Washington’s Stale Silk Road Policy

If you want to find a lack of originality in the United States’ policy in Central Asia, you don’t need to look far. Just check the name: “New Silk Road initiative.” Harking back to the putatively halcyon days of integration, trade, and rapport in the region, the U.S. opted to set up a policy that flies directly in the face of the gummed-up relations in post-Soviet Central Asia. That’s not to say the U.S. didn’t have a firm understanding of reality; the State Department, after all, still calls Central Asia the “least-economically integrated [region] in the world.” But considering the ethnic pressures, resource strains, and economic drop-offs the region currently faces, the name didn’t quite fit the facts on the ground.

Unfortunately, neither did the plans within the policy.

When the policy was first delineated in 2011, it came about as a means of political balance through economic integration. “Countries in the region know they have more to gain economically by working together than by being isolated,” according to the State Department. This is a given. But actually getting to that point of integration – or improving it in some measurable fashion – remained the hitch. Despite plenty of rhetoric otherwise, the means of enacting this integration continue to have little likelihood of moving from plans on paper to reality in the region.

For instance, look at the primary vehicle for economic integration the New Silk Road initiative sets up. The U.S. has spun the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000) as its foremost means of economic integration in the region for years. As currently envisioned, the project will transit excess electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan and Afghanistan. While primarily funded through the auspices of the World Bank, the U.S. says that it has already donated $15 million to the project.

Again, on paper, such a project remains admirable. It seems to make sense. But when you turn to the current reality in Central Asia, you realize the project has as much likelihood of success as currently planned as Kazakhstan does of holding a free and fair election. The electricity demands in Afghanistan and Pakistan exist, and Tajikistan does maintain an excess supply of summer electricity. But most regions in Tajikistan only receive 12 hours of electricity per day – why not focus on getting the electricity to its own citizens first? Moreover, in 2014, low and late glacial runoff significantly dropped Kyrgyzstan’s hydro-electricity capabilities – and turned Bishkek into a net electricity importer. There appears little likelihood that any of these realities – Tajikistan’s regional shortages; Kyrgyzstan’s glacial runoff shortages – will end at any point in the near future. And where the CASA-1000 project may have made some semblance of sense a decade ago, the project is almost certainly dead on arrival, stuck somewhere between diplomatic inertia and depleted reserves of creativity.

But the issue with CASA-1000 – and the U.S.’s continued emphasis on putting this project at the forefront of its New Silk Road initiative – doesn’t end with misunderstood capabilities. Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon has publicly stated that the only way to make CASA-1000 profitable is to complete construction on Tajikistan’s Rogun Dam, currently plotted as the world’s largest dam. Despite the fact that no current CASA-1000 planning actually incorporates Rogun into its framework, Rahmon has claimed the project as further leverage for the creation of Rogun. Domestically, Rogun could be a net boon to Tajikistan’s economy. Regionally, however, Rogun may well provoke a conflagration hinted at for years. Sitting upstream from the water flow that helps sustain Uzbekistan’s massive cotton crops, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov has made his disdain for the project publicly known multiple times – even hinting in 2012 that such difficulties over water could lead to war.

Disappointed

There are other vehicles within Washington’s plans for regional integration – improving customs checks, upgrading transmission lines, etc. – but CASA-1000 remains the primary project for showcasing the New Silk Road initiative. As such, when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at Brookings Institute at the end of March about the initiative, observers wondered what innovation Washington had brought to its flagging policy in the region. Those observers, unfortunately, came away disappointed. In lieu of any kind of rethink, Blinken ran through the same retread ideas the U.S. has been pushing in the region for years. Even though the New Silk Road initiative is closer to an empty shell than a policy framework, Blinken cited it as if it were the only option available.

Running through the buzz-phrases of “dynamic potential” and “economic bridge,” Blinken unveiled a toolbox that was mostly empty. Once more, he cited CASA-1000 as the primary means of “helping develop the region’s connectivity” – but he didn’t seem to realize that the project would have been far more apt in 2005 than 2015. The fact that this was called an “enduring vision for Central Asia” made the speech all the more of a letdown.

Indeed, Blinken’s entire speech was largely devoid of anything observers hadn’t heard before, and hadn’t critiqued before. (Observers would likely have gotten more from Deputy Assistant Secretary Richard Hoagland’s March speech on Central Asia, where the diplomat regaled the audience with stories of KGB interference and “vodka-shot competitions.”) The U.S., per Blinken, intends to remain present in the region. “Today, there are those who look at the drawdown of our forces from Afghanistan and see through that a region of declining importance to the United States,” Blinken said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” This remains a fine sentiment, but the U.S. is bringing little more than stagnant policies likely to fail – all while the region’s autocrats continue consolidating their power, and civil rights continue to backslide.

Rather than focusing on the kind of economic integration the U.S. pledged within its New Silk Road initiative, Blinken actually spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on the roles external powers play in the region. (To take one metric, between his talk and responses to questions, Blinken mentioned China 23 times – while only mentioning Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan three times apiece.) Rather than highlighting any innovation within the New Silk Road initiative, Blinken hinted that the U.S. would prefer piggybacking onto China’s Silk Road Economic Belt – or, at least, doing little to get in the way of Chinese investment. “We don’t see China’s involvement in Central Asia in zero-sum terms,” Blinken said. “Its development of infrastructure in Central Asia can be fully complementary to our own efforts.” As it is, Hoagland reiterated the talking point, noting that the U.S. “[doesn’t] see China’s involvement in Central Asia in zero-sum terms.”

With Russia, however, Blinken didn’t mince words. Moscow is “threatening the fundamental principles that we all have a stake in defending in Europe and, indeed, around the world,” Blinken said:

...but it is Russia’s actions themselves that are sending a very discordant message to countries in the region, and that is causing them to look more and more for alternatives and different choices.

Countries in Central Asia “understand the dangers posed by Russia better than most,” Blinken said. Now, says Blinken, because of this “fear and concern,” about Russia, China gains another card of influence.

This, then, may be the innovation observers were looking for – not within the United States’ own policy, but in a new willingness to back China’s regional policy. Beijing brings with it economic leverage and can serve as a bulwark against Moscow’s expansionism. The United States’ New Silk Road initiative policy will remain for the time being, at least on paper. But on the ground, it seems Washington is willing to support a different Silk Road policy that has far higher odds of success.