Uzbekistan and America’s Future Conflicts

Global Politician, NY
July 31 2005

Uzbekistan and America’s Future Conflicts

Angelique van Engelen – 7/31/2005

As of next year, Central Asia will have come fully online to Western
energy markets, as twin oil and gas pipelines linking the Caspian sea
to Turkey will begin to deliver. By this time, the world will likely
finally understand that US foreign policy, known to be energy
focused, is intent on more than just bringing Iraq to its knees. This
weekend’s decision by the leadership of Uzbekizstan, just hours ahead
of a key meeting with US officials, to ask US forces to leave its
Karsy Khanabad airbase -dubbed K2- might be a turning point however.

The US opened military bases in Uzbekistan and neighboring
Kyrgyzstan, both bordering on China, in 2001. But the agreements were
rather makeshift and the parties involved hardly trust each other. In
the wake of the massacre by Uzbek government forces, the situation
between the US and the regime in Uzbekistan have been especially
jittery. US top officials did whatever they could to avoid Islam
Karimov’s regime to change its mind on the US troops’ presence,
including a shameful attempt to block UN action calling for an
official investigation into the massacre. To no avail however. The
deal -a collaboration of sorts- is off now. US troops are packing
their bags.

If this is a precursor to future developments, we can expect to see
some more diplomatic manoevering soon. Most of the arrangements for
US troop deployment in Central Asian countries have been forged under
rather strenuous circumstances that could start to act up at moments
way less painful than for instance a massacre. Elections will do just
fine too. The recently forged access to a base in Azerbaijan,
situated next to that monstrous Iran, was reportedly subject to some
heavy coercing. Discussions between the US secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and officials replacing the country’s president Ilham
Aliyev, publicly might have passed for negotiations but are said to
be a first hand example of the very bullying that the US officials
accuse Russia and China of in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

If the efforts to gain greater access to the countries in the region
and, more importantly, their hinterlands China and Iran, had largely
escaped the world’s notice, the process has received a serious
setback for the US with this Uzbek decision, however sad the
motivation. Recent events however do shed more insight over the
priorities Washington has.

The last five years’ worth of practical efforts on the part of the US
to become involved in Central Asia show quite clearly just how self
centered and immoral many moves are. And as the region’s USD3 billion
flagship energy project -the Baku, Tblisi, Ceyhan pipeline- hits the
limelight, it is likely details of the exact role Washington intends
to play in the region will be measured out more public.

Ever since the region’s oil wealth was discovered, US policymakers
have been working hard to be in on the party. They won a key
strategic concession by getting the countries through which this
‘East-West energy transit corridor’ would run (Turkey, Azerbaijan,
Georgia and Kazakhstan) to exclude Iran and Russia. The US efforts
have been near as intense as the host countries’ work laying out the
pipeline. But now the US role might turn a lot more controversial,
not least because the military aspect attached to it starting to be
questioned in ways that have real tangible impact. If a country like
Uzbekistan can tell the US to get lost, who guarantees the others
won’t follow soon?

The writing is on the wall in this respect. Countries in the region
are increasinly linking the deals for the US army to be stationed on
their bases to the situation in Afghanistan. After this war is over,
the Asian countries are less likely to welcome US troops, however
sorded the reasons and however good a blackmailing case the US might
use to barge in nevertheless.

In the past, the US State Department has gained access to these
countries saying the war on terror was the mission, but the soldiers
sent to the region had received training that was focused more or
less on energy however. It appeared soon later that the troop
deployment was part of the US’ intended fight to ‘decisively win
multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars’. This has mostly escaped
the world’s notice because most of the jostling for access took place
as the War or Terror took off, yet there are strategic Washington
documents simply spelling out these ‘by-goals’, the most outspoken of
which are those of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a
controversial organization the members of which dominate the echelons
of power in Washington.

It cannot be denied that the importance of the region is key to goals
stated by many US foreign policy documents. The allegations are
perhaps not so far off, that US agents might have been involved in
the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and that US infiltrants might
have been instrumental in the events spiralling out of control in
Kyrgyzstan, the region’s last country to witness such a highly
uncharacteristic event which commentators still hesitate to describe
as a revolution.

So far, events have accumulated in Central Asia rather silently, but
last weekend’s Uzbek announcement shows that this might be over.
Earlier in the week, Kyrgyzstan, which hosts the spearhead for the
Shanghai Cooperative Organization’s (SCO) rapid reaction forces in
Kant, also spoke out uncharacteristically sharp in this respect. High
ranking US officials were forced to be somewhat honest about their
agenda, responding to the Kyrgyzstani demand that Washington set a
clear date for troop departures from its soil as well as from
Uzbekistan. The claim was countered by the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of staff and Air Force General Richard Myers who accused China
and Russia -interestingly- of ‘trying to bully’ those Central Asian
countries that host US troops.

