America (Re)Engages in Central Asia

For the better part of a decade, U.S. influence in Central Asia has been on the wane. Following Uzbekistan’s expulsion of American forces from the Karshi-Khanabad base in 2005, Washington’s presence has steadily declined. The Northern Distribution Network (NDN) – which shuttled American materiel from Afghanistan northward – helped stem some of the drop-off but did not halt American decline in the region..

The United States’ slow fade from Central Asia was rooted in manifold realities. On the one hand, the pull-back made a certain kind of sense – American presence in the region initially came heavily tied to American presence in Afghanistan. As the Afghan War faded from public view, policymakers likewise began moving beyond Central Asia. Meanwhile, Russia’s growing assertiveness in numerous post-Soviet spaces increased the perceived price of further U.S. engagement.

But much of the American decline was self-engendered, and was unrelated to broader geopolitical factors. To wit, the American’s New Silk Road Initiative, its putative economic integration plans for the region, fell flat nearly as soon as it was unveiled in 2011. Two of the program’s flagship projects – the TAPI pipeline, transiting Turkmen gas to India, and the CASA-1000 energy program, exporting Kyrgyz and Tajik electricity southward – look far more attainable on paper than on the ground, and neither appear anywhere near fruition. Likewise, the U.S. proved unable to hang on to its presence in Kyrgyzstan’s Manas Transit Center, with Bishkek pushing the Americans out in 2014. And after the U.S. presented a State Department award to Azimjon Askarov, an ethnic Uzbek jailed in Kyrgyzstan after attempting to investigate the country’s 2010 violence, Bishkek shredded a 1993 bilateral cooperation agreement with Washington.

As 2015 waned, it appeared that U.S. influence in Central Asia stood at its lowest ebb in the post-9/11 era. Secretary of State John Kerry, however, attempted to reverse that tide in November. As the first secretary of state to visit all five Central Asian nations in a single swing, Kerry tried to stanch the decline, and to reassure the local governments that the United States remains a major player in the region. External factors certainly played a role in the decision – especially in light of the Taliban’s recent, if temporary, takeover of Kunduz. Likewise, continued Russian saber-rattling and Chinese economic expansion goaded Washington into reaffirming its presence and interests in Central Asia.

The change, for Central Asian governments, was likely welcome – but came with far too few concrete takeaways in either economic or military terms. China continues to build up its Silk Road Economic Belt through the region, coming on the back of over $50 billion in investments over the past two years. Russia continues to provide one of the primary, if sagging, economic props for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the form of remittances. Even Japan recently upped its economic pledges, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signing regional deals totaling $18 billion over the past month.

The United States, on the other hand, shied from any substantial economic commitments during Kerry’s swing. Instead, Kerry opted for a far more realpolitik visit, focusing on overlapping interests in security and geopolitics. Kerry affirmed that his visit was not part of some great power contestation.

“What we want to see is not a struggle between China and Russia and the United States in a zero-sum game,” Kerry noted during his stopover in Tajikistan. “What we want to see is a Central Asia that claims its place as an engine of growth at the heart of a modern and dynamic Asia.”

As such, Kerry helped spearhead a series of agreements within a “C5+1” format, broad and mutual assurances on improving trade, addressing climate change and environmental sustainability, and contributing to nonproliferation efforts, among others. The grouping’s joint declaration even acknowledged the humanitarian role in relations, including assurances to “[p]rotect human rights, develop democratic institutions and practices, and strengthen civil society through respect for recognized norms and principles of international law.”

But while the document contains lofty goals, tangible gains from Kerry’s visit remain uncertain. For instance, while Kerry assured Kazakhstan of U.S. support for its sovereignty – which Putin called into question last year – no further security arrangements have been agreed upon. And despite continued pressures from the Western human rights community, Kerry’s visit to Central Asia saw a notable dearth of public focus on political prisoners and liberal democratization in the region. As Freedom House’s Nigina Valentine wrote, Kerry “stunned the human rights community during his stop in Uzbekistan, when he seemed to have difficulty even using the words ‘human rights,’ instead referring vaguely to ‘the human dimension’ as one of several issues to be discussed in private with authoritarian president Islam Karimov.” Less than two weeks after the trip, however, Uzbekistan released a political prisoner, Murod Juraev, who had been imprisoned for nearly 21 years. Relegating human rights to behind-closed-door sessions yields individual positive results at times, but has not impacted the overall situation in Uzbekistan, which is deeply criticized for arbitrary detentions and torture. 

Human rights were not the primary motivation for Kerry’s visit, but the secretary of state did find moments during the visit to mention them. At Astana’s Nazarbayev University, Kerry pointed out that “terrorism is not a legitimate excuse to lock up political opponents, diminish the rights of civil society, or pin a false label on activists who are engaged in peaceful dissent. Practices of this type are not only unjust, but they are in the end counterproductive.”

Likewise, Kerry alluded to the fact that Central Asia, outside of Kyrgyzstan, boasts no elections that can be considered free or fair. “Elections matter little if they are not free and fair, with all political parties competing on a level playing field,” Kerry noted. “And promises contained in constitutions and laws – they don’t amount to much unless those promises are actually kept.”

The rhetoric on display for university students stood in contrast to Kerry’s posturing with regional leadership. In addition to public photo-ops with presidents from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, Kerry preferred to focus far more on mutual security relations and too-broad-by-half calls for economic integration and environmental coordination. Remarkably, the State Department later said that the trip resulted in “unprecedented collaboration” between the U.S. and the Central Asian states.

While that rhetoric is significantly overblown, the United States has nonetheless illustrated that there is at least some willingness to retain a presence in the region. No future military bases will likely open moving forward, and none of Washington’s flagship integration projects will find much success in the near future. Still, the U.S. appears to have moved past its nadir in Central Asia, and remains determined to maintain a presence in the region.