Page 2 of 3 Sino-Russian baby comes of age
By M K Bhadrakumar
idea of a "contact group" with Kabul. It has maintained a smooth working
relationship with the government led by President Hamid Karzai. If anything,
Karzai's recent difficulties with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
capitals have prompted him to reach out to Moscow.
United States pressure on Karzai to keep him away from the SCO is unlikely to
work again. Karzai will be present at the Yekaterinburg summit meeting. His
vice presidential running mate, Karim Khalili, recently visited Moscow.
Karzai's other running mate, Mohammed Fahim, has old links with Russia's
security agencies.
The SCO conference on Afghanistan held in Moscow on March 27
was primarily intended to challenge the US's monopoly over conflict resolution
in Afghanistan, though its focus was on the problem of drug trafficking. It
followed three years of futile efforts by the SCO to forge a partnership with
NATO for the stabilization of the Afghan situation, which Washington kept
frustrating.
Finally, the US was compelled to attend the Moscow conference lest Russia and
China dissociate from similar American-sponsored forums on Afghanistan. The
conference has opened a window of opportunity for regional powers to get
involved with Afghanistan's stabilization, independent of US strategy.
Countries like India, which are being left out of the loop, will find the SCO
as a useful framework to work with. (India will be represented at the SCO
summit for the first time ever at the level of the prime minister.)
The SCO conference also assumes significance in the context of the Barack Obama
administration's AfPak strategy, which envisages "grand bargains" with regional
powers. The SCO sized up that Washington's game plan would be to strike "grand
bargains" individually and separately with each of the countries in the region,
which would effectively ensure that the US retained the monopoly of conflict
resolution and enabled the US to give new underpinnings to its regional
policies aimed at broadening and deepening its influence in Central Asian and
Southwest Asian geopolitics.
Bush's policies continue
NATO has officially invited Kazakhstan, a major SCO member country, to take
part in its Afghan operations. [5] This is despite Kazakhstan being an active
promoter and a prominent member of the Collective Treaty Organization (CSTO)
and the SCO, both of which have repeatedly offered partnerships to the Western
alliance for its Afghan mission. [6]
Robert Simmons, the NATO secretary general's special representative for the
Caucasus and Central Asia, is on record as saying that the Kazakh army has
already achieved "interoperability" with NATO forces and could make a good
showing in the Afghan mission. Clearly, NATO is sidestepping the CSTO and the
SCO and would prefer to deal with Central Asian capitals individually. The US
is striking similar "grand bargains" with other Central Asian capitals in terms
of gaining access to new military base facilities.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in April that Russia and China would
strengthen their military cooperation through the SCO and engage in several
joint military maneuvers. He implied that these plans were aimed at limiting
the US's presence in Central Asia. From the Russian and Chinese point of view,
it is obvious that the erosion of the US's economic foundations is not
preventing Washington from pursuing with renewed vigor its project aimed at
regaining lost influence in Central Asia.
The Obama administration's proposed budget for the State Department allocates
aid of $41.5 million for Kyrgyzstan and $46.5 million for Tajikistan, whereas
the corresponding figures for the current fiscal year are $24.4 million and
$25.2 million, respectively. US military aid to the two countries will also
similarly be increased under the new budget.
The justification given is that Central Asia's strategic importance has risen
of late for US regional policies. According to budget justification documents
released by the State Department in Washington on May 7:
Central Asia
remains alarmingly fragile: a lack of economic opportunity and weak democratic
institutions foster conditions where corruption is endemic and Islamic
extremism and drug trafficking can thrive. For this region, where good
relations play an important role in supporting our [US] military and civilian
efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, the [budget] request prioritizes assistance
for the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan.
The political
rationale of the aid request makes no bones about the fact that geopolitics is
a factor in Washington's decision to step up aid to Central Asia at a time when
the Russian capacity to bankroll Central Asian economies is in serious doubt.
"The United States rejects the notion that any country has special privileges
or a 'sphere of influence' in this region; instead the United States is open to
cooperating with all countries in the region and where appropriate providing
assistance that helps develop democratic and market institutions and
practices."
Curiously, Washington has lately made it clear that it has no intentions of
vacating the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan in August without a last-ditch effort
to get Bishkek to reconsider its decision. Apart from sustained US diplomatic
efforts to persuade a rethink in Bishkek, Washington has also sought the good
offices of Karzai to raise the issue with his Kyrgyz counterpart President
Kurmanbek Bakiyev - interestingly enough, on the sidelines of the SCO summit in
Yekaterinburg.