He also conceded that the US could help bring ‘security and
stability’ to Central Asia. Words that are often heard now and that
seem to have become the new standard sound byte, replacing lines on
Afghanistan. Shortly afterwards, an official at the Pentagon followed
up on the comments, saying the US did not necessarily see the bases
in these two countries as critical, and that it has built up enough
flexibility to get along without access to the countries’ bases. He
put a brave face on it. The two countries are incremental for the US
ground plans to deter what it conceives as Chinese military treats.

The former Russian base in Uzbekistan that the US is asked to vacate
is, at 1,500 capacity, one of the largest the US has access to in the
region. The Kyrgyzstan air base in Manas, also known as the Peter J.
Ganci base (after the New York City fireman who died in the World
Trade Center), is even bigger, at 2,000 capacity. Sources report that
extensive infrastructure has been built, including a central power
plant, a hospital and two industrial-size kitchens. The flexibility
that is quoted by US officials likely amounts to the concessions they
negotiated with the regime in Kazakhstan, who conceded they could use
their bases for landing and taking off as well as its presence in
Tadjikistan, also not half as attractive as the Uzbeki and
Kyrgyzstani situations.

The accusations by the US who says Russia and China are bullying
these two countries into submission are interpreted by observers as a
case of the pot calling the kettle black. The access to Azerbaijan
-not part of the SCO- is also enshrowded in mystery that doesn’t
appear to be much good. Though U.S. officials deny that their forces
are already stationed in Azerbaijan, they concede that the country is
vital for future US bases in the region. The intelligence monitor
Stratfor reported this April that some U.S. troops and materiel are
already in the country, and more forces and aircraft will be deployed
there later this year. Citing ‘multiple sources’ both official and
unofficial, the report indicates that both U.S. troops and aircraft
have arrived. The report claims that Azerbaijani government sources
have confirmed there is an agreement between Baku and Washington on
locating U.S. “temporarily deployed mobile forces”, a deal struck at
the Baku airport by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s and the
Azerbaijani Prime Minister Artur Rasizade and Defense Minister Safar
Abiyev — acting on behalf of Aliyev. The latter was -conveniently-
out of the country at the time. Apparently Rumsfeld and Aliyev missed
each other by hours.

“Sources said that Rumsfeld, not satisfied with Baku’s initial
agreement, pressured the officials to set a quick fixed date to begin
major deployments of U.S. forces to Azerbaijan”, according to the
Stratfor report. The country is said to be strategic to the US in
case it decides to attack Iran. Plans for such an event are being
researched in depth by Washington, among others by the U.S. Strategic
Command (STRATCOM), which has been asked to draw up concrete, short
term contingency plans, to involve “a large-scale air assault
employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons”, reports
Counterpunch columnist Gary Leupp, in an article entitled ‘Is Iran
being set up?’ Answering in the confirmative, he warns that the
consequences of such action would be disastrous for all the goodwill
the US is building up in Iraq currently. “Do they even realize that
southern Iraq and Iran constitute the heartland of historical Shiism,
and that an attack on Iran will negate any goodwill among Shiites
U.S. forces have acquired in Iraq?”, he wonders.

Officials do not confirm reports that Azerbaijani bases are at this
point utilized by the US army, but at the same time they do not deny
that Iran is not on the hotlist for possible military action. And
where else to attack from but from a base in the region? An
officially commissioned study by the Washington based Iran Policy
Committee (IPC) recommends a regime change in Iran is desirable to
-in the study’s wording- ‘recall the nuclear time clock that is
ticking down as Iran drives to reach nuclear weapons capability’.

What exactly would have made the Azerbaijani leadership agree to US
troops renting former Russian bases on its soil might not be
everyone’s guess. The current leader Ilham Aliyev who took over from
his father after controversial elections in 2003, could easily be
toppled in the same fashion as his colleagues in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan
and Ukraine, which saw popular uprisings that many say was spurred on
if not incited by US agents. This might explain the Azerbaijani
regime’s preference to delay the major U.S. forces’ arrival — or at
least the formal announcement of it — until after the elections this
November. “The current government would be accused of election fraud
and treated accordingly by the West and Western-encouraged
opposition”, according to the Stratfor analysis. Officially, Aliyev
is said to favor a pluralistic foreign policy, having resolved
differences with Russia over its troops in a base in Qabala,
northwest of Baku. It is believed that President Putin has
tentatively allowed US troops can be stationed there, but that he
demands to say in the loop on the issue.

