Meanwhile, the US is correspondingly scaling back its energy ambitions in Central Asia, perhaps a tacit admission that they’re not likely to be achieved. In a January speech, Morningstar showcased a new Caspian energy strategy that was remarkable for its modesty. Morningstar said the United States would not necessarily object if Europeans chose not to build Nabucco and instead built one of the alternative pipelines that Russia backs. And he said Russia would even be welcome to participate in Nabucco if it wanted.
Thus far, China’s economic gains in the region have not been matched by political influence. And Central Asian publics are much warier of China than they are of the United States or Russia: When Kazakhstan in December mooted the idea of leasing some of its farmland to China, rare public protests erupted.
So, in all this geopolitical back-and-forth, who is ‘winning’ in Central Asia? It’s a common trope among armchair geopoliticians that the competition between the United States and Russia in Central Asia is a new ‘Great Game,’ referring to the spy-vs-spy intrigue between Britain and Russia in the 19th century, when each country manipulated the weak kingdoms and city-states of Central Asia as pawns against their rivals.
But these days, the Central Asian states are as likely to be using the big powers as pawns. For example, in 2008, while the Turkmenistan-China pipeline was under construction, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan announced that they would dramatically raise the prices they charged to Russia for their natural gas. Says Central Asia analyst Martha Brill Olcott: ‘The increased bargaining power of the Central Asian states owes more to the entry of China into the market than to the opening of [the U.S.-backed pipelines going west].’
Kazakhstan’s government even has a name for this tactic: ‘multi-vector diplomacy.’ Its government has dealt skilfully with oil companies, governments and militaries from Russia, China and the West to maximize its leverage and build the country into the success story of Central Asia. And its resource-rich neighbours, particularly Turkmenistan, are learning that lesson.
‘With an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the “game,” Central Asian governments have been able to bid up the price they are paid for their resources by playing one superpower off another,’ says Scott Radnitz, a Central Asia scholar at the University of Washington. ‘As Central Asian energy exporters increasingly diversify their export markets, the leverage anyone has over them will decrease.’
In the end, the ‘winner’ of all this 21st century intrigue might not be Russia or the US or even China, but the Central Asian countries themselves.
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Ebag Xor
With no threat of occupation and subsequent forced export of their resources, these oil-rich nations are clearly in the driver seat. They cannot be threatened with invasion, or blatant domestic tinkering, and thus cannot be strong-armed by great powers that cannot live without their resources. Obviously these autocrats need to sell their oil to maintain their wealth and power, but with multiple markets available, they can for the first time get real market value. And they said autocratic government couldn’t survive globalization…