The United States will expend diplomatic energy in the coming months on promoting free trade among states in Central and South Asia. A top American diplomat has denied that the US policy initiative is linked to the intensifying geopolitical struggle in the region, involving the United States, China and Russia.
The Asian continent's rising prominence in the world economy is prompting US policy makers to encourage Central Asian states to look southward and eastward for new trade opportunities, said Evan Feigenbaum, deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs.
"What we really are talking about is the restoration of traditional continental trade, or, more precisely, helping to foster trade within an Asia central, south, and east that once again is becoming an integrated strategic and economic space as it was through much of history and from that more integrated Asia to points in the global economy beyond," Feigenbaum said.
Feigenbaum has been in his current post for about seven months. Previously, Feigenbaum served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff for about five years. He spoke about US policy at a February 6 event at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington called "Central Asian Economic Integration: An American Perspective."
Washington is focusing on Central and South Asian ties because relations between those two regions are relatively less developed. He said that a program to get Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to export their excess electricity to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India is a particular focus. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. While Kyrgyzstan currently sells its electricity for about one cent per kilowatt-hour, in Pakistan electricity costs five times that much and in India it could be ten times as much, Feigenbaum said.
In addition, a US-funded bridge connecting Tajikistan to Afghanistan will open this summer, which will be open 24 hours and will allow 1,000 vehicles to pass every day, he said.
Other initiatives Feigenbaum outlined include an April conference hosted by the US Trade and Development Agency to help reform Central and South Asia's telecommunications regulations, and a push to increase donor coordination through the Asian Development Bank's Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation program.
Feigenbaum denied that the US was playing a "great game" for influence in Central Asia, and said that other countries should not see the US as a threat. "There's a little bit of skepticism in Central Asia about the United States," he acknowledged. "It's something that for US officials is sometimes hard to understand because we think we have no secrets about what we're doing in this part of the world. Some people think that what we're saying on economic reform bleeds into political reform, and some people are threatened by our ideas for political reform."
In any case, he said the governments of Central Asia are skilled at playing off the rival powers against each other.
"We don't regard Central Asians as anyone's pawns," he said. "In fact, I would argue that, if anything, it has been the other way around. Over the past 15 years, Central Asians have demonstrated remarkable skill at turning great power rivalry into an asset that maximizes their independence."
He said, in particular, that Washington does not harbor desires to diminish Central Asia's traditionally strong ties with Russia. "How could we, anyway? An existing and extensive network of pipelines, power lines, railroads, and highways to Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States countries provides the current backbone of Central Asian trade and commerce," he said. "What we want to do is to help Central Asians forge some new connections to trade and investment opportunities, cross-border energy projects, additional deep-water ports, and the enormous possibilities of the global market."
Feigenbaum faced some skepticism from members of the audience. S. Frederick Starr, the chairman of CACI, said that he supported the aim of integration with South Asia, but that the US does not appear to be able to overcome intransigence from Pakistan, which imposes onerous border procedures on goods from Central Asia. "The only trouble is that Pakistan has this whole process, and therefore US policy, by the throat," he said. "The fact is, everything we've discussed here stops at the border of Pakistan."
Political problems also stand to hamper any attempt to integrate Central Asian economies, said Grant Smith, a fellow at CACI. "I'm skeptical because the Central Asian countries have not been able to resolve their problems in the past to produce real economic cooperation, and those tensions between the countries still exist," Smith said.
Feigenbaum acknowledged that US influence could only go so far in this area. "We can't make the choices for them. What we can try to do is show them the benefits of what's possible to do and hope they make decisions to facilitate this greater economic space," he said.
Editor's note:
Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.
