Geostrategy in Central Asia

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Central Asia has long been a geostrategic location merely because of its proximity to several great powers on the Eurasian landmass. The region itself never held a dominant stationary population, nor was able to make use of natural resources. Thus it has rarely throughout history become the seat of power for an empire or influential state. Much like Poland throughout European history, Central Asia has been divided, redivided, conquered out of existence, and fragmented time and time again. Consequently, Central Asia has served more as the battleground for outside powers than as a power in its own right.

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[edit] Strategic geography

Central Asia had both the advantage and disadvantage of a central location between four historical seats of power. From its central location, it has access to trade routes, or lines of attack, to all the regional powers. On the other hand, it has been continuously vulnerable to attack from all sides throughout its history, resulting in political fragmentation or outright power vacuum, as it is successively dominated.

  • To the North, the steppe allowed for rapid mobility, first for nomadic horseback warriors like the Huns and Mongols, and later for Russian traders, eventually supported by railroads. As the Russian empire expanded to the East, it would also push down into Central Asia towards the sea, in a search for warm water ports. The Soviet bloc would reinforce dominance from the North, and attempt to project power as far south as Afghanistan.
  • To the East, the demographic and cultural weight of Chinese empires continually pushed outward into Central Asia. The Mongol Yuan dynasty would conquer parts of East Turkestan and Tibet, and the later Manchu dynasty would reconquer those areas several centuries later. As part of the Sino-Soviet bloc, China would swallow Tibet. However, with the Sino-Soviet split, China would project power into Central Asia, most notably in the case of Afghanistan, to counter Russian dominance of the region.
  • To the Southeast, the demographic and cultural influence of India was felt in Central Asia, notably in Tibet, the Hindu Kush, and slightly beyond. Several historical Indian dynasties, especially those seated along the Indus River would expand into Central Asia. India's ability to project power into Central Asia has been limited due to the mountain ranges in Pakistan, and the cultural differences between Hindu India, and what would become a mostly Muslim Central Asia.
  • To the Southwest, Middle Eastern powers have expanded into the Southern areas of Central Asia (usually, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). Several Persian empires would conquer and reconquer parts of Central Asia; Alexander the Great's Hellenistic empire would extend into Central Asia; two Arab Islamic empires would exert substantial influence throughout the region; and the modern state of Iran has projected influence throughout the region as well.

[edit] Strategic locations

In terms of strategic geography, Central Asia has several important routes through Eurasia, which conquerors would seek to dominate and utilize.

Passes:

Areas:

[edit] The Great Game

From 1813 to 1907 Great Britain and Tsarist Russia were engaged in a strategic competition for domination of Central Asia, known in Britain as "The Great Game", and in Russia as the "Tournament of Shadows." The British sea power and base in the Indian subcontinent served as the platform for a push Northwest into Central Asia, while the Russian empire pushed southwards from the North. The powers eventually met, and the competition played out, in Afghanistan, although the two never went to war with one another.

The British feared that Russian control of Central Asia would create an ideal springboard for an invasion of Britain's territories in the subcontinent, and were especially concerned about Russia gaining a warm water port. They would fight the First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars in an attempt to establish control over the region, and to counter the slowly creeping expansion of Russia. Losing badly both times, the British signed the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention which divided Afghanistan between the two powers and outlined the framework for all future diplomatic relations.

[edit] Debated and Debatable zone

Alfred Thayer Mahan, the father of U.S. geostrategy, outlined the geostrategic divisions of Eurasia in his 1900 piece The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon International Policies. He divided Asia into three parts:

  • Russian dominated land to the north of the 40th parallel;
  • British dominated lands to the south of the 30th parallel; and
  • the Debated and Debatable zone located between the 30th and 40th parallels on the Asian continent.

Within this vast zone lie significant parts of Central Asia, including sections of what are now Tibet, Xinjiang, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran, and the Caucasus.

Mahan believed that the clash between the Russian land power from the North, pushing down toward warm water port, and the opposing coalition of sea powers from pushing upward from the South (including Britain, the U.S., Japan, and Germany), would play out their conflict in the Debated and Debatable zone. This zone featured areas of political vacuum, underdevelopment, and internecine conflicts which made it both unstable and ripe for conquest.

Even today, the above areas of Central Asia are politically weak or unstable, and riven by separatism, ethnic, or religious conflict.

[edit] The Heartland

Halford J. Mackinder, a British polymath, would describe this region of the world as the Heartland in a 1904 speech The Geographical Pivot of History to a British geographical society. This idea would become the foundation of his contribution to geostrategy. Geographically, the Pivot encompasses all of Central Asia, with the addition of large parts of Iran, and Russia as well.

