|
Geopolitics in Central Asia
Today
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S, has pursued a policy of penetrating the former Soviet republics in Central Asia as well as the Caucasus region, something that had been strategically out of the questions before that collapse.
This article will focus mainly on Central Asia, because its geopolitics, involving China as well as Russia and the U.S., have a complexity distinct from that of the Caucasus. The U.S. policy of politically and militarily penetrating Central Asia has multiple interrelated geostrategic purposes, the main ones being: (1) To prevent, by means of obtaining political influence and military presence in as many of the former Soviet republics as possible, a re-establishment of Russian hegemony over its Near Abroad, and if possible to contribute toward Russia's long-term decline and ultimate disintegration; (2) To use its military presence in Central Asia to threaten China's western flank, thereby to round out U.S. military encirclement of the Asian Dragon and thus to hamper its political, economic, and military capabilities as a potential rival of the United States; (3) To take steps in Central Asia and its environs aimed simultaneously at increasing the diversity of oil and gas supplies for the U.S. and at minimizing China's influence in Central Asia, especially to limit its access to oil and gas from that region. Right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington enticed the Central Asia republics, through financial rewards, into agreeing to joint military exercises with U.S. troops. Then, immediately following the September terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, the U.S. decided to overthrow the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. Washington pressed the Central Asian states for help in that war and gained, among other things, the right to use Uzbekistan's air base at Khanabad, and Kyrgystan's consent to build a large air base near Bishkek, a mere 300 km from China's western border. Though remarkable for its audacity and unprecedented nature, the Pentagon's anti-Russian and anti-Chinese was essentially opportunistic in the sense that it took advantage of sudden opportunities to enhance America's power position vis-à-vis two potential challengers to its hegemonic role in the world,. This was different from the legitimate defense of America's vital national interests defined in terms of the security of its territory and population and intimately related needs. U.S. penetration into Central Asia was opportunistic in the same sense that its invasion of North Korea in October 1950 and its war in Vietnam were opportunistic, that is, they had nothing to do with America's vital national interests but were intended to achieve certain territorial and political gains just because U.S. power seemed sufficient to justify a gamble. But when the gamble was lost, the objectives were deemed abandonable, and indeed were abandoned, most notably in the case of Korea when in December 1950 the Chinese threw back General MacArthur's attempt to conquer North Korea, and in Vietnam after eight years of a futile attempt to prevent the unification of Vietnam. At first both Moscow and Beijing, partly on the assumption that the U.S. bases would be used only for the durations of the Afghan war, reacted with restraint. Within months, however, both Russian and Chinese attitudes toward the U.S. military presence hardened, leading most recently to.an agreement to stage the first-ever joint military exercises of Russian and Chinese forces in late 2005. From the geostrategic point of view, America's "footprints" in Central Asia, even if they were to be permanent, would add very little to America's ability to exert military pressure against China, much less to defeat it in an offensive war against China's homeland, which would be so costly to the U.S. in blood and treasure, and so predictably futile, as to place the very idea of an American war in China in the realm of fantasy. Here, instead, I shall focus on the more realistic question of whether the U.S. would be able to prevail in a limited, regional war in Central Asia if it chose to rejected determined demands by either China or Russia, or both, to dismantle its military bases there. The following geopolitical analysis will show that the U.S. could not possibly prevail. To begin with, Central Asia, being in the "backyards" of both China and Russia, is militarily much more important to both than it is to the U.S. Hence both Beijing and Moscow would be willing to take greater risks and, if need be, pay a higher price in military confrontation with the U.S. over issues in Central Asia. Next there is the fact that the American people in recent decades have had an underlying sense that American wars in far-away places really had little to do with America's national interest or with their own lives - which is why in two wars against Iraq the U.S. Government has had to provide frequently shifting and pathetic explanations as to what the wars were "really" about. Furthermore, America's overall military superiority would be mostly irrelevant to any localized and limited war in Central Asia, because its strategic nuclear weapons by definition would not be used in a limited war, and in any case it would be insane to use, while the use of tactical nuclear weapons would raise the spectre of nuclear escalation and therefore would also not be employed. Moreover, the U.S. Navy, which is such an important part of American overall military superiority, would be useless in the middle of the Eurasian continent. Apart from the fact of being fundamentally a seapower centered on a large island off the Eurasian continent, the U.S. would be handicapped by the vast distance of its homeland from the heart of Eurasia. In 1990-91 in America's build-up to the first war against Iraq, it was the great geographic distance that accounted for the fact that it took the U.S. five months to transport and deploy 500,000 troops and their weapons, equipment and supplies to the Persian Gulf. In contrast, both China and Russia have large troop concentrations and supply bases practically next door to Central Asia. As to the vulnerability of Russian or Chinese troops to U.S. airpower launched from bases in the Middle East, this would be serious if the U.S. could have total control of the air as is the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was the case in Kosovo, Panama, Grenada, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea.. But both Russia and China possess huge quantities of surface-to-air missiles (SA-10 and SA-11) and powerful Su-27 fighter planes and Su-30 fighter-bombers. Moreover, the American bases themselves would be at the mercy of hundreds of highly accurate ballistic missiles, such as the Chinese DF-15, thus in turn crippling the U.S. jets dependent on those bases. As already stated, America's penetration of Central Asia was a response to windfall opportunities, but by the same token, if and when conditions turn out to be less than opportune, it is predictable that the U.S. will pull back its horns, as it had done over the years in North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Beirut, and Somalia. (Professor Lee teaches about Chinese foreign policy and U.S.-China relations at the University of Hawaii. He was research assistant at the University of Chicago Center for the Study of American Foreign and Military Policy, and served in a strategic intelligence unit in the U.S. Army Reserve) *Oliver Lee, Ph.D. University of Hawaii, U.S.A. Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
|
