The post-9/11 struggle for the Eurasian 'Heartland'

---

See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Much sand has shifted in the wind since the 19th century savants struggled with turgid Teutonic strategic concepts about the Eurasian “heartland”, how control of it would dictate the world’s future. The digital revolution has so enhanced their missing third dimension, air power, the old concepts of strategic depth and land/sea chokepoints may be irrelevant. They certainly have new dimensions.

That was apparent when Beijing and Moscow, chafing under the shadow of overwhelming American power and technological prowess, gathered with the Central Asians in the Kazakhstan capital to talk about their mutual concerns. It was an attempt by China and Russia to put flesh on the bones of the SCO [originally the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, now with its skeletal Shanghai-based secretariat, the Security Cooperation Organization].

In pre-9/11 ancient times, the SCO was a paper organization the Chinese dreamed up to try to get intelligence collaboration from the Central Asians and Russians in their common struggle to suppress Islamic radicals. Beijing’s problem was Turkic ethnics in their huge, far western province of Singkiang. A sporadic insurgency, with lines to their cousins in Central Asia, Turkey and the West, blocks Beijing’s effort to drown them in Han assimilation. The Central Asians, newly sprung from Soviet control, ruled by former Communist apparatchiks, like China, were terrified of the Moslem religious revival and its bastard offspring, terrorists sponsored by Taliban Afghanistan. Moscow, with its huge, restless Moslem minority exemplified in the world’s No. 1 quagmire, Chechnya, had similar fears. That was enough for a paper organization.

Then U.S. response to 9/11 required “lily pads”, impromptu military bases, in neighboring Central Asia to smash the Kabul regime and its protégé al Qaida. Moscow first opposed then settled into grumbling acceptance of American bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The common enemy in Kabul, accompanying honeyed aid packages, and the drama of U.S. power in Iraq, had brought a wave of regional pro-Pax Americana sentiment. And for Azerbaijan [and even Kazakhstan] the Washington-subsidized pipeline to carry Caspian oil to world markets around the Russian chokehold [and the specter of renewed Russian domination] was icing on the cake.

But with unfolding events – continuing challenges to American power and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington’s seemingly successful sponsorship of reform and regime change in Georgia, Ukraine, and, nominally, Kyrgyzstan – the Central Asia tin-pot dictators have been hedging. China’s growing worldwide economic power [buoying the oil price] has led to a huge pipeline-oil deal between Beijing and Kazakhstan and the Chinese even have a toehold in Caspian oil. When Uzbekistan’s dictator bloodily suppressed a local revolt, Beijing said well done and wined and dined him. The U.S., speaking with a forked tongue of human rights and strategic needs, threatened to cut off aid.

The upshot has been a SCO call for the Americans to pack up their bases and go home. The newly elected Kyrgyzstan president has publicly questioned the future of his U.S. base with his Moscow ambassador, significantly, echoing the call. In reality it probably is – along with rumors of reinforcing a Russian base within howitzer-shot of the Americans – Oriental haggling for more American [$] concessions. The irony, however, is he rode to power with some observers [ignoring Tip O’Neil’s dictum all politics, even in Central Asia, are local] calling it part of a democratization process sweeping the region. That India [just before Prime Minister Singh’s Washington visit to try to brush in more details of a wished for U.S.-India strategic partnership], Pakistan, Iran, and other hangers-on are beating on SCO’s door for admission, is only part of the background noise.

The SCO will never be a NATO [at least now nominally committed in Afghanistan] – or what NATO was for half a century: the most effective alliance in history.

Moscow’s oil bazaar is enough inducement for Beijing to[temporarily] pack up its claims of 19th century “unequal treaties” having taken away Siberia. But petrodollars and sales of Russian arms notwithstanding, more than one Russian general and analyst has looked askance at growing Chinese immigration and economic exploitation of the vast, resource-rich, depopulating Russian Far East. Nor would Moscow be happier with growing Chinese influence in its “near abroad” in Central Asia through commercial ties and SCO arrangements.

The U.S., especially with the longer term concepts of “transformation” of military post-Iraq strategy to meet world threats to security and prosperity, will continue to need Central Asian bases and the goodwill of local governments. The hopefully dying gasps of the neo-Taliban [and continued failure to get the trophy, Osama Bin Laden’s head], are only temporary tactical justification. Longer term, a new version of the old dictums on The Heartland – for example, an aggressive China would fear “encirclement” and penetration of its western “soft underbelly” – are probably partially valid. That’s why adroit and informed U.S. diplomatic as well as military skills are needed to answer challenges from the SCO echoing in Beijing and Moscow -- even though they are at this stage largely propaganda.