The Straits Times
November 6
merica has officially entered into a strategic alliance with Uzbekistan, a relationship that is certain to reshape the geopolitical map of Central Asia. While the United States has sought quietly to ingratiate itself with the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan ever since they broke away from the Soviet Union a decade ago, forging military-to-military ties with several of them under the auspices of Nato's Partnership for Peace programme, a US military presence close to Russia's southern border, would have been unthinkable even weeks ago.
The new US military presence in Uzbekistan is an important sign of how the geopolitical rules of the last half of the 20th century no longer hold sway. The Cold War and post-Cold War periods are definitively at an end. The far-reaching and unintended consequences of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks for the world are, of course, a key cause here.
No one can now foretell how long the US will be engaged in Uzbekistan, or whether America will extend its reach deeper into Central Asia. Much depends on how the ground war evolves in Afghanistan, and whether the US military presence makes way for a UN-sponsored supervisory mission.
If, down the road, there is no international military presence in the region, the US may choose to make its military presence permanent. In such a scenario, Uzbekistan could play the same cooperative-neighbour role for the US that Pakistan played during the latter years of the Cold War. Even if the US were to fully withdraw, the military balance within Central Asia would yet be likely to change. For the US seems certain to offer Uzbekistan long-term military assistance as a reward for serving as a gateway for US military engagement in Afghanistan.
Whatever happens, Uzbekistan will continue to distance itself from Russia militarily, something which will not please Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the degree of his displeasure will be shaped by the nature of the evolving relationship between Russia and Nato. After all, a future US military base in Uzbekistan will not seem nearly as troubling to Russian policy-elites if Moscow itself is preparing for eventual Nato membership.
Russia's president is also aware of an implicit quid pro quo with the US - that Washington's use of Uzbekistan as a stronghold for protecting US strategic interests in Central and South Asia creates room for parallel Russian manoeuvring in Chechnya, and quite possibly in Georgia as well.
FUELLING UZBEK AMBITIONS
A US military presence in Central Asia is of even greater potential interest to China, a country which, like Russia, has a security relationship with Uzbekistan through membership in the six-nation Shanghai Forum. China would benefit clearly from the US removal of Osama bin Laden and his multi-national terrorist network from Afghanistan and might seize this as an opportunity to crack down pre-emptively on Uighur separatists in China's southwest regions and other Chinese Muslim dissidents.
While the strategic interests of Russia and China across Central Asia need not be affected in a negative way by the US foray into the region, Uzbekistan's neighbours will certainly feel that their future security and the regional balance of power might well be compromised by the inevitable increase in Uzbek military capacity.
Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov has long believed that it is his country's destiny to dominate Central Asia. Neighbouring leaders have long viewed the recently erected statue in downtown Tashkent, of the ancient conqueror Tamerlane, as a warning aimed directly at them. Many are beginning to fear that American weapons will only serve to fuel Uzbek ambitions.
The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her book, Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise, will be published this winter.