democratization. Thus they have spread the canard, believed by leaders from Kuchma to Karimov, that Washington is behind these revolutions and seeks to unseat noncompliant rulers, a notion that these leaders are all to ready to believe or at least exploit. The overlay of ideological and strategic rivalry thus creates conditions in Central Asia not just of a great game but also of a strategic bipolarity reminiscent of the Cold War in the Third World. This summit’s statements indicate how Moscow and Beijing are using the fusion of these two elements of rivalry to advance their aims at the expense of America and to attempt to re-subordinate these states to their goals and domestic political structures.

IMPLICATIONS: The United States has properly refused to take account of the SCO’s statements, placing its stand on the sovereign decision of the states involved as to whether or not they wish to retain American bases and under what circumstances. Indeed the negotiations on this point with Uzbekistan are taking place currently. But at the same time Washington cannot remain aloof from or unresponsive to the challenges emanating from the region. It must do more to attack the narcotics problem in Afghanistan. It must also clarify its stance on democratization so that it is clear that the U.S. government, while supporting human rights and liberalization as provided for in international agreements that these governments are parties to, is not seeking their overthrow. If anything, greater liberalization in these governments might prevent the alternative from remaining a choice between Karimov-like regimes or the extremists. It must also do a better job of exposing the truly neo-colonialist programs and policies carried out by both Beijing and Moscow in these states, e.g. China’s practice of holding Kyrgyz businessmen as prisoners to ensure no support in Bishkek for the Uighur insurgents in China or Russia’s colonialist designs upon their economies. The bases in Central Asia, apart from their strategic significance in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan, are also guarantees of the Central Asian states’ independence, stability, and integrity. They also signify America’s interests in preserving those attributes of these governments even as Washington strives to improve their domestic stability. Merely leaving the bases or cutting off aid in a fit of pique or misplaced moralism only confirms Moscow and Beijing\'s propaganda and turns these states over to the tender mercies of those two governments who have not the slightest interest in domestic reform. Indeed, they abhor it because democratization makes the return of their imperialism quite impossible. Central Asia has become a cockpit not only of terrorism and of a renewed great game, but also of ideological contestation.

CONCLUSIONS: Remaining in the Sino-Russian orbit is the only destiny that ensures that Central Asian states will see more instability, violence and backwardness. If there is an option for local governments that enhances their security, stability, integrity, and development, it is with America and the West, not Moscow and Beijing. Engagement with America is not a panacea for them or for anyone else for that matter, but it is clear what Russian and Chinese imperialism offers to those states. While American policy will undoubtedly come under further pressure, this does not mean that Washington needs to abandon the field to its rivals or refuse to listen to local governments who may be corrupt and authoritarian. Punishing them and leaving in a fit of virtuous moralism neither advances American interests or their interests, let alone American values. Finally, for there to be a consensus, no matter how limited, on democratic values with local regimes, there must first be a convergence of interests, and the war on terrorism is for Central Asian governments and for the United States exactly such a converging interest. AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department, or Government.