Moscow-based business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday that Turkmenistan has agreed on the purchase of six BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launchers from Russian armaments manufacturer Motovilikhinsk Factories.
The transaction is being linked by experts to ongoing negotiations about the Caspian littoral pipeline project, the paper said.
A source says the two of 90-kilometre range motorized rocket launcher will be delivered this year and the remainder will reach Turkmenistan in 2009. Based on the average cost of a single BM-30 unit, the deal may be worth up to $70 million, Kommersant reported.
The paper suggests that the deal may be another incentive from Moscow to persuade Turkmenistan to giving up any prospective commitments to the Nabucco gas pipeline, which is designed ostensibly to circumvent Russian soil. This is a pretty implausible linkage, although it might be recalled that Turkmenistan did used to sell gas to Ukraine in exchange for weapons and military training. Ashgabat has also received military equipment from the United States and coordinated with NATO over select military issues.
There is also a precedent for attempted arms-for-gas deals, as Kommersant observers. In 2001, Rosoboronexport weapons exporter struck a deal with former President Saparmurat Niyazov for gas trader to act as a go-between in just such a deal. Elsewhere, in countries including Algeria and Libya, Moscow has been making full use of its military-industrial export capabilities in efforts to solidify its role as the world’s prime energy power.
Despite the temptation to view this as a quid pro quo deal, it is perhaps more interesting to contemplate what exactly this might mean for Turkmen military and foreign policy.
A large component of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s reform agenda has been based on plans to reform the military sector. The most eye-catching initiatives to date have involved changes on military service and efforts to professionalise the army. But Berdymukhammedov has also stated it is his government’s aim to modernize the country’s military equipment, and importing from Russia suggests that his ambitions have superseded reliance on technically inferior Ukrainian materiel. As an aside, it should be noted that the BM-30 deal is relatively modest in scale and is unlikely by itself to constitute a significant bargaining pawn of any kind.
A parallel development, as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported recently, has been Ashgabat’s increasingly friendly overtones to NATO, as exemplified in Berdymukhammedov’s attendance of the security bloc’s Bucharest summit in April.
As with its energy policy, Turkmenistan has begun to take a leaf from fellow Central Asian nation Kazakhstan, by pursuing a delicate balance of interests among strategically opposed partners. The emerging diplomatic and trade patterns Turkmenistan has chosen to weave looks likely to put it in the enviable position of owing nothing more to its partners than what they are due.