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Central Asia as an object of interest of NATO countries (analytical report)

This article examines how the Alliance’s partnership policy has changed in Central Asia and South Caucasus since the 1990s and aims to clarify to what extent NATO’s new partnership policy can affect its relations with these countries. NATO–Russian relations and the Afghanistan operation are evaluated as the main drivers of this process. The target date of the withdrawal of the ISAF combat mission in December 2014, set at the Lisbon Summit 2010, as well as the shifting of the focus of long-term US foreign policy to the Asia-Pacific region and the US aim of balancing China’s influence in this region increase the necessity for the Alliance to redefine its future policy towards Central Asia and South Caucasus.

The article claims these developments have caused the need to treat Russia more as a partner than a potential competitor in constituting the policy towards Central Asia and South Caucasus. Furthermore the article claims there is no possibility for new Alliance expansion in this part of the world in the short to medium term.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has a keen interest in Central Asia due to the security and stability risks the region generates, as well as the negative spill-over effects from Afghanistan that impact upon the region. Although all five Central Asian Republics take part in NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP), concrete cooperation remains limited and is mostly oriented towards maintaining a dialogue. The Central Asian regimes feel they need to balance security cooperation with NATO with that of Russia (the Collective Security Treaty Organization) and Russia-China (the Shanghai Cooperation Organization), but at the same time they exploit NATO’s and the U.S.’s dependence on keeping the Northern Distribution Network alive for troops and supplies to Afghanistan. Meanwhile NATO seeks to balance the demands of hard security interests with not losing sight of Central Asia’s deploring democracy and human rights record. However, cooperation is clearly weighted in favor of NATO’s practical interests: the ISAF mission in Afghanistan largely defines NATO relations with the Central Asian region. Excluding policies towards Afghanistan, the European Union (EU) by-and-large has the same objectives as NATO when it comes to security in Central Asia, but completely different ways of going about pursuing a stable Central Asia that is a genuine partner. NATO’s focus lies in dialogue with the Central Asian leaderships, keeping Central Asian supply routes to Afghanistan open and some cooperation in the field of defense reform. The EU’s approach is much more diverse and focuses on aspects of human security, which it tries to support through projects and funding for rule of law, good governance and water management, but at the same time also supporting Central Asian border management and so on. In doing so the EU of course has substantially more resources at its disposal and the EU’s objectives in Central Asia are also much broader than merely security and partnership.

Nonetheless, it is strange that the EU and NATO do not liaise much in general, particularly when it comes to policies on and ties with Central Asia. As one policymaker said, “NATO and the EU are like two elephants running through the same city (Brussels) while never meeting each other”. This also applies to Central Asia where both rarely can be found in the same room. This is unfortunate because there are several reasons that would make increased cooperation and fine-tuning of policies and approaches towards Central Asia worthwhile. First, both have only a limited presence in the region. Whereas the EU is stepping up its presence on the ground by opening up an EU Delegation in Uzbekistan (on top of already having delegations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), NATO only has a liaison officer present and is represented by (contact) embassies of NATO members in the region. Active exchange of information – in Brussels through regular meetings and in the region between EU delegations and European NATO members’ embassies including U.S. and Turkish embassies – would be beneficial to both. Second, U.S. and European policies towards Central Asia are increasingly divergent. The EU takes a broad approach by looking at a whole spectrum of issues, from energy interests to the promotion of democratic values and human rights to security interests, while the U.S.’s approach is becoming narrower by concentrating foremost on (hard) security matters and seeing Central Asia primarily through an Afghanistan lens. NATO brings Europe and the U.S. together in one organization, and also includes Turkey, itself an active and substantial actor in Central Asia. In the wake of the growing influence of Russia and China in the region increased coordination between the EU and NATO seems a logical step. Third, NATO as well as the EU is concerned about the development of Afghanistan over the coming years, especially post-2014 when the ISAF mission will be concluded and troops will have been withdrawn. As the EU and NATO work together on the ground in Afghanistan it would make sense to extend practical cooperation to Central Asia. This is especially true of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan who are the most vulnerable to the potential increase of extremism and drug trafficking. Again, NATO having the U.S. and Turkey on board could help the EU in planning border management assistance and other security-related support such as disaster preparedness and aspects of security sector reform and governance. Joint programming could also be envisaged in some of these areas, possibly including the OSCE and UNDP. Lastly, the EU and NATO will also need to take a joint approach in fostering regional cooperation concerning Afghanistan. This should include not only Pakistan, but certainly Central Asia and hopefully Iran as well. Regional cooperation will be difficult to promote in a region with so many influential players with often contradictory interests. This is why at least NATO and the EU need to have their act together and move jointly in bringing other parties to the table. This EUCAM Watch is devoted to NATO and Central Asia. An insight into NATO’s activities in the region is provided by NATO Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, James Appathurai. Alexander Cooley writes about the Northern Distribution Network and the U.S. plans for the New Silk Road, while Marlene Laurelled and Sebastian Perouse discuss NATO in connection to the Russian driven CSTO and the Russia-China led SCO.