The Geographic Pivot is an area on the continent of Eurasia which is either landlocked, or whose rivers and littoral fed into inland seas or the ice-locked Arctic Ocean. The Volga, Oxus, and Jaxartes drain into lakes, and the Ob Yenisei and Lena drain into the Arctic. The Tarim and Helmund rivers also fail to drain into the ocean. Most of the region Mackinder defines is steppe land, mottled with patches of desert or mountains. Because of the rapid mobility that the steppe lands allow, Mackinder points to the historical tendency of nomadic horseback or camel-riding invaders coming from the east into the west.

The Pivot's projection into Central Asia is defined on one side by the Caspian Sea and Caucasus, and on the other side by a mountain range running from Pakistan northeast up to Mongolia and southern Russia. This triangular projection south into Central Asia was part of an area inaccessible to the sea powers (Britain, the U.S., Japan, and France primarily). As such, it was a strategically important area from which land power could be projected into the rest of the Eurasian landmass, virtually unimpeded by the sea powers.

[edit] Soviet collapse

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 once again created a situation of political vacuum in Central Asia. The resultant authoritarian but weak former SSRs were still considered part of Russia's sphere of influence, but now Russia was only one among many competitors for influence in the new Central Asian states. By 1996, Mongolia would also assert its independence from Russia's influence. Further, the North Caucasus Russian republic Chechnya would claim independence, leading to the First and Second Chechen Wars--the latter still in progress as of 2005, and spreading throughout the entire North Caucasus.

Geostrategist and former United States National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski analyzed Central Asia in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, terming the post-Soviet region the "Black Hole" and post-Soviet Central Asia (the Caucasus, former SSRs, and Afghanistan) in particular the "Eurasian Balkans." The area is an ethnic cauldron, prone to instability and conflicts, without a sense of national identity, but rather a mess of historical cultural influences, tribal and clan loyalties, and religious fervor. Projecting influence into the area is no longer just Russia, but also Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan, India and the United States:

  • Russia continues to dominate political decision-making throughout the Caucasus, and former SSRs, although as these countries shed their post-Soviet authoritarian systems, Russia's influence is slowly waning.
  • Turkey has some influence because of the ethnic and linguistic ties with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, as well as serving as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline route to the Mediterranean and a route for natural gas pipelines (South Caucasus Pipeline; Nabucco Pipeline).
  • Iran, the seat of historical empires which controlled parts of Central Asia, has historical and cultural links to the region, as is vying to construct an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.
  • China, already controlling Xinjiang and Tibet, projects significant power in the region, especially in energy/oil politics.
  • Pakistan, an unstable state, armed with nuclear weapons, and employing its security forces (which had created and sustained Taliban rule in Afghanistan), is capable of exercising limited influence.
  • India, as a nuclear-armed rising power, exercises some influence in the region, especially in Tibet with which it has cultural affinities. India is also perceived as a potential counterweight to China's regional power. The Farkhor Air Base in Tajikistan gives the Indian military the required depth and range in seeking a larger role in South Asia and is a tangible manifestation of India’s move to project its power in Central Asia, a policy goal formally enunciated in 2003–2004.
  • And the United States with its military involvement in the region, and oil diplomacy, is also significantly involved in the region's politics.

[edit] Oil politics

[edit] War on Terror

In the context of the United States' War on Terror, Central Asia has once again become the center of geostrategic calculations. Pakistan's status has been upgraded to a "major non-NATO ally" because of its central role in serving as a staging point for the invasion of Afghanistan, providing intelligence on Al-Qaeda operations in the region, and leading the hunt on Osama bin Laden, believed to still be in the region as of 2005. Afghanistan, which had served as a haven and source of support for Al-Qaeda, under the protection of Mullah Omar and the Taliban, was the target of a U.S. invasion in 2001, and ongoing reconstruction and drug-eradication efforts. U.S. military bases were also established in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (the Uzbek presence was later withdrawn), causing both Russia and China to voice their concern over a permanent U.S. military presence in the region.

China and Russia, as well as several of the former SSRs, have taken advantage of the War on Terror to increase oppression of separatist ethnic minorities in Central Asia. China has taken a harder line against the Uighur separatists of Xinjiang, while Russia has pursued the second war in Chechnya with greater intensity. Washington, which considers Russia and China as strategic partners in the War on Terror, has largely turned a blind eye to these actions. The ethnically diverse former SSRs, especially Uzbekistan have reclassified ethnic separatist attacks as terrorist attacks and pursued more oppressive policies.

[edit] See also

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