The Bush Administration is reacting calmly to the Russian Air Force's deployment of planes at the Kant air base in Kyrgyzstan, which Russia announced in early December. The deployment is relatively small and temporary, but the muted American response to it indicates broader trends in American strategic policy toward Russia.
Scholars and observers say the placid American response to the December 5 announcement may indicate that China has emerged as a more important variable in Central Asia. Dmitri Gorenburg, Director of Russian and East European programs at a think tank called the Center for Naval Analyses, believes that Washington no longer views Russian military maneuvers through a competitive lens. (Gorenburg's group advises the Pentagon.) A National Security Council official who covers Central Asia supported this assessment. "We are beyond seeing Russian troop deployment in Central Asia through the prism of US-Russian rivalry," said this person, on condition of anonymity. "This is no longer a zero-sum game. We hope the Russians know this."
Washington and Moscow, Gorenburg says, are emerging as a twinned alternative to Chinese hegemony. Russia and Central Asian states, however, do not want China to deploy troops in the region. Concerns about China are dovetailing with longstanding interest among Russia and its Collective Security Treaty allies in the development of a rapid reaction force in the region.
"President Putin is doing what Moscow experts were recommending throughout the 1990s," says Irina Kobrinskaya, director of the international cooperation program at Moscow's National Project Institute-Social Contract. "It was obvious as early as 1995 that Russia has not economic capacity to deploy adequate forces in Central Asia and the Caucasus." Therefore, Russia had to
Editor's note:
Ariel Cohen is Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