How are the Central Asian Republics working with NATO through the Partnership for Peace (PfP)? Since the NATO Summit in Istanbul in 2004 the Alliance has made additional efforts to deepen cooperation with all of its Central Asian Partners, including appointing a Special Representative for the region and sending a Liaison Officer to the region. Each Central Asian partner nation determines its own level of participation in the PfP, given diversity of perspectives among the five countries. So each individual country makes use of the various tools and levels of partnership that we offer according to its own priorities [1].

All Central Asian Republics have joined a mechanism that we call the IPCP or Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programmed. This programmer offers a wide range of partnership activities including defense reform, defense policy and planning, civil-military relations, education and training, military-to-military cooperation and exercises, civil emergency planning and disaster-preparedness, as well as cooperation on science and environmental issues. There are additional mechanisms, like PARP (Planning and Review Process) and IPAP (Individual Partnership Action Plan) that we offer to our Central Asian partners. These are more complex programmers, which require a higher level of cooperation with NATO, but allow access to a wider range of partnership activities. In many PfP countries NATO is active in support of defense reform as part of security sector reform and governance. What are the activities and possibilities with Central Asian countries in this respect? A key objective is to promote the effective and efficient management of defense institutions, as well as civilian and democratic control of the armed forces. We also want to help the militaries of all our partners to become increasingly interoperable with NATO, in order to allow them to work as smoothly as possible with the Alliance, and so enhance the effectiveness of any current or future NATO operations in which they might wish to participate. The Planning and Review Process or PARP, as we call it, is the key instrument for helping partners with these reforms. Partners whose cooperation with NATO is more advanced participate in this mechanism in which some of their security forces also undergo defense review procedures similar to those of NATO Allies themselves, in order to prepare them to participate in international peacekeeping operations. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan participate in the PARP process, while Tajikistan has expressed an interest in doing so in the future. The PARP mechanism has a flexible nature and it is up to the partners to decide on the priority areas of defense reform and defense review. The Kazakh government’s efforts at achieving greater interoperability with NATO troops have led to the creation, assisted by NATO, of a Kazakh battalion (KAZBAT) [2].

While this was not in a NATO context, KAZBAT has successfully deployed alongside Polish troops in Iraq for a demining mission. Several Central Asian states are also members of the Collective Security and Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with which NATO has no official ties. Does this complicate cooperation with Central Asia? Let me first emphasize that NATO’s engagement with Central Asia is complementary with that of other actors in the region. For Central Asian countries, cooperation with NATO is not, and should not be, a “zero-sum game”. NATO strongly believes that it is the sovereign right of each individual state to determine its own security arrangements and that cooperation with one regional organization does not preclude cooperation with any other regional organization. NATO and its partners have undertaken initiatives to promote and coordinate practical cooperation and the exchange of expertise in areas such as combating terrorism and border security. I am confident that this cooperation will continue to fulfil its potential and contribute to increased security in Central Asia, which is particularly relevant in the context of transition in Afghanistan. Kazakhstan seems to have progressed furthest in Central Asia within the PfP [3-4].

How is the Individual Partnership Action Plan proceeding and has it led to increased cooperation and reform? The IPAP is a more advanced cooperation mechanism, in which a Partner and NATO jointly agree on a detailed programmer of security sector reform. The benefits of participating in more advanced programmers are linked to greater access to NATO expertise and assistance in conducting the reforms identified by the Partner. Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian country to have agreed an IPAP with the Alliance, in early 2006. Since then, Kazakhstan has been making substantial progress in defense reform and interoperability. Currently, we are working on the third cycle of the IPAP process with Kazakhstan for the period of 2012-2013 and plan to finalize it in February. Have the 2010 revolutionary changes in Kyrgyzstan brought an opportunity for NATO to increase cooperation with that country, including in the field of discussing democratic practice and human rights issues in defense matters? NATO’s relations with Kyrgyzstan date back to the early 90s and cover already a wide range of areas. Currently, we are considering new projects which were requested by Kyrgyzstan which include a trust fund on the management of weapon storage facilities, projects on leftover and unwanted uranium residue, as well as defense reforms.

