Dr Vladimir Paramonov and Dr Aleksey Strokov: The Evolution of Russias Central Asia PolicyНазад
Dr Vladimir Paramonov and Dr Aleksey Strokov: The Evolution of Russias Central Asia Policy
* In the post-Soviet period Russia has continually changed its policy towards Central Asia, which has ranged from almost total indifference in the early 1990s to close cooperation today, especially in regard to institutions and the oil and gas sectors. Nevertheless Moscow has not yet arrived at a coherent strategy for defining the position of the region with respect to Russia`s national interests.
* At the beginning of the 1990s, Moscow regarded Central Asia as a sort of appendix, without which the process of reforming the Russian economy and aligning Russia with Western economic and military-political systems would proceed more easily and quickly. The policy at this stage was to free Russia from "the burden of the national republics".
* The indifferent attitude of the pro-Western Yeltsin government towards Central Asia was one of the main reasons why the states of the region began to lose faith in Russia and its policies and to make increasingly obvious attempts to re-align their international connections.
* From the mid 1990s, however, there were ever-increasing signs that Russia was trying to develop a fundamentally new foreign policy. The importance of the region in Russia`s national priorities increased considerably when "multipolarity" became the main plank of Russian foreign policy in 1996.
* Russia planned to strengthen its position as a Eurasian great power in Central Asia mainly by improving cooperation in the defence and security sectors, and also by exploiting its monopoly in the transport sphere, particularly for the transit of Central Asian energy products to external markets.
* But the inconsistencies and contradictions in Russian policy actually exacerbated the lack of trust in Russia in the republics of the region. By 2000, when Yeltsin relinquished the presidency, the only tangible results of Russian policy in Central Asia were political support for the Russian military presence in Tajikistan, some cooperation with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in the export of hydrocarbons and various declarations about the need to develop closer cooperation.
* After the accession to power of Putin and his team in 2000 Moscow`s foreign policy began to be more clearly focussed. The multiple declarations began to be matched by action for the first time. Yet the results of Russian foreign policy in Central Asia have not yet been an unambiguous success.
* On the one hand, Russia has succeeded in putting the brakes on the centrifugal tendencies of the region, in strengthening its own position and in overcoming the lack of trust. Clearly Moscow has now brought to its Central Asian policy more flexibility, pragmatism, stability and consistency. This has been made possible largely by its growing understanding of the strategic importance of the area and by the allocation of more funds for foreign policy purposes.
* On the other hand, Russia has still not been able to fill the geopolitical vacuum in the area, still less the geo-economic one. The impression is growing that it still understands the "strategic importance" of the region mainly in terms of its own revival as a "great power" and its desire to secure its own energy interests.
