BACKGROUND: In the wake of the Andijon massacre and Kyrgyz revolution, we may discern the following new and significant trends in Chinese policy, possibly due to these events. China has abandoned its earlier reticence about former Russian Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov’s strategic triangle with Russia and India and agreed to a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the three states in Vladivostok on June 2. At this meeting the war on terror, access to Central Asian energy (including Iran), and the issue of uprisings in Central Asia were discussed among the participants although we do not know what practical conclusions, if any, they reached. Second, China has pushed to invigorate the Shanghai Cooperative Organization to use it as an agency for both bilateral and multilateral action to suppress popular unrest in Central Asia and to strengthen it as a bulwark against Western (especially American) ideas and policies about democratization. Thus it is becoming the equivalent of the 19th century holy alliance against revolution. As part of this program China has supported the SCO decision, and may well have instigated it, to make India, Pakistan, and Iran observers of the SCO. Both these decisions: support for the strategic triangle and for enlarging the scope and membership of the SCO reveal Beijing’s efforts to ward off possible rivalry with India in Central Asia and to tamp down both its earlier tensions with India there and in South Asia. It is also very possible that a series of understandings with India about energy access from Central Asia, Russia, and Iran are in the offing so that any potential rivalry with India here that could spill over into Central Asia will also be averted. By effecting these understandings with New Delhi, China hopes to reduce the possibility that India might lean to the American agenda here and be a stalking horse for Washington or even an independent rival of China’s in this increasingly sensitive, even vital sphere of its interests. Third, China has continued to upgrade its military capability, particularly with regard to the dispatch of rapid reaction forces to the area. The widespread reports of Chinese interests in a base in Kyrgyzstan, though denied, may yet come to fruition, possibly as an SCO base rather than a purely Chinese one. But we should have no illusions that China is engaged in both a qualitative improvement of its regional and local military capabilities here and is readier than ever to put them at the service of its interests if necessary. Its calls for upgrading the capabilities of the SCO and its upcoming combined exercises with Russian forces, ostensibly in an anti-terrorist scenario, albeit one that looks suspiciously like an anti-Taiwanese, American, or even Korean landing operation, also suggest heightened concern about trends in Central Asia. Fourth, China has substantially enhanced its ties to Iran. This policy aims at more than ensuring a reliable supply of energy although that certainly is a major Chinese motive. After all, Iran and China signed a $70 billion energy deal in October, 2004. But this policy not only strengthens Iran against Washington in the Gulf and regarding nuclear proliferation, it also cements a shared purpose in restricting its ability to play in Central Asia and thus threaten both those states. Iranian elites, including candidates for the presidency in its current election, certainly welcome the idea of a bloc with China, Russia, and India (again the triangle) against Washington and make no secret of his aspiration. Finally, there will probably be intensified courtship of Moscow and vice versa, not just on the basis of the triangle or the SCO but in the bilateral Sino-Russian relationship and in bilateral military cooperation. There are those in Russia calling for this and the recent decision by the SCO to create its own team of supposedly impartial outside observers to monitor presidential and other elections in Central Asia provide a mechanism for expressing not just common strategic goals, but more importantly, shared ideological-political aspirations to freeze the status quo in Central Asia.

IMPLICATIONS: China’s new policy initiatives represent significant new departures in its policies toward the area even though they clearly grow out of its preexisting policies toward Central Asia. They bespeak both the increased importance of this area to China in terms of energy and the impact developments in Central Asia could have upon Xinjiang and China’s overall state structure. They also attest to the increasing and widening rivalry with the United States in Russia and China’s effort to build counter-coalitions against what it perceives to be U.S. encirclement and potential threats on its doorstep. Third, these policies also highlight the tremendous and strategic importance of energy access to China; an issue that is critical for the long-term and which already is and will be a major driver of future policies. Fourth, they point to the increasing militarization and strategic polarization of the Central Asian and post-Soviet “space” as rival security blocs are beginning to take shape and more and more exclusively military interests are beginning to make their presence felt here. The SCO, China’s first formal show of willingness to project power beyond its borders, is but one manifestation of this trend as are its 2003-2005 exercises and growing military links among all of its members. Finally, the strategic bipolarity between America on the one hand and Russia, China, and Iran on the other is now being reinforced by ideological-political cleavages over democratization and human rights in both Central Asia and states like China, Iran, and Russia. This ideological dimension can only reinforce and strengthen the tensions that already are present with regard to rival strategic ambitions in and for the Caucasus and Central Asia. Thus they will make great power cooperation much harder to achieve and will also probably strengthen internal and inter-state cleavages in Central Asia as domestic players will now have foreign patrons to whom they can go for support and aid, or to whom they can complain about domestic conditions.

CONCLUSIONS: Several Years ago Zbigniew Brzezinski called this area the Eurasian Balkans. While the comparison or analogy may be inexact, the possibility that domestic factions in each country will be able to appeal to and pressure foreign governments to come to their aid, or that governments will be able to exploit the emerging bipolarity or tripolarity in this area by playing one bloc off against another to secure tangible political, military, and economic benefits all resemble the international crises through Yugoslavia’s wars of the 1990s. Domestic and regional, if not international, cleavages will duly reinforce and replicate each other, making it much harder to stabilize local conditions or avoid great power confrontation in or over Central Asia. That structural geostrategic rivalry should not be in the interests of the United States or in that interests of the peoples of Central Asia. But it is becoming a fact, and China’s new initiatives demonstrate not only its understanding of that fact, but also Beijing’s resolution to exploit it to its own advantage.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not in any way represent those of the U.S. Army, Department of Defense or the US Government.