What is the nature of NATO relations with Turkmenistan? How does NATO see Turkmenistan’s increased activism in urging regional cooperation on Afghanistan? As with all other Central Asian Republics, Turkmenistan joined the IPCP. Within this programmer, Turkmenistan chose not to participate in military activities, in line with its position of “neutrality”. This does not, however, preclude cooperation in key areas included in the IPCP, such as Civil Emergency Planning and Science for Peace and Security projects. In the past few years, we have witnessed more sustained engagement from all Central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan, with regard to assisting Afghanistan. Uzbekistan is logistically essential to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. Is NATO capable of addressing human rights violations with the authoritarian leadership while also maintaining the Northern Distribution Network? Let me stress that partnership is about more than practical cooperation – it is also about values. By signing the PfP Framework Document, Central Asian partners committed to respect international law, the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Helsinki Final Act, and international disarmament and arms control agreements; to respect existing borders; and to settle disputes peacefully. It is no secret that Central Asian countries still have some way to go to fully live up to these standards. However, we believe that we can assist this process through our cooperation. As with other partners, we also highlight with Uzbekistan the importance of values such as democratic standards and the rule of law. At the same time, we believe that we can have practical cooperation that goes hand in hand with our efforts to stress the need for the Central Asian states to live up to all of their commitments [5]. Does NATO plan to intensify cooperation with Tajikistan as the most fragile and poorest country in the region? Tajikistan joined PfP in 2002, the last Central Asian partner to do so. Indeed, cooperation with Tajikistan has been hampered by practical issues including lack of resources and English language capability. Nevertheless, Tajikistan has shown growing interest in recent years in slowly but steadily enhancing its cooperation with NATO. President Rahmon visited NATO HQ in February 2009 for the second time where he noted his country’s willingness to expand cooperation. A NATO- sponsored Summer Academy in Dushanbe has become an annual event, and includes participation from across Central Asia, including Afghanistan. Currently, we are launching a trust fund project aimed at the destruction of surplus ammunition. NATO also regularly engages with regional actors in order to address the security needs of Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan. In this framework, we have regular consultations with the OSCE and, more recently, also with the EU. What do you see as the major risks and threats to Central Asia after ISAF troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in the coming years? Over the next three years, NATO’s role will progressively evolve from combat to training and support of Afghan security forces. The process that we call transition to Afghan lead responsibility is on track, and will be completed by the end of 2014. However, we will not abandon Afghanistan once transition is over. Afghanistan’s needs in the coming years cover many areas, such as governance, justice, development and economic growth. We are confident that the international community will play its full part when ISAF’s combat mission comes to a close.

At the Lisbon summit last year we agreed on an Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan. And at our next summit in Chicago, we will set out how that will work, by agreeing a package of concrete assistance measures. NATO will not let Afghanistan slip back into the hands of militants, but NATO does not aspire to lead the support effort in all areas in which Afghanistan needs assistance. The whole international community has a stake in a stable Afghanistan, and the whole international community must help achieve it. As NATO looks to reduce its major combat presence in Afghanistan, Western officials are exploring how to promote greater economic cooperation between Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors. Two recent initiatives – the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) and the “New Silk Road” (NSR) strategy – have been touted as important steps in fostering much needed regional economic integration. Yet, the problems that have arisen in the operation of the NDN over the last few years may well be a harbinger of the challenges that will confront the ambitious NSR. The NDN was established in 2008 to provide U.S. and ISAF forces alternatives to the volatile and politically vulnerable supply routes that enter Afghanistan from Pakistan. NDN routes are a remarkable logistical undertaking, traversing large portions of the Eurasian landmass. On the main NDN routes, cargo is offloaded onto Baltic ports and then transported by rail through Russia, Kazakhstan and onto Uzbekistan and the Afghan border. An NDN South spur originates in Poti, Georgia, goes by rail across to Azerbaijan and then by ferry to Aktau, before being loaded onto trucks. In both strands, Uzbekistan serves as a hub, with five out of every six containers making their way to Afghanistan via the TermezHairaton crossing. Until 2008, NDN transit accounted for only about 10 percent of Afghanistan-bound shipments compared with Pakistan’s 90 percent; in 2011 total transit through the NDN had increased to 60 percent (though initially planned to reach 75 percent), and this percentage appears likely to increase in 2012 given continued political tensions between the United States and Pakistan. Beyond its critical role as a transit route for NATO supplies, officials expressed hopes that forging the NDN would also generate regional economic benefits in the form of improved infrastructure, transit technologies and greater trade volumes.

