BACKGROUND: The recent announcement that the U.S. base will be able to stay at Manas in Kyrgyzstan ends a chapter, but by no means the whole story, in the saga of U.S. bases in Central Asia. Washington can now retain the base until the fighting in Afghanistan comes to an end. But the new bilateral agreement raises the annual rent that Washington must pay for use of the base to $150 million. Washington will also transfer four helicopters to Kyrgyzstan to use in suppressing terrorist outbreaks. Although this figure does not quite match the original demands of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to raise the annual rent by 100 times to $200 million per annum, it nonetheless represents a victory for Bakiyev who is under tremendous pressure at home and abroad, especially from Russia and China. Whereas those governments are placing enormous pressure upon Kyrgyzstan to oust the United States from its base, he is also facing pressure from political rivals and their allies in the organized crime community and thus needs both cash and increased defense capability in order to ward them off. While the repercussions of this deal for Kyrgyzstan are very important, this deal also tells us a great deal about the pressures that now confront any American effort to restore its military presence in Central Asia even as the fighting in Afghanistan continues to rage. Russia and China have been pressuring Washington and Central Asian regimes since 2002 to limit the scope and duration of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia regardless of the progress of the war in Afghanistan. In June 2005 they successfully persuaded the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to formally request that Washington give an answer as to when it would leave the bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and then, in July, they worked equally successfully with Uzbekistan to oust the U.S. forces from their base at Karshi-Khanabad. Since then they have continued to bring growing pressure to bear upon Kyrgyzstan to oust the U.S. forces from there. Indeed, Russia\'s intelligence agencies evidently tried to scuttle the Kyrgyz-U.S. negotiations by leaking stories about U.S. diplomats allegedly spying on Kyrgyzstan. And they also sought to prevent any further U.S. base from materializing. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld\'s recent trip to Tajikistan, according to the Russian press, had as one of its objectives, an effort to negotiate rights to a U.S. base there. But if this is the case, the Tajik government refused to make such a deal, no doubt with Russia’s military and economic presence in Tajikistan in mind. But beyond seeking to exclude the U.S. military from Central Asia, both Russia and China have sought to enhance their military presence and capabilities there. China sought to gain the U.S. base in Uzbekistan but was checked by Moscow who promptly negotiated a deal with Uzbekistan allowing it to use that base if necessary. And Russia has simultaneously also expanded its forces at its base in Kant, Kyrgyzstan and its military presence in Tajikistan. It also is enhancing its capability for long-range power projection and trying to exclude Washington and U.S. military support to the Caspian littoral states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Apart from seeking more bases in Central Asia, China and Russia will continue rendering military assistance to Central Asian governments and undertaking more and more joint exercises with them either through the SCO or through Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization, which seeks to expand its missions from anti-terrorist operations to air defense, to peace support operations.

IMPLICATIONS: Meanwhile, it is quite possible that this combined Sino-Russian pressure upon Kyrgyzstan would have succeeded if not for the fact that the U.S. has deep pockets, is willing to pay a lot to sustain its access to Afghanistan through Central Asia, and to help the Kyrgyz government ward off threats to its rule, and because of the personal intervention of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But it also is highly likely that the outbreak of renewed fierce fighting in Afghanistan rebutted the Russo-Chinese argument that the war there was winding down and hence the base was becoming redundant. Equally, if not more importantly, this upsurge of fighting in Afghanistan brought home to the Kyrgyz, if not other local governments, that their security was still at considerable risk and that failure to support the American efforts was by no means a cost or risk free operation, especially as it is clear that Russia still does not have the forces, for all its efforts to develop them, with which to provide a real basis for repulsing such threats to Central Asia. It still appears to be the case that if Afghanistan once again becomes a base for international terrorism that nobody can protect Central Asia better than the U.S. military. Presumably such considerations played no small part in influencing the Kyrgyz government to find an acceptable basis for a mutually satisfactory solution. But this record of events illustrates the fragility of the U.S. military position in Central Asia. Turkmenistan will accept no real foreign bases, neither will Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan is closed off to the West and the other two governments, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the two weakest in the region, are under tremendous pressure from Russia which seeks to diminish their sovereignty and free choices in defense policy. Moreover, the only basis for which a need for or desire to welcome the U.S. military presence has now become continued fighting in Afghanistan. Only to the extent that the West is unable to bring that war to a close will it be able to make a material contribution to Central Asia security and provide an alternative or counterweight to Russia and/or China. This fragile foundation for a U.S. presence in Central Asia is probably insufficient to satisfy American interests and desires, but it is all that Washington has at present. Therefore the need to establish a stronger foundation for enduring and mutually beneficial security relations with local governments becomes all the more urgent for Washington even as the Sino-Russian rivalry with it and the fighting in Afghanistan intensify.

CONCLUSIONS: Even if some observers argue that there is no new great game or rivalry among the great powers for or over Central Asia, the fact remains that with regard to foreign bases, the most potent symbol of power projection capability, an intense rivalry is growing every day. But since it threatens to undermine allied capabilities with regard to the fighting in Afghanistan, the upsurge of that fighting to some degree gives Central Asian states room to maneuver among the giants seeking to limit their sovereignty. It is becoming an unintended irony that the durability of the American position in Central Asia depends on its being under continuous, if not growing pressure in Afghanistan, a war that it cannot afford to lose. But with victory comes the end of the established rationale for its continuing presence in Central Asia. If the U.S. government intends to preserve a future military accessibility to Central Asia it will have to work to develop new alternatives and bases or getting that access that do not depend on the continuation of war in Afghanistan and the security threat that this war poses to the entire region. In macro-strategic terms, the problem confronting Washington is converting its force in Central Asia into a presence that represents and constitutes part of an established, legitimate order. That is, Washington now faces one of the thorniest of eternal strategic questions, the necessity of converting force into legitimate order. And it must do so under conditions of intensifying pressure by interested great powers upon relatively weak smaller states who are in the geographical orbit of those great powers. Achieving a positive result here will test all the capabilities of U.S. foreign and defense policy which is already under stress virtually everywhere else in the Islamic world if not throughout Asia. But not only does the success of U.S. policy depend on Washington’s ability to find an effective answer to this problem. The security and independence of Central Asia depends upon it as well.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department or Government.