Therefore, it is against the backdrop of the deteriorating security situation
in Afghanistan, which causes concern among the SCO member countries, as well as
the robust US diplomacy in the Central Asian region to expand American
influence that the Chinese and Russian decision to step up SCO military
cooperation will be viewed. The SCO defense ministers' meeting held on April 29
in Moscow confirmed reports that China and Russia would hold 25 joint maneuvers
this year. (In the entire period since 2002, China has held only 21 military
exercises with foreign countries.)
Interestingly, all these proposed maneuvers will be focused on the "war on
terror". The SCO war games for 2009 began with a joint "anti-terror" exercise
in Tajikistan near the Afghan border. The main exercise, codenamed Peace
Mission 2009, is planned for July-August. This year's exercises assume the
nature of a conventional drill operation insofar as they will involve more than
2,000 Russian and Chinese troops with heavy weapons such as tanks, transport
planes, self-propelled artillery and possibly including strategic bombers.
The exercises will be held in three stages inside Russia and in northeastern
China. Unmistakably, closer Chinese-Russian military cooperation within the SCO
framework has been prompted by their perception that the US is pressing ahead
with its strategic plans to bring the energy-rich Eurasian region under its
influence.
Can Obama become a heretic?
In a remarkably candid interview recently, well-known Russia scholar Professor
Stephen Cohen at New York University said he didn't believe "anything
substantially or enduringly good" is about to happen in US-Russia relations in
the foreseeable future. Nor is a "real partnership" possible between the two
countries.
More ominously, he warned that the US-Russia relationship was fast getting
"militarized", as it used to be during the Cold War. He said, "NATO expansion
has militarized the relationship between the US and Russia, between the United
States and the former Soviet republics, and between Russia and the former
Soviet republics. Remove NATO expansion, remove the military aspect, and let
them compete otherwise." [7]
More startlingly, Cohen assesses that despite the Obama administration's call
to "reset" ties with Russia, the "old thinking" prevails in Washington - "that
Russia is a defeated power, it's not a legitimate great power with equal rights
to the US, that Russia should make concessions ... that the US can go back on
its promises because Russia is imperialistic and evil."
Cohen said Russia hands in the Obama administration - Vice President Joe Biden,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor General James
Jones, National Security Council member Michael McFaul - are all in one way or
another associated with the "old thinking" toward Russia. "So there are no new
thinkers in Obama's foreign policy okruzhenie [circles]. There is
enormous support in the US for the old thinking. It's the majority view. The
American media, the political class, the American bureaucracy - they all
support it. Therefore, all hope rides with Obama himself, who is not tied to
these old policies. He has to become a heretic and break with orthodoxy."
Cohen added:
Now you and I might say that's impossible, but there is a
precedent. Just over twenty years ago, out of the Soviet orthodoxy, the much
more rigid Communist Party nomenklatura, came a heretic, Mikhail Sergeyevich
Gorbachev. It's not a question of whether we like Gorbachev's leadership or we
don't. The point is that he came forward with something he called "new
thinking", breaking with the old Soviet thinking, and the result was that he
and [president Ronald] Reagan ended the Cold War, or came very close to doing
so. So the question is whether Obama can break with the old thinking.
Thus, the extraordinarily high degree of mutual understanding that the Russian
and Chinese leaderships have been able to work out in the recent period within
the SCO has a much broader framework than appears at first sight. US policies
towards Russia have significantly contributed to these regional compulsions
felt by Moscow and Beijing. Chinese commentaries are consistently sympathetic
towards Russia apropos the range of issues affecting US-Russia relations in
Eurasia.
In an extremely meaningful political gesture on April 28, Chinese Defense
Minister Liang Guangalle, heading a military delegation and visiting Moscow in
connection with the SCO defense ministers' meeting, traveled to Russia's North
Caucasus Military District to discuss regional security with Medvedev. This
happened just two days ahead of the formalization of the Russian decision to
deploy troops for the defense of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
What emerges is that both Russia and China remain skeptical ZAfghanistan.
Izvestia wrote recently, "Today, despite their hypocritical talk of
'cooperation' (by which they mean the shipment of NATO military freight across
Russia), the [US-led] coalition is keeping Russia away from Afghanistan as much
as
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