Over the last year, U.S. and NATO leaders have also rolled out the NSR, an ambitious plan to contribute to Afghanistan’s post-2014 economic development by establishing regional economic links between Afghanistan and its Central and South Asian neighbours. Under the plan, the international community will assist with the upgrading of regional infrastructure such as roads, railways, bridges and pipelines. Furthermore, planners are particularly interested in connecting Central Asian energy production with potential markets in Afghanistan and South Asia. Clearly, given that Afghanistan’s GDP remains almost completely dependent on foreign assistance, expanding economic opportunity and regional activity should be a priority for NATO. Yet, however laudable these goals, a number of challenges have plagued the NDN, and these are also likely to hamper the NSR. First, these two regional initiatives conflate two distinct types of economic activity - “rent-seeking”, or the use of political power by government officials to gain access to fixed income streams, with productive private investment. The whole premise of the NDN was to offer Central Asian governments hefty transit fees as the necessary economic incentives to secure their cooperation on these new logistical arrangements. Central Asian officials have regularly hiked transit tariffs, while bureaucrats and customs officials demand informal payments and delay shipments without them. A comparison of basic indicators provided by the World Bank about the Central Asian countries suggests that between 2008 and 2011, despite the ramping up of the NDN, there have been no broad improvements in the long clearing times required for exports and imports to and from the region.

Nor have U.S. attempts to procure goods and supplies from Central Asian vendors – a move encouraged by General Petraeus’ decision in 2009 to waive federal guidelines in order to encourage more local sourcing – yielded a significant surge in regional trade. Between 2008 and 2012, the total amount of Central Asian procurement for the NDN was about $155 million, a much smaller amount than was originally anticipated (in 2009, Uzbek officials reportedly set an annual goal of $100 million). This volume can only increase significantly, if Central Asian elites decide that they have more to gain from encouraging formal trade than by collecting large informal payments, which depresses it. Similarly, with the New Silk Road, the impending 2014 deadline for the NATO drawdown from the region may encourage Central Asian officials to focus on securing as many short-term projects as possible, with scant regard for the regional dimension. This appears to be the fate of the multilateral Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) programme, which has ambitiously poured billions of dollars into the construction of a set of regional corridors, yet the project has stalled as each recipient has used the funds for its own highway construction without committing to actually improving cross-border transit and transactions. Second, rather than act as a force to increase economic integration and regional cooperation, it appears that aspects of the NDN have actually increased intraregional competition among the Central Asian states.

The central importance of Uzbekistan has exacerbated its regional economic rivalries and highlighted simmering border tensions. Over the last year hundreds of freight cars bound for Tajikistan have piled up at the Uzbek border, while individual border crossings between the countries have been closed and militarised. In November 2011, a railway spur from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan, which the Tajik authorities claimed could handle increased NDN traffic volume, was blown up under mysterious circumstances. In Kyrgyzstan, officials complain that Tajik companies and drivers exclusively operate the trucks running within the Tajik-Kyrgyz NDN spur. Thus, for the Central Asian states, concerns over how much rival states gain from the NDN appear to be trumping the emergence of new cooperative initiatives.

Finally, as a “grand idea” without an accompanying blueprint, the NSR may unnecessarily lend geopolitical overtones to a group of projects that otherwise might be widely accepted as primarily developmental. The NSR is pragmatically open-ended, allowing for a number of disparate projects, initiatives and developmental plans to be bundled together. But the umbrella of a single strategic concept also emboldens sceptics, particularly in Moscow and Beijing, to infer that the West is positioning itself to maintain enduring regional influence. Meanwhile the SCO has remained a paper tiger in terms of regional security. The organization has attained only one of its declared objectives, namely black listing and extraditing Uyghur dissidents.

In all other aspects of collective strategic cooperation, the gap between its institutional rhetoric and its lack of joint mechanisms is vast. The CSTO in Central Asia is only active in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and even then the Kremlin’s desire to strengthen military cooperation runs up against Dushanbe’s reluctance, Bishkek’s hesitations and Astana’s desires for autonomy and a multi-vector policy. Furthermore, Moscow does not know how to prepare for the non-traditional threats arising in the region, and for any possible waves of political destabilization such as those that rocked Kyrgyzstan in 2010. In this context, the CSTO and SCO are not really NATO’s direct rivals in Central Asia. To enter into competition with them, NATO would have to aim at integrating the security policies of the Central Asian states into a solid regional structure, which is not the case.