Apart from the direct tension between Washington, Moscow and some of
the Central Asian countries, other countries in the world are
decidedly negative on the US strategy of setting up camp everywhere
it sees fit, even though much of the disconsent has hardly come to
the surface because of the way the access to Central Asia has been
couched in the official spoken rhetoric. The first and foremost
reason the Americans cite for their necessary presence is the
situation in Afghanistan, but slowly it is now becoming clear that
the long-term vision consists of guaranteed access to energy
resources and countering the ‘strength of the Chinese army’ in the
region. Which amounts, in real factual terms to its membership of the
SCO with Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The countries
have been holding joint exercises for three years.

China is currently surrounded by a whole chain of major military
bases hosting US troops in Central Asia, as well as in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Vietnam. China is not known to be vying superpower
status to the extent that it wishes to dominate the world militarily.
The same cannot be said of the US regime. The extent of the US army
buildup in Asia today is not really comparable to the international
deployment of US troops during the cold war, but it has been termed
an elaborated, more sophisticated, new, flexible defense
infrastructure for intervening in-or initiating- “hot wars” from the
Middle East to the Caucasus to East Asia. The fear that’s making US
policy makers shivver with regards to China is only exacerbated or
feeding off Chinese army asperations to be modern, flexible and high
tech.

Donald Rumsfeld on a recent Asian trip confirmed the notion entirely,
saying simply China was becoming too powerful for the liking of the
Pentagon. No further qualification of the danger. A recent Pentagon
report on Chinese military strength underlines that simple growth and
sophistication of an army is somehow immediately seen as equal to a
threat, without this necessarily having to be the case. It states
that China is expanding its missile capabilities in Asia and the
Pacific, improving its army’s capability ‘to project power’ and is
upgrading its military technology. Whatever the US leadership is
saying about the Chinese, most comments are geared to the end that
China is an increasing threat, even though the country never singles
the US out as an enemy. The phrase of the pot calling the kettle
black might yet again have acquired new meaning.

“China has three priorities: economic growth, economic growth,
economic growth,” according to Kenneth Courtis, Vice Chairman of
Goldman Sachs in Asia. A recent document drawn up by the US-China
Security Review Commission simply underlines this. The document,
drawn up by a panel of Washington insiders and business people, is
decisive proof that the only reason the Americans are going about
their business in the region is to ensure the continuation of their
hegemony worldwide and will utilize every trick in the school book to
achieve their ends. Even if in recent decades the official line has
been to encourage the process of capitalism in China, Washington is
not pleased with the impressive accomplishments at all now. Beijing
is now seen as a growing threat, both economically and militarily.
What Washington is focusing on in its treatment of China will grow
from criticism of human rights, limited religious freedom into more
potent issues such as an alleged failure to stamp out illegal sales
of nuclear materials and missile-related technology to countries
accused of sponsoring terrorism. The usual.

The report however also mentions highly illustrative ‘motivators’
that are more difficult to classify as offensive under international
law stipulations. What the authors really have a problem with though
is the fact that China is ‘challenging the US in the manufacturing of
airframes, computers and aeronautical guidance systems’. Why? They
are markets America once dominated. America’s growing reliance on
high quality, low-price Chinese imports eventually might “undermine
the US defense industrial base,” it is furthermore asserted. China
has a leg up on the US in trade, as it has managed to gain access to
more than US$14 billion, worth of investments raised in US capital
markets. This is believed to be the main source of the Chinese
initiative to modernize its military and growing its influence in
South-East Asia ‘at the expense of the US’. The commissioners even
feel threatened by the lure of the Chinese market for international
business and cite this as an aggravating factor for the massive US$
87 billion US-China trade imbalance.

Whatever the pretext Washington decides to come up with for a
possible next country to attack, the material is in the making,
testimony this report. There is tons of other stuff, which shows that
the US is not going to be abating this line. The key document
underpinning US international policy, the National Security Strategy
of the United States of America, clearly states the overall goal;
“Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries
from pursuing a military build-up in the hopes of surpassing, or
equalling, the power of the United States”. This is a rather factual
betrayal of all its allies. The US simply states here it will never
be able to be friendly with any power outside that might live up to
the very principals it is preaching whilst going its destructive
course.

“This […] has come as an unpleasant surprise to those who swallowed
the idea that economic globalisation was being accompanied by the
emergence of forms of `global governance’ that would overcome the
centuries-old struggle for supremacy among the Great Powers”, says
Dipak Basu, a columnist at People’s Democracy. Lesser left wing
observers agree on this point.

