Losing Patience with Strategic Patience

The United States gives Central Asia scant attention but even less thought. In the ashes of the Soviet Union, a quarter century ago, the U.S. saw an open field in which Washington hoped like-minded democracies would grow. Instead, authoritarianism has taken root – three of five regional leaders have been in power since 1992. Despite millions in assistance targeted at democratization, plus millions more in economic and security assistance, Central Asia still lacks political diversity and its stability is hotly debated, with some characterizing the region as a few short steps from complete collapse.

American policy toward the region under the Obama administration came to be known as “strategic patience.” The core idea being that if Washington was patient enough, Central Asia would change. For obvious reasons, human rights activists and a number of regional watchers have viewed the policy with scorn.

A pair of reports released in early 2016 attempt to suggest new directions for American policy in Central Asia. But both reports fall flat. One ends up at the conclusion that a policy reboot is needed but the reboot looks strangely like a confirmation of the status quo. The other report concludes that not only is strategic patience necessary, but more strategic patience is needed (whatever that actually means). These conclusions, in of themselves, are not surprising given that all the authors served in the U.S. government until recently.

The first report, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is co-authored by Eugene Rumer, the director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, and two senior associates in the program, Richard Sokolsky and Paul Stronski. Rumer was previously the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to 2014, Sokolsky was in the U.S. State Department’s policy planning office from 2005 to 2015, and Stronski analyzed Russian domestic politics for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research prior to joining Carnegie. The second report, published by CIGI, was authored by Richard E. Hoagland, until August 2015 the U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs.

In short, these are men fully ensconced in the U.S. government’s preexisting policies toward the region. It is little surprise that their recommendations put on paper what’s already been the norm in practice.

Perhaps the most contentious piece of advice offered is the bold statement in the Carnegie report that the United States should “not condition security cooperation on human rights performance.” The report lists Central Asia’s failure to embrace democracy, harsh crackdowns in political opposition, and lack of respect for human rights as abject failures of U.S. policy.

The CIGI report by Hoagland, awkwardly titled “Central Asia: Not in Our Backyard, Not a Hot Spot, Strategically Important,” does a careful job to lay out the many ways in which Central Asian regimes have avoided their human rights commitments and then says “That’s the black-and-white view. In reality the great majority of the citizens of Central Asia go about their daily business and live quite normal lives, although the endemic corruption of daily life exasperates them.” Hoagland goes on to say that highlighting human rights issues in Central Asia contributes to the region’s “image problem.”

Unmentioned is the fact that one of the solutions to “endemic corruption” is a press able to independently report on government waste and abuse and a people empowered to decide on their leaders.

But rather than propose ways to more properly address serious issues like arbitrary justice systems, torture in prisons, and freedom of the press, the CIGI report argues for the status quo: “Western nations can encourage and support humanist values in Central Asia without resorting to shrill naming and shaming about human rights or public fingerwagging.”

The Carnegie report, for its part, essentially suggests abandoning concerns about human rights. This is couched as reasonable in light of American national interests. But nowhere do the more ephemeral American interests – the core founding values most easily summarized by the word “freedom” – enter into the report’s calculations. For some, economic and political interests trump ideological ones, with little room for human rights issues. Others argue that respect for human rights is not just a humanitarian issue but a fundamental piece of building lasting regional stability.

The Carnegie report goes on to say, “America’s expectations for and demands on the states of Central Asia should be tempered by the investment Washington is prepared to make in this region.” It suggests identifying areas where U.S. interests overlap with those of Russia and China – both of which are clearly more invested in the region – and “harness their interests in and approach to the region in the United States’ favor.” U.S. interests match perfectly with those of Russia and China: the former has little interest in Central Asia and the latter two aren’t keen to see democracy take firm root in their mutual backyard.

Moscow, in particular, consistently points to extremism as Central Asia’s greatest threat. The Carnegie report acknowledges that regional regimes “often exaggerate these risks and misrepresent legitimate political protest as extremism in order to justify repression and to deflect Washington’s criticism of human rights abuses.” Selling out U.S. Central Asia policy to Russian interests means potentially buying into the hyped-up threat of extremism in the region. This has been – and will likely continue to be – the core area where Western and Eastern interests align. Never mind that in Central Asia the perpetual predictions of collapse have yet to come to fruition nor have a long series of international extremist groups – from al-Qaeda to the Taliban to ISIS – put effort into making Central Asia a priority.