For its part, the SCO has not positioned itself as an organization with a substantial military component, and instead confines itself to promoting a “healthy” Central Asian order, free from the so-called three evils of separatism, extremism and fundamentalism, and devoid of pro-Western forces. Only Russia offers willing Central Asian states the complete array of bilateral and multilateral relations, including arms sales at reduced prices, training, joint exercises and intelligence exchanges. In terms of cooperation with NATO, Kazakhstan is the most advanced state of Central Asia. Astana has an IPAP with NATO and takes part in an Action Plan against Terrorism, which provides for the exchange of information with NATO members. It also hosts the annual “Steppe Eagle” anti-terrorism exercises and created a symbolic peacekeeping force called KAZBRIG that collaborates with NATO under a UN mandate. Astana also seeks to step up efforts in NATO interoperability in the coming years.

However, this does not prevent Kazakhstan from being a major ally of Moscow in the post-Soviet era, or from showing its support for most of the Russian proposals for strengthened integration. Kazakhstan therefore shows how the programmers offered by NATO and the CSTO can be complementary rather than competitive. In contrast with the CSTO, the SCO has not raised the idea of cooperation with NATO. China would probably be reluctant for this type of rapprochement, even if informal discussions between senior officials do take place. But NATO also has little to share with the SCO. The SCO’s definition of the three evils runs contrary to NATO’s political objectives. The Atlantic Treaty Organization cannot lend its support to SCO rhetoric on domestic security and the value gap between them is substantial. The areas of cooperation between Western institutions and China are at best limited to a better coordinated anti-drug strategy, but none involve any hard military security.

Even on issues linked to regional security China is extremely reluctant to become more involved in Afghanistan or in the fight against drug-trafficking. Hitherto, only Russia has regularly requested an institutionalizing Why NATO doesn’t talk with the SCO and the CSTO by MaloneLaurelled and SebastianPerouse, EUCAM Researchers of NATO- CSTO cooperation. Moscow wants to have a say in NATO decision- making. While this is unlikely to happen, there is a window of opportunity for NATO-Russia cooperation with the forthcoming withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan. Russia is concerned about the consequences of this transition for Central Asian stability and would probably not be willing to carry the burden of providing security support to Central Asia alone. But for a step up in cooperation Russia is likely to demand NATO’s recognition of the CSTO; not as a symbol of Russian “imperialism” in Central Asia, but as a legitimate regional institution, validated by the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik governments. NATO might not be ready for this step and in any case would prefer to work bilaterally with Russia and the Central Asian states through PfP. Potential NATO-CSTO discussions also presuppose that the governments of Central Asia, at least the most cooperative ones, would take an interest in developing joint measures [6].

Kazakhstan might support NATO-CSTO links and the relatively weak Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities can probably be convinced, but Uzbekistan would likely resist. Furthermore, all local governments have tended to put external actors against one another rather than promote cooperation between them. Under current conditions, it would thus be naive to think that cooperation between the institutions will happen any time soon. NATO is reluctant to take the CSTO seriously; Russia hesitates between investing in the CSTO or the SCO; China is not interested in multilateral initiatives it does not control; and the Central Asian governments play the competition card.

Nonetheless, the approaching security changes after 2014, as well as the financial, military and political limits of the three organizations are likely to push them increasingly towards reconciliation and bring possible avenues of cooperation into policy debates about Central Asia and Afghanistan.

 

REFERENCES

  1. NATO and Central Asia The two elephants that never meet EUCAM Watch 11 - NATO and Central Asia. - Access mode: http://www.eucentralasia.eu/uploads/tx_ icticontent/EUCAMWatch-11.pdf - (Accessed 28.09.2017).
  2. Dunn, NATO in Central Asia. - Access mode: http://www.eurodialogue.eu/ nato-central-asia - (Accessed 28.09.2017).
  3. Kazakhstan . -      Access mode: http://www.nato.int/issues/nato-kazakhstan -(Accessed 28.09.2017).
  4.  Access mode: http://www.nato.int/issues/nato-kyrgyzstan -(Accessed 28.09.2017).
  5. Access mode: http://www.nato.int/issues/nato-uzbekistan -(Accessed 28.09.2017).
  6. NATO publications are available from the E-Bookshop. - Access mode: http:// nato.int/ebookshop - (Accessed 28.09.2017).

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