No New-Zero-Sum-Great-Game!
There’s new talk of a New Great Game unfolding in Central Asia. The thing that made me post on this, to me unfamiliar, terrain of geopolitics was a news report in yesterday’s UK Times. The piece quoted the head of the British army Sir Richard Dannattin in the context of British forces facing a “generation of conflict” in Afghanistan:
[He] gave warning of the dangers posed by a “strident Islamist shadow” and suggested that the British Army was “on the edge of a new and deadly Great Game in Afghanistan”.
Discussing the speech on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Dr. Michael Denison of Leeds University said that Sir Dannatin’s remarks should be read as that British security interests can only be maintained by fighting in “remote and treacherous areas abroad”, and on a tactical level by “local deal-making, attrition and espionage”.
Well, although Sir Dannatin only mentioned Afghanistan in his speech, the return to an oldschool-19th century “Tournament of Shadows” might also be an appealing story for the odd sensationalist journalist predicting a clash between the NATO-West and the SCO-East in Central Asia.
The recent SCO summit in Bishkek has of course already prompted such reporting. For example from PINR:
The stronger the S.C.O. grows, the weaker Washington’s strategy of dealing with Central Asian countries on a strictly bilateral basis will become. Still, Washington is a long way from being pushed out of the region as long as it maintains a troop presence in Afghanistan. After the summit ends, Washington is likely to send representatives to the area to demonstrate its commitment to the region.
The Journal of Turkish Weekly:
Certainly if the membership expands to include Turkmenistan, Iran, India and Pakistan, the nature of the SCO would undergo a serious qualitative change and stimulate new dynamics in the endlessly unfolding “new great game” for access and influence in Central Asia.
Wait, if the SCO gets Turkmenistan, Iran, India and Pakistan, then NATO should hurry up to convince Mongolia not to join the SCO but its own ranks, right? That would be a chessboard move. Just look at it.
It’s getting even better in Japan Focus:
On the other hand, Washington’s grip over the Kabul setup will incrementally weaken once Afghanistan develops an “SCO connection”. Washington should be extremely wary, since Afghans are adept at playing their optimal role in the “Great Game”. Most important, the US will increasingly find itself under compulsion to perform as a team player, which suits neither its geostrategy nor its standing as the sole superpower.
But seriously, if you go beyond the appealing-because-it’s-easy chessboard of imperial rivalry, you find that the New Great Game, or any “zero sum game scenario”, for Central Asia isn’t really a helpful framework with which to assess events in the region, at least in my opinion.
First, way too many players. And they’re by no means sharing any homogenous aims such as in “let’s get rid of all competitors in this region” as it was a chief characteristic of the old Kipling Great Game. And I think that’s the essence of it.
Kazakhstan can export its oil to China, to Europe via Russia or via the Caucasus. Theoretically, there is enough for everyone and in the end, it’s business economics (or command economics in China’s case) deciding over the construction of pipelines. Also with the BTC, believe it or not. It’s simply economically viable to build expensive pipelines these days, it’s not all to do with government blackmailing. BP is no state-owned company if I can remember properly.
In the same vain, Tajikistan can host French, Indian and Russian troops on its soil without the three countries shooting at each other there. Although beset with more frictions, the same is valid for Kyrgyzstan and its two superpower military bases, despite all Russian sabre-rattling.
Tajikistan can also have multiple foreign infrastructure projects on its soil. The causality “Build me the biggest road/bridge/tunnel and you can put your armed forces on my ground” isn’t really what’s happening, although of course, again, it’s appealing to put everything together in one huge New Great Game.
It’s by no means a zero-sum game we’re seeing in the region. All involved powers, small and big, can win by combatting drug trafficking. All powers, small and big can gain much by stabilising Afghanistan. Everyone benefits from economic integration and higher economic growth. Everyone gains from international cooperation to stop environmental disasters from happening.
Lastly, by reading too much into the observer status of India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia and guessing that/when/how any of them will soon join the SCO is also not really paying enough attention to the dynamics at play. It’s not like the whole world is putting its focus on Central Asia, as “the arena of the next big thing in international geopolitics”. It’s not that important after all. There’s more than five times as much oil in the Middle East than in Central Asia.
