Abstract
Over the past decade and a half, since the implosion of the former Soviet Union, the United States has emerged as an active player in Central Asia and the Caucasus, competing for influence throughout the region with both the Russian Federation and China. The rationale most often provided by US governmental sources for the expansion of US interest and involvement in the area comprises two central, but interrelated, elements. The first is a series of arguments associated with the importance of supporting political stability throughout the region and doing everything possible to strengthen democratic forces. This is based on the assumption that, in the long term, democratic governance will contribute to stability, as well as to the improvement of the overall quality of life for the peoples of the region and ultimately to a more peaceful international environment. A second set of arguments, presented most forcefully since the terror attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, relates directly to the ‘war on terror’ proclaimed by President George W. Bush and to the goal of