BACKGROUND: Since 1992, there has been a steep rise in the incidence of Muslim insurgencies in both Russia and China. The escalating violence, originating but not confined to Xinjiang and Chechnya, added to fears of American/NATO support for other potential separatist movements have led China and Russia to display stronger expressions of partnership. Those expressions are intended to exclude the United States from the area, suppress local insurgency, cement ties with Central Asia's authoritarian rulers, suppress efforts by insurgents to link up with other insurgent movements across state lines, and expand the Shanghai-Five from a community of states sharing borders to a regional and collective security system explicitly designed against the United States and its positions on human rights, missile defense, and Asian security issues like Taiwan.

To achieve these objectives China has supported Moscow's actions to integrate Central Asian states around Russia through the mediums of anti-terrorist organizations and the appointment of pro-Russian figures to head local intelligence, police, and military agencies within Central Asian governments. Russian special services have obtained the right to operate freely in Central Asia, Russia's army contemplates sending 50,000 more men there by 2003, and there is also a renewed effort to realign regional energy economies around the Russian pipeline system and exclude Western influence.

China sent an observer to the April 2000 exercises of the CIS forces in Central Asia to signify support for Moscow here. Beijing and Moscow have also increased economic assistance to the authoritarian rulers of Central Asia to cement this alignment and are also trying to expand the Shanghai-Five into a collective security system that will go far beyond its original mandate of affirming shared border delimitations and confidence building measures within the border zones. Thus Moscow has publicly invited India, Iran, and Uzbekistan (which does not border China) into the groups, and successfully persuaded its last meeting to attack U.S. missile defense programs.

IMPLICATIONS: Since 1999's insurgencies in Central Asia and NATO's Kosovo operation, both China and Russia now view Muslim insurgency abroad and at home with much greater urgency. They both are explicitly linking such military actions to international terrorism and potential American support. Consequently Central Asia's strategic salience for an evolving Russo-Chinese alliance has grown sharply. Trends show that the Russo-Chinese entente or partnership is going beyond that label to fulfill earlier bilateral communiqués. These stated that they would try to constitute alternative poles to the United States in Asia and globally.

This signified the conversion of the organization into a regional collective security system with a clearly focused anti-American agenda and purpose. The Shanghai-Five is intended to become the nucleus of a counter-American security system in Asia, a second pole dominated by Russia and China, and possibly India. Thus, it is a first step towards restoring bipolarity in Asian security structures despite Russo-Chinese talk of multi-polarity. Furthermore, by bringing in India and Iran, Moscow and Beijing are trying to realize Yevgeny Primakov’s vision of an anti-American strategic triangle in Asia.

Moscow and Beijing are trying to induce Pakistan to desist from inciting insurgency in Kashmir and from supporting the Taliban and terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Such policies if they persist could easily erupt into war with India or inside Central Asia. Thus, the process of suppressing democratization in Central Asia, Russia, and China is linked to international security agendas in East, South, and Central Asia. These policy initiatives show that the internal structure of Sino-Russian governance exercise a powerful influence upon their foreign and defense policies. The policies also make clear that the real reason for their burgeoning partnership is to safeguard their threatened integrity and stability first of all against democratization and its champion, the United States.

CONCLUSIONS: Russia and China are bringing Central Asia further into Asian security agendas that can only intensify the "great game" for Central Asia and the likelihood of protracted and bitter domestic struggles there and possibly in their own states against reform. They also seek to enforce a security structure in Central Asia that will, they hope, reduce chances for renewed Indo-Pakistani and Indo-Chinese conflict that in itself would be a positive outcome.

But by doing so they show that fundamental structures of governance, from Moscow through Astana and Tashkent and on to Beijing are unstable, vulnerable, and all too susceptible to violent reactions from even the slightest threat or opposition to their rule. Such policies that are intended to avert violence, actually make its incidence all the more likely and intense when it does happen in the future.

AUTHOR BIO: Dr. Stephen Blank is a Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The views expressed here do not represent those of the US Army, Defense Department or the US Government.

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