Russia and Central Asia
Moscow's Relations with the Former Soviet Central Asian States
The growing American presence in Central Asia following the US invasion of Afghanistan, which was initially accepted by Russia, posed a direct challenge to Moscow when the real American objective of displacing Russian influence became clear. After years of neglect toward the region by former President Boris Yeltsin, new President Vladimir Poutine (now Prime Minister) was pressured by the Russian military leadership to neutralize this new perceived threat (See “Russia's New Role in Central Asia” by Leszek Buszinsky in the number 45, volume 4 issue of Asian Survey).
Russia regaining lost ground in the Central Asia
Russia has wide-ranging interests in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, which it labels its “near abroad”. Its main political goal is to keep a deep-rooted, long-term influence in the region, despite the United States' and China's growing presence. Moscow aims to achieve this with the expansion of its military presence throughout the area and by strengthening its relations with local authoritarian leaders.
This goal in mind, Russia has institutionalized its relations with Central Asia through several regional organizations: politically-wise with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, created in 1991), militarily-wise with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO, created in 2002) and economically-wise with the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC, created in 2001). Uzbekistan's decision to cut its close ties with Washington in 2005 and to join the EEC and the CSTO in 2006 was an important victory for Moscow.
Another major goal is to keep control over regional energy resources and transit routes. Russian state-owned companies like Gazprom, LUKoil or Rosneft have signed major long-term contracts which keep Central Asian oil and gas producers (especially Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) in a relationship of dependency towards their bigger neighbor. This prevents Western plans to access the region while bypassing Russian territory in the context of Europe's increasing dependency on Russia for meeting its energy needs. Moscow is thus able to keep some level of economic and political leverage on Europe.
Central Asia as a field of Russia-China cooperation
A major development is the intensification in activity of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, created in 2001), which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran could also join as soon as summer 2008. Since Central Asia is one of the regions where Russian and Chinese interests correspond the most, the SCO has become an institutional confidence-building structure thought which they have strengthened their relations, especially in the areas of security cooperation and energy policy coordination. The shared perception of the US presence in Central Asia as a long-term threat has also contributed to bring Russia and China much closer and led them to join together in a strategic partnership aimed at countering American power projection in the region and beyond.
Central Asia as a first stage for engaging the Muslim world
As we saw, Moscow's relations with Central Asia can be analyzed into the prism of its power struggle with Washington or its wider growing partnership with China. Another way to see it is as Russia's engagement of the Muslim world. The haste with which the former Central Asian SSRs joined the Organization of the Islamic Conference shows that communism did not fully eliminate their identification to Islam.
So in the wider Russian-Muslim world relationship, Central Asia can be seen as the first of three geo-historical levels of engagement of Islam. The second being former Soviet-era Arab allies and the third being countries that have never been traditionally close to Russia in the past, particularly Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
