Window on Eurasia

Moscow Pays High Price for Its ‘Special Role’ in Central Asia

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 28, 2006 – The Russian government is paying a high and rising price for international recognition of its “special role” in Central Asia because of three trends among the five post-Soviet states there that it has generally chosen to ignore, according to a journalist who writes frequently on Russian-Central Asian relations.

In an article posted on Prognosis.ru yesterday, Devlet Ozodi describes
how Moscow’s desire to be recognized as having a “special role”
in Central Asia has led it to ignore develpments there that not only
threaten that position in the future but also have already had a
significant impact on ethnic relations within the Russian Federation.

First, he writes, in its drive to win recognition of its pre-eminent
role, Moscow has lashed itself to authoritarian regimes whose
repressive actions are undermining economic growth, generating ever more resentful oppositions, and powering outmigration to, among other places, Russia
itself.

“The basic problem” of these regimes, Ozodi continues, is “the
search for a successor and the legitimation of the mechanism of the
transfer of power into his hands.” But the struggle of clans and
regions within each of these countries is putting the efforts of these
regimes – and hence of their Russian patron – at risk.

Even if the Russian government is not prepared to look that far in to
the future – and that future is probably no more than months or a few
years ahead – it should be sensitive to the ways in which its own
policies are contributing to the influx of Central Asian nationals into
the Russian workforce.

And that, the Central Asian journalist writes, should have led the
Russian leadership to recognize that “by supporting openly
dictatorial regimes, it is in fact contributing to the worsening of conditions in
the direction of an extraordinarily dangerous and unpredictable
scenario.”

Second, the Central Asian governments, which had sought to defend their
freedom of maneuver in the past by playing up tensions between Russia
and the West, are now, albeit in a far less public way playing off
Moscow against Beijing, something that has forced Moscow to make
economic compromises ever less favorable to itself.

Moscow’s willingess to make conessions to Turkmenistan’s Sapurmurat
Niyazov over pipeline routes has only stimulated other regional leaders
to make demands as well. And Ozodi points to the recent suggestion by
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev that the issue of Siberian
river diversion should be reopened.

That idea, one that calls for sending water from rivers in the Russian
Federation to Central Asia, has long been discussed but was among the
first Soviet-style gigantist projects shot down in Gorbachev’s time
– and largely by Russian nationalist groups who are more powerful
and sensitive on this issue than they were then.

The third trend in Central Asia that Ozodi suggests Moscow has failed
to recognize the seriousness of is the attempts of some Central Asian
presidents to assume the position of the region’s leader. Thus,
Nazarbayev has sought to promote himself as someone who could fill that
role.

Not only do such efforts threaten to drag Moscow into a struggle for
power within the region, but they also make the situation “too
unpredictable” for any policy that relies on a particular leader or
group for very long as the Russian authorities have done over the last
15 years.

Moreover, any such Russian involvement in these struggles will prompt
those on the other side to try to strengthen their own positions by
portraying Moscow’s role as a “colonial power” seeking to recover
its position, a charge that would “inevitably” lead to a greater
role for outside actors, including China.

Given all this and the certainty that big changes at the top are likely
in some or all of the Central Asian countries in the near future, Ozodi
concludes, Moscow may ultimately decide that the price it is paying for
Central Asian recognition of its special role there is “greater than
the real value” of that region for Moscow.

Whether that Moscow makes such decision on its own or whether the
Russian government is overtaken by events in Central Asia, the
countries of that region, now viewed by many in both the Russian capital and the
West as part of the Russian Federation’s backyard will again be in
play.

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