U.S. Signals a More Balanced Approach to Central Asia
As the United States prepares to end its combat mission in Afghanistan, U.S. officials are signaling a substantive shift in their Central Asia policy, suggesting that for the last few years the policy has been focused too heavily on security.
Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, U.S. policy in Central Asia has been closely tied to support for the war effort. In exchange for the Central Asian countries' cooperation in the war taking place just to their south, the United States stepped up aid, particularly security assistance. That correlation has been long acknowledged by U.S. officials privately, and is borne out by monitoring the fluctuations in U.S. assistance: The amount of security assistance the United States has given to Central Asia, as well as the share of military aid in the total aid package, has corresponded closely to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the need by the Pentagon for basing and transit agreements. But for obvious diplomatic reasons, U.S. officials have publicly disputed the notion that their policy in Central Asia was subordinate to the war in Afghanistan.
The focus on security has led to policies that many have criticized, like the training of some special forces in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that were tools of state repression, and restoring military aid to Uzbekistan that had been cut in 2004 because of human rights concerns, in spite of the fact that the human rights situation there had not sufficiently improved.
Some recent statements by U.S. officials, however, suggest that may be changing, possibly presaging a fundamental shift in the focus of U.S. policy in Central Asia. In an interview with the Voice of America, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia on the National Security Council Celeste Wallander – who had recently traveled through Central Asia – acknowledged that previous policy had been too focused on security and Afghanistan, and that this would change:
So much of our focus has been on security, because that was necessary because of the Afghanistan mission. During my trip I had a very strong view that that was important and that the security cooperation needs to continue. But now we have an opportunity with this transition to have more of a balance and support the engagement of all our partners more broadly in the economic, political, and social spheres.
Similarly, the head of U.S. Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, testified to Congress in March that the current “transactional” approach to military cooperation with Central Asia would be transformed into something “more constructive”:
Central Asia's position, bordering Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan, assures its long-term importance to the United States. By improving upon our military-to-military relationships we will be better able to maintain access and influence, counter malign activity, protect lines of communication and deny [violent extremist organizations] access to ungoverned spaces and restrict their freedom of movement. Going forward, initiatives will be tailored to transform our current limited transactional-based relationships into more constructive cooperative exchanges based on common interests and focused on training and equipping them to conduct more effective counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counternarcotics operations.
Recent data also have suggested that the United States will be deprioritizing security assistance in its relations with Central Asia. Funding for the Defense Department's Section 1004 funding, which focuses on counterterrorism missions and which has been the largest single item of U.S. security assistance to Central Asia, dropped precipitously across the region in the first half of fiscal year 2014. And a senior Kyrgyzstan defense official recently complained that the Pentagon had cut military cooperation with Bishkek since the United States left its air base that it had operated in that country since 2001. At the same time, U.S. support for programs to help Kyrgyzstan address trafficking in persons increased last year as well as U.S. support to Tajikistan to help improve the “legal and regulatory environment for civil society…and strengthen media outlets’ capacity to provide objective news and information.” It remains to be seen what other changes may be in store.