Titled “The Great Game 2.0″, the Hindustan Times ran an actually interesting article on India’s recent SCO ambitions:
Political apathy too is a problem. In the last eight years, barely four questions pertaining to Central Asia have been asked in Parliament. Trade with the region is merely $ 242 million. There is little that things would alter for India in a major way though SCO could reinforce bilateral efforts in Central Asia. India’s trade with Russia, China and Kazakhstan is growing independently of the SCO.
And lastly, The Economist gets it right I think when it says that
[s]trategic competition in Central Asia exists, but it does not consist of a straight confrontation between West and East. Instead, big countries jostle for a share of influence, knowing they cannot monopolise the scene; small and medium-sized powers struggle to keep room for manoeuvre by playing off would-be patrons.
Geopolitics is slippery slope for me, and I am looking forward to a discussion.
on August 30th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Dear Ben,
I too, think that this GG 2.0 stuff is secondary to a host of other considerations. Most Realist theories won’t allow themselves to go second, however, and they have the ability to reduce to nothing many important considerations such as you have mentioned (international crime such as terrorism and narcotrafficking, and international trade).
I think the fact that they are being put forward now relates to the militarization of foreign policy, i.e., Afghanistan and Iraq, both with large military duties and with reconstruction budgets that are administered by military personnel. Au fond, much of miitary thinking is very concrete and a realist theory is helpful to them in military terms but not with the diplomacy they are being asked to do.
The difficulty of including all factors at once in calculations extends also to a leadership that must pay attention to military concerns constantly, or, perhaps, would prefer a more clear demarcation of us/them for the purposes of budgeting (and rhetoric). It is only going to be worse, where I live at least, for the next year as the U.S. goes into presidential elections.
The rise of realism will cause the same problems in overall thinking in foreign affairs that creates the difficulty for troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, where it’s difficult to distinguish friend and foe. If one must have a reductive theory, then I would say this is it, whether for Tajikistan’s infrastructure or a Baghdad neighborhood. “A friend is a friend so long as you are there.”
If you stretch the Realism into structural realism (even more insular and limiting), one could say that Tajikistan is pursuing its own non-aligned movement. And that theory of non-alignment is the dominant one, not the realist one: a friend is a friend, when it hangs out with you and gives you capabilities. For states like the UK and the US, Russia and China, they have to decide what capabilities they are willing to foster, and what they are willing to pay to create those capabilities, and what they expect to gain out of them. An economic approach means you are always there, with your trading partners, increasing by suasion rather than force.
Under this formulation, Russia’s selling arms in Central Asia might not have as much utility as having a border force in the country; their pipeline politics may not have long-term utility; the U.S. aid cuts in Central Asia have no utility; military training for Central Asian republics has little utility but training border patrols in Central Asia has a lot of utility.
Well, that’s a start on a discussion. Great post! I love this stuff.
Bonnie
on September 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
Good article Ben. A couple of other points: first, the SCO is really not like NATO. Does anyone think Russia is really going to rush to China’s aid in a major war? They’re almost as likely to be on the other side, and far more likely not to get involved at all (and, of course, the chances of navel-gazing China going to war are much slimmer than saber-rattlers in the West believe).
Also, I disagree with Bonnie’s assertion that the us/them demarcation is going to get worse in the US a meaningful sense. Maybe a little rhetoric on the campaign trail, but after 2008, I think any American president, particularly a Democrat, is going to have a global popularity boost over Bush.
Finally, we have to keep in mind that Putin will (fingers-crossed) be leaving fairly soon. If his replacement is a reformer like Medvedev, rather than a militarist like Ivanov, the US will have another opening for diplomacy. All in all, I think Ben gets the issues right: it’s about economics, containing drug trafficking and fighting terrorism. It might get rhetorically contentious at times, but it probably won’t spill into military confrontations or “Great Game” style do-or-die politics. So PINR and Journal of Turkish Weekly should stop hyperventilating.