CAAB

Anyone examining contemporary security issues in Central Asia and the Caucasus quickly comes to the conclusion that security has become increasingly militarized. This growth of military power, influence and ambition is taking place in many ways, but a key theme is the scramble by major foreign powers for military bases in the strategically vital region.

The search for bases preceded the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, but since then the rush for foreign bases has accelerated. Indeed, it has become a focal point of the many international rivalries that now dot these areas. And it appears likely to divide the region into rival proxies for the major military powers.

Given the enormous potential for conflict inherent throughout the former Soviet Union, this can only be a dangerous trend. While the forces at these bases may or may not perform combat operations, they are visible tokens of the foreign state's influence, and equally important, support for the host regime. Foreign states seek bases to project their influence as well as military power, and weak host states want them to increase domestic support against challengers and to obtain tangible protection from powerful patrons.

Although many new bases are US installations, acquired after September 11, this scramble for military toeholds is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Russia's base in Kyrgyzstan at Kant is officially an air base and the spearhead for the Shanghai Cooperative Organization's (SCO's) rapid reaction forces. But since Russia is not fighting anyone in Central Asia and cannot spare troops to defend this base's perimeter, it looks more like an attempt to show the flag and counter the American presence. It also appears to be an effort to influence Kyrgyzstan's domestic politics, after the US refused in 2002 to lend its support to President Askar Akayev, who was suppressing democratic and opposition movements in his country. The US has a major base at Manas, not far from Kant, which can hold thousands of troops. According to some reports, for every aircraft landing the Americans have to pay US$7,000. In addition, the rent of the base and use of various facilities bring in extra revenues - all of which in another way help perpetuate Akayev's regime.

Russia, meanwhile, is bringing pressure to bear to convert its previous military deployments in Tajikistan into a permanent base. What is most interesting here is that the Russo-American struggle for bases is becoming an ever-more open struggle over rival spheres of influence or efforts to deny such to the other side.

Russia pressures states to oppose US bases
Quite recently, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia, almost certainly due to Russian pressure, announced their opposition to permanent US bases in their territory, once the "war against terrorism" is over. Indeed, Kyrgyzstan's government reversed its earlier stand on bases - that the US could stay as long as necessary.

This struggle over bases has grown as the US has embarked on a global restructuring of its basing system. This impending reordering has clearly triggered Moscow's defensive and imperial reflexes. Due to Washington's changed perception of contemporary strategic realities, there is good reason to believe the US is seeking some form of regularized access to, if not permanent basing rights, in at least some of the post-Soviet republics.

While the US has not publicly disclosed where it would seek bases, Moscow's alarm is evident in numerous statements by high-ranking officials, including President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. All have clearly opposed any US military presence in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), beyond the existing network of bases and agreements about overflights and logistical access.

There is a crucial difference, however, between US and Russian ideas of bases in the region. Though it opposes America's asserted right to bases in the Caucasus or Central Asia at the request of state governments, Russia does not hesitate to declare that its own bases are permanent, nor does it hesitate to impose those bases despite local opposition.

Notwithstanding its genuine and vital interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Moscow has refused to vacate its bases in Moldova and Georgia, as stipulated by its participation in its 1999 agreements with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Its intransigence in this regard raises questions about what exactly Moscow hopes to achieve by imposing permanent bases on states when it cannot sustain expeditionary forces of any quality abroad.

Russian ambassadors' statements to CIS governments also reveal an imperialist mentality that evidently seeks to perpetuate a closed bloc in the CIS and to abridge host governments' sovereign freedom to make decisions on foreign bases on their own territories. Moscow's ambassador to Azerbaijan, Andrei Ryabov, said he was "provoked" by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent visit to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for discussions of US troop deployments there at Azerbaijan's request and Pentagon offers of military assistance to Azerbaijan.

'Nyet' to the US in the Caspian
"There has not been and there will not be any kind of American presence in the Caspian," Ryabov declared. "We will not allow it, they have nothing to guard here." He also said that foreign military forces would prolong - not help to resolve - the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. That conflict has been frozen in place, and Armenia has so far prevailed, largely because of a billion dollars worth of Russian arms transfers. Ryabov also argued that "positioning foreign military bases in the territory of other sovereign counties should be considered a partial seizure of those countries' independence."

While the Russian envoy lamented what he called the negative consequences of US military bases in an independent country, he made no mention of Russia's large military presence in Georgia and Armenia. Nor did he mention the Russian troops stationed in Moldova.

The US has said it wants to deploy mobile troops in the region to ensure the security of the oil and gas pipelines that run through Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ryabov responded: "To ensure security of oil and gas pipelines by use of foreign military troops is beyond world practice. Azerbaijan has the potential to secure the pipelines itself." As for the US troops maintaining peace in the Caspian basin, the Russian ambassador emphasized that the outside military presence would adversely affect Azerbaijan's relations with neighboring Iran and Russia. He appeared to assert Moscow's right to veto Baku's foreign and defense policies and Russia's right to an exclusive and closed sphere of influence in the Caucasus.

This Russian-American struggle is only one aspect of the great power interest in Central Asia. China's accession to the 2001 SCO treaty stipulates its membership in a collective security organization, thereby legalizing for the first time the projection of Chinese troops beyond China's borders - if one of the other signatories requests its support. And China has now instituted joint maneuvers with Kyrgyzstan separately and collectively with the other members of SCO, further extending its power projection capabilities.

India has now disclosed that it has acquired an air base in Tajikistan. Once Pakistan closed its air space during the crisis generated by terrorist attacks in India in late 2001, India negotiated base rights with Tajikistan. While little is known about this base, it is believed to be at the operational level and therefore could be used to counter Central Asian insurgents or Pakistan, or to support a friendly government.

This probably will not be India's last base, and it probably will not remain a small one. Certainly it appears to spearhead New Delhi's deepening involvement in Central Asian defense. India is also trying to create an anti-terrorist organization involving Tajikistan and presumably other Central Asian states, thus justifying conversion of the base to permanent use.

And so the rivalries of the great powers, Russia and America, India and Pakistan - and China as well - now fully embrace Central Asia. There is a distinct possibility that the former Soviet Union will be divided into staging grounds for rival blocs that ultimately are enmeshed in conflicts triggered by or for their proxies with another great power - or its proxies.

Since most of these foreign military installations are air bases, ground forces to defend them will eventually appear. The specific locations of these bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia and China's recent maneuvers with Kyrgyzstan's armed forces reliably suggest where the major powers think Central Asian governments are in trouble and how they will "help" them.

These bases, however, are by no means the only ways in which the states of the former Soviet Union have undergone a progressive militarization. Add the influx of weapons, the drug trade, the rise of terrorism and the pervasive misrule in these states, and it is easy to see that the combustible elements that can explode into conflict are gradually being assembled and readied for use.

Georgia has just undergone a peaceful revolution, or at least its initial stages. It could easily go bad. If another regime falls in the former Soviet south, there are no guarantees that it will be a peaceful transfer of power and that stability will be maintained.

This is a volatile region, made more so by unstable governments and by Russian and US competition for military power. It would be folly to predict that the great powers with their powerful objectives will renounce the economic, political and strategic goals over which they are now contending so intensely - and decide to start cooperating.

Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs, residing in Harrisburg, Pa.