Whither the New Silk Road and US Central Asia Policy?

As the U.S. and ISAF forces leave Afghanistan, U.S. policy in Central Asia must necessarily change too, from a primarily military strategy into one based on economics and political support. Continued military emphasis is ruled out because there is no discernible military threat other than Afghanistan, because Washington cannot afford protracted military deployments, and because such deployments would further antagonize Moscow and Beijing and confirm those governments’ deepest suspicions about U.S. objectives. However, can the New Silk Road, Washington’s highly touted economic program of building infrastructure and trading networks among Central and South Asian states, fill the place of military forces in enhancing security and stability in Central Asia?

Background

According to U.S. officials, Washington is intent on deepening its relationships with Central Asian states even as the Afghan withdrawals progress through 2014. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, Washington’s point man for Central Asia, recently endorsed an idea espoused by several analysts: converting the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) into a vehicle for the expansion of intra-regional trade among Central Asian states and as a vehicle for expanding their trade with the wider world. Yet, the question remains whether the idea remains feasible under present circumstances.

The NDN emerged in 2008-09 out of talks with Central Asian states and Russia as a route allowing the U.S. and NATO to ship nonlethal supplies to Afghanistan without going through Pakistan and the Khyber Pass – logistical arrangements exposed to Taliban attacks as well as massive delays due to Pakistani obstruction. It was a military analogue to the U.S. policy dating from 2006 of stimulating grater economic investment and trade between Central and South Asia, to rebuild Afghanistan and to give Central Asian states options other than Russia or China. Undoubtedly some of these projects have moved forward, e.g. Central Asian states providing electricity for Afghanistan from their surplus power generation, Uzbekistan’s construction of a rail line to Mazar-i-Sharif, and the conception of several new infrastructural projects such as the projected TAPI gas pipeline. Yet, there are many obstacles to realizing this grand design and Washington knows it.

First, relations among Central Asian states are very tense, particularly Uzbekistan’s relations with its Tajik and Kyrgyz neighbors. Indeed, Uzbekistan has repeatedly undertaken actions amounting to economic warfare and disruption of trade affecting these states quarrels over water, geopolitics, and ethnopolitical issues. For a viable regional trade network to function, such behavior must stop. But who will induce or even compel Uzbekistan to behave differently when it is Washington’s key ally in the region and highly adept at playing off rival great powers? In addition, Afghanistan’s neighbors eagerly talk the talk of solving common problems but simultaneously seek to exploit Afghanistan’s problems for their benefit. For example, Tajik officials regularly present international donors with long lists of “win-win” cross Central Asia-Caucasus border development plans that, they insist, must be built in Tajikistan. Afghanistan only benefits much later if at all.

Second, in addition to trade wars among Central Asian states, there are far too many cases of state interference in border trade and crossings which have become lucrative venues for entrenched bureaucrats and officials to impose fines, penalties, and payments to line their pockets with official protection while impeding trade. These factors ratify the numerous scholarly findings concerning the many serious obstacles that are deliberately being erected against any form of regional cooperation that will vitiate hopes of maximizing the potential of the NDN or the New Silk Road.

Implications

While Washington has eloquently advocated on behalf of the New Silk Road program, it is unable or unwilling to pay the amount of money needed to make it work. In his speech, Assistant Secretary Blake cited the funds pledged at Tokyo for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Yet, that sum was not even what the Afghan government asked for and as we have seen countless times before, pledges do not amount to actual donations and one cannot rely on money that is not there.

Furthermore, while military assistance to Afghanistan and Central Asia appeared to be growing until 2012, other forms of aid are apparently declining. Under expected conditions of future U.S. budgetary stringency we can expect a decline in military assistance too. Indeed, funding for Afghanistan is already being reduced while the new decisions announced in February 2012 will bring even greater and major funding cuts for both civil and military programs. Moreover, it is probably the case that no amount of available funding could meet the needs hitherto identified in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has now halved the requested funding for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the FY 2013 budget, an odd decision since the ANSF’s development is the condition for the U.S. leaving sooner rather than later.

Similarly, the Majority Staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that Civilian assistance for all countries in Central Asia was US$ 186.2 million in FY 2010 and is on a downward trajectory. Peace and security assistance to the region increased from US$ 70 million in FY 2001 to US$ 257 million in FY 2010, though it too may actually be declining now. Overall, U.S. assistance to the countries of Central Asia is relatively small compared to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In FY 2010, total U.S. assistance to Central Asia amounted to under three percent (US$ 436.24 million) of what was spent in Afghanistan (US$ 14.78 billion).

Neither is there any real pressure to relieve this downward pressure. When this author queried State Department officials in December 2011 about the future of funding and the spending needed to turn the New Silk Road into something more than a rhetorical contrivance, all he heard was a shamefaced silence. Similarly, the majority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published a report strongly advising support for the project in late 2011, yet there has been no word from the White House or the government supporting that endeavor. Indeed, the President has not bothered to say a word in public about supporting the New Silk Road project despite the obvious priority of Afghanistan.

Without sustained political leadership that induces major domestic reforms in Central Asia and substantial appropriations, this project will not realize the hopes vested in it. Russia and China may fear the U.S. presence, but if the U.S. deems Central Asia to be a geopolitically critical region it will have to pay for its interests, which appears to be increasingly unlikely to occur despite the rhetoric. Neither Afghanistan, nor Central Asia, is mentioned in the U.S. election campaigns, suggesting an elite disinterest in those issues.

Given the enormous sums needed to prevent Afghanistan from becoming primarily an aid economy, and the lack of this investment from Washington, any substantive improvement on the basis of Western aid is unlikely. If China takes up the slack, that will have foreseeable strategic consequences. It will certainly undermine India’s efforts in Afghanistan which are already under pressure because previous U.S. support has given India secure space to work there in the face of Chinese and Pakistani objections to its presence. Russia will be unable to fill the vacuum left by the U.S. and ISAF and pressure will therefore reduce pressure on Central Asian leaders to reform and reduce the obstacles to trade and regional cooperation. Ultimately it seems that Washington underestimates how much its sustained presence contributes to Central Asia’s stabilization and how much it is wanted by local actors.

Conclusions

The State Department’s rhetoric about the Silk Road and the NDN is very positive but there is little behind it. As experience should tell us, one cannot build a sustainable policy in or for Central Asia on the basis of rhetoric alone. There appears to be insufficient U.S. understanding of the region’s strategic importance or the requirements for long-term sustained investment of resources on a large scale. If Washington thinks the area is important it ought to say so and allocate the resources necessary to reinforce success. Otherwise the gap between rhetoric and reality will remain and investments that are made will essentially be reinforcing failure, which only opens the door to continued stasis and intensified great power rivalry in a region whose importance is arguably growing. One can only hope that whoever wins the upcoming U.S. elections will develop a coherent Central Asia policy that grasps the area’s strategic importance for the U.S. and can credibly match resources to goals. Otherwise, whatever we say or think about our military performance in Afghanistan will merely be written on the wind and our efforts there will leave not a rack behind.