Abandoning the Great Game

On the first day of 2016, recognizing that the states which once comprised the Soviet Union would be celebrating their 25th year of independence, I implored all who would listen to abandon the phrase “Great Game” to discuss modern geopolitics in Central Asia:

Everyone loves a great game — Monopoly, Risk and Civ 5 come to mind — but in Central Asia this tired phrase stands in as a substitute for explaining modern geopolitical dynamics… In modern usage, it’s applied to the perpetual contest — real and imagined — between external powers for influence in Central Asia, with the regional states cast as pawns or mere scenery. The problem is that this phrase robs regional states of their own role in events.

To my disappointment (but not my surprise) the phrase has persisted. A recent piece in The Economist, titled “Stans undelivered,” led with it: “The five former Soviet republics struggle to survive the new Great Game.”

The piece was an overview of the region and started by pointing out the eccentricities of Turkmenistan with the note, “Such absurd extravagances can only happen in a dictatorship” and going on to categorize all five regional governments as “repressive, cronyist.” It painted the region with a not entirely inaccurate, but exceedingly broad, brush; worried about color revolutions and jihadism, the region is “something of a home game” for Russia.

On the issue of security, the article stays into typical hyperbole. “Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may have contributed more than 1,000 IS fighters each.” Then there’s this odd reference: “The Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, with their nomadic heritage, have been less seduced by IS’s puritanical version of Islam.” The titular peoples of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan do have a more nomadic heritage than say, Uzbeks, but across Central Asia people are, in general, Hanafi Sunnis with a dash of Sufism and 70 years of Soviet rule flavoring the relation of people to their religion.

Then the piece turns to the new Great Game: “The main players are a militantly nationalist Russia, a mercantile China, an initially hopeful but now bruised America and a warily interested Europe.” The dynamics described subsequently are accurate: Western business are indeed wary of the region's weak legal institutions and rampant corruption, Chinese business engagement is on the rise, and “Russia remains the pre-eminent influence.”

The piece comes at Central Asian politics primarily from one direction: the concerns of external actors. While the later portion of the article speaks from the region’s perspective, the section is dominated by Kazakhstan, “easily the most impressive of the five.” Uzbekistan gets a single line, describing President Islam Karimov as “the nastiest and perhaps most paranoid of the five rulers.” (A justified statement, if still too pithy to describe a country.) Tajikistan gets a few sentences, and Kyrgyzstan a throw-away comment: “Politically, Kyrgyzstan is the freest, but that does not seem to have made people happier.” Turkmenistan, the country with which the article begins, is absent from the final section entirely.

Unsurprisingly, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan pushed back on the piece in letters to the editor, frustrated by being relegated to non-active players in their own region. Kazakhstan complained because it sees itself as the region’s economic and political powerhouse; Kyrgyzstan because it sees its political progress as worth more than a single sentence. Whatever criticisms I can (and do) lob at Astana and Bishkek, in this they are right.

Erlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, pushed back in much the same way I did in January, by asserting the individuality of Kazakhstan as a global actor. “We are not a silent bystander in anyone else’s strategy; we are a young country making its own independent way in the world,” he wrote in a letter to the editor. He went on to echo Kazakhstan’s signature policy positions and rebranded the Game: “Rather than a Great Game we believe in a Great Gain, where states co-operate to achieve regional prosperity, stability and security.”

Idrissov’s letter is short and the obvious intent is to trumpet Kazakhstan’s multivariate international relations. More interesting, I believe, is the letter from the Kyrgyz side. At more than twice the length, the letter from the Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States and Canada, Kadyr Toktogulov, also seeks to trumpet his country’s self-narrative.

Toktogulov takes issue with the fact that Kyrgyzstan had been “thrown into an overgeneralized characterization of Central Asia’s stans.” After highlighting Kyrgyzstan’s first peaceful transfer of power--from interim President Roza Otunbayeva to current President Almazbek Atambayev in 2011--and noting next year’s presidential election, he pointed out that Kyrgyzstan’s election last October was peaceful, modern, and ushered six parties in the parliament.

Toktogulov took further issue with the article’s characterization of Atambayev as maybe “even more pro-Russian than his neighbors”:

This characterisation is unfair, implying that pro-Russian leaders can’t be democratic. Having strategic relations with Russia, the country’s largest trading and security partner, does not make Kyrgyzstan and its president non-democratic.

Kazakhstan is not a “silent bystander” and Kyrgyzstan is not, by virtue of a good relationship with Russia, necessarily non-democratic. It would make very little sense for the countries of Central Asia to pursue a policy line that would bring them into conflict with Russia (or China for that matter) and judging the countries of Central Asia harshly for such relationships is counterproductive for those in the West. A good relationship with Moscow does not mean the capitals of Central Asia jump at Russia’s command.

“Grouping the stans together is inaccurate as there are now five different political systems and economies,” Toktugulov closes with. This is a strident--and often repeated--message that the West ought to take to heart. For all the similarities between the Central Asian states, there are as many differences.

Over the past 25 years the countries of Central Asia have worked to define themselves, especially against their neighbors. The five ‘Stans (another term I don’t particularly like) did not exist as independent modern states before 1991 (no matter what Kazakhstan says about 550-plus years of Kazakh statehood). In the 25 years since the Soviet Union’s collapse the five have made their own way--often at the cost of closer intra-regional cooperation.

Simplifying the region, casting The ‘Stans as foremost the pawns in a Russian-Chinese Great Game, not only lacks nuance but it’s not tremendously helpful in understanding regional dynamics. Every little twist and turn in Kyrgyz politics is not done by Russia’s hand, nor are Kazakhstan’s decisions drafted in Moscow. Do Astana and Bishkek care what Moscow wants? Sure, but most states take the interests of their immediate neighbors into consideration to some degree and the bonds of history are not so easily erased.

A title like “Stans undelivered” is intended to convey the sense that Central Asia has not lived up to expectations following independence 25 years ago. This is true in a sense, particularly with regard to political progress. But reality is vastly more complex: in combating poverty countries like Kazakhstan have made great leaps and bounds, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have simply not had the resource wealth to do the same. It’s perhaps poor timing that the 25th anniversaries of independence fall in a period of particular economic distress--two years ago things looked rosier, in economic and political terms. The present downturn seems to be, at least in part, systemic--meaning past optimism may have been misplaced and the region’s economic strategies not as robust as hoped.

So why do we cling to the Great Game? Because it’s simple: it puts complex political and economic issues into a neat, accessible framework. A game has identifiable players with basic motives. A game can be won or lost. The Great Game is, however, too simple a metaphor. Its simplicity allows those commenting on the far-reaching implications of regional matters--particularly how they relate to the world’s major powers--to do so without understanding the internal, individual, state motivations and interests at play. Some of the states of Central Asia don’t make it easy: they can be unfriendly to criticism, to put it diplomatically, and prone to secrecy by default. There are significant problems across the region--political and economic--but at the same time some progress since independence. Both blame and praise ought to be directed at the five regional capitals, not lobbed at their larger neighbors.