In future it will be hard to convince the domestic US population of
the merits of any ventures akin to the war against Iraq. Hard, but
not impossible. The past five years have shown that it is possible
that you can use means that are inconceivably hard faced and void of
all logic to launch a war. Even though the reasons that were cited
for going to war on Iraq are by many Americans seen as failing to
come close to reality, they have been documented. Current new reports
on Iran, China and other countries show eery resemblance to this
planning.

The idea that that the US should be in control of the resources and
territories of Central Asia was launched in the early 1970s. In his
book The Grand Chessboard, Zbignew Brzezinski, who used to be an
advisor to Rockefeller and president Carter launches this idea,
stating as a reason the enormous concentration of oil and gas
reserves. In describing the best way to go about this, Brzezinski’s
book reads like a document issuing favorable advise on the war in
Iraq. He says that a “truly massive and widely perceived external
threat? is needed to incline the US public into a supportive mood for
engagement in international war. Even though he wrote the book eight
years ago, and even though the US public has felt betrayed by its
rulers since, this thinking is still not eradicated at all.

There is little the rest of the world can do, apart from object and
exercising international law and staving off the US dominance over
key areas within the UN. Europeans do not like the cowboy style
military strategy abroad, but even if European officials would call
Washington to justify its bases, at this point the US would hardly
care. The war against Iraq has shown this repeatedly. General
closeness between European nations and the US, the product of years
long cooperation, is however often taken for granted at points that
benefit the US. Recently, Europeans did not blink an eyelid when they
saw the US block a UN effort to call Uzbek leaders to question for
the atrocities they commanded in Andijan where over 700 protestors
died at the hands of government troops. The reason? Fear that the US
access to the country’s air force bases would be compromised. The EU
line is that it’s desired that international forces are present in
the country to make sure human rights are honored.

It somewhat subjects its ties with Russia to such demands. The
Russian-German-French troika or the EU-3 which has been close to
Moscow, and which dominated the foreign affairs of the EU over the
past decade, might well be on its last legs however. The Troika’s
motivating factor for involving Russia actively in the not so distant
past has been to throw up a counterweight to the US on the
international political stage. If Europeans are planning to make
themselves heard on the world stage at any time in the future, it is
still very likely they will individually or collectively seek Russia
out all the more.

Russia meanwhile has reacted as if stung by a bee. It increased its
efforts in the region, in the wake of three revolutions in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. President Putin is now more active than at
any point in his tenure in getting the Russian army to assert its
influence in its former republics. He has, among other things,
overseen the conversion of Russia’s military deployments in
Tajikistan into a permanent base, only just beating the Americans to
it. The Central Asian regimes still in place are remarkably loyal to
Moscow, not only because of their mutual history, but also because
they do not wish to undergo the same fate as the previous regimes of
Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and believe that Moscow can protect
them.

Analysts say that the wider populations broadly support independence
from both the West and Moscow, even though the societal make up and
the domestic economies of these countries is recognized as fragile. A
decisive factor is that the US influence is accompanied by economic
incentives which are likely more attractive than what Russia offers
in return. Kazakhstan, the largest of the Asian states and an active
NATO partner, where US oil firms are well represented, is leading the
way in favoring large Western investments over politics favoring the
U.S. to leave neighboring countries. The reimbursements the US pays
the countries do make a considerable difference to their national
accounts. Georgia, for instance, was recently paid USD64 million as
part of a two-year “train and equip” mission, in which US Special
Forces trained a 2,000 strong antiterrorist force that patrols the
Pankisi Gorge, which is where Chechen rebels and AI Qaeda fighters
hide out. This easily outstrips the country’s annual income from
overseas workers and tourism. The company building the barracks and
other facilities for the US trainers is Kellogg Brown & Root division
of Halliburton industries, the former business of US vice president
Dick Cheney, which is building plenty of other facilities in this
region, as well as in Iraq.

Moral issues aside, the question of whether the US really needs to
maintain a foreign strategy centered on energy is an issue the
experts disagree about. Some analysts believe that the day will come
that the rationale for maintaining a military presence in conjunction
with energy needs will be abandoned because it will prove too costly.
So far, this does not seem to be the opinion of US policy makers; the
current US’ worldwide presence outside resembles a specialist energy
map of the globe. Aside from Central Asia, there are not many
countries where US troops are stationed that do not have energy
resources crucial to the US. They include Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Djibouti, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Japan Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen and India.

A country like Azerbaijan, where the Americans are positioning their
troops literally next to the pipeline for the time being serves the
purpose of defending energy interests quite credibly, even though the
ultimate importance that the East West Energy Transit Corridor has on
international markets is debatable. This is not so much because of
the absolute amount of oil that it will pour onto world markets from
this project, but more because of growing scarcety that determines
developments in the world oil supply scene. At 1 million barrels per
day, the project’s initial impact will be most drastic, because it
will account for 25% of all new oil supply, and 1.3% of global
supply, putting it on a par with Iraq. By comparison, Saudi Arabia
produces an estimated 9.8%. Not exactly earth shattering numbers, yet
the deliberations concerning energy supply are largely argued in
terms of demand that is rapidly outstripping supply. This way, any
new project being launched can easily be termed vital, even if the US
is in reality maintaining the base in case it needs it to attack
Iran.

The two factors coincide quite happily. Oil market predictions have
always tended to influence US war rhetoric. And from the reports that
are currently drawn up, it is clear that the extremist, paranoid
component to the reasoning has not diminished at all. What’s worse,
analysts believe that any threat to US access to energy is not
necessarily going to have to be as extreme as Saddam Hussein’s regime
purported possession of weapons of mass destruction for the US to
take action.

“Significant price impacts in the global oil market are caused by
modest marginal changes; the unanticipated one or two million barrels
of oil per day of American and Chinese demand have helped to push
prices up and keep them at elevated levels over the last several
years”, one analyst points out, saying this kind of data alone is
likely enough reason for the US to base rather strategic decisions
on. Other indicators also state that the US has become more extreme
than ever in securing its energy needs. For one, ordinary US citizens
stating their views on forums tend to baffle Europeans saying their
government is right at invading other countries for the purpose of
securing energy access. The general criticism is that the US hardly
lives up to efforts made by others to combat the negative side
effects of the consumerism propelling this urge. The US’ refusal to
sign the Kyoto Protocol is rather assymmetric to the vehemence with
which energy resources are appropriated.

Even though some Central Asian countries have shown a welcoming
attitude to foreign troops and are keen to work in NATO structures,
it does not automatically mean that their leaders are necessarily
consistently pro West. The sea change in Uzbekistan might underline
this. Central Asian countries generally view the West as the most
effective ally in their efforts to build fully independent states,
but the strength of their current pro-Western policies varies. Often
this has a lot to do with internal issues. Azerbaijan showed just how
fickle things are still only this last year, when it effectively
cancelled a NATO exercise of the alliance in September, not hiding
its displeasure at the plan’s inclusion of Armenian soldiers.
Azerbaijan for the last decade has strongly contested Armenia’s
occupation of the region which is dominated by Armenians, and it is
likely going to be key in Azerbaijani NATO negotiations. Recently,
assistant Secretary-General for Defence Planning and Operations John
Colston visited Baku and reported that “Special reports will be
prepared soon, which will identify the main directions of cooperation
between the alliance and Azerbaijan. It is expected Azerbaijan is
ready to join the alliance 2006. The issue of Nagorno Karabakh is
likely key here. But the country has a history of making sea changes.
At the moment, Azerbaijan is a member of the Russian-invented
Commonwealth of International States too, even though it rejected
this in the early 1990s. The membership includes the Treaty on
Collective Security, and an agreement on economic cooperation.

Many countries in the regions have NATO applications that might
translate into membership this year or next. Some are quite far into
the process, notably Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan and
Moldova. These five countries are united in GUAAM, an organization
modeled on NATO’s Conventional Forces in Europe, which was launched
in 1996. The countries declared their commitment to becoming more
independent from Russia in their defense policies, pooling their
diplomatic resources in order to to oppose Russian troop deployment
in or near their countries. The main reason for the pact was to
create more security through collaboration from possible
destabilizing action Russia might undertake against these countries.
All countries except Azerbaijan are dependent on supplies of oil and
gas either from or through Russia. Azerbaijan’s oil and gas exports
that are not directed at Turkey go either through Russia or through
countries that Russia is in a position to destabilize. Russia is
known to employ tactics like suspending the supplies or redirecting
export routes to manipulate the foreign and domestic policies of the
former Soviet Republics at an absolute whim.

The true independence that most Central Asian countries are after
will likely materialize as its mineral wealth gets monetized. Georgia
for instance stands to gain an income from transit tariffs of $50-60
million per year of the oil pipeline that runs through its territory.
What’s more, the pipeline will likely provide an economic snowball
effect. In a few years, the country might be seen as more stable than
ever, which will improve Georgia’s investment climate for other
projects. This in turn will likely lead to greater independent
foreign policy too. Hopefully, the countries will exhibit an appetite
for unauthoritarian forms of democracy that yield a liberty that will
prove to be simply incorruptible by outside powers.

Angelique van Engelen is a former Middle East correspondent and
currently runs a writing agency She also
participates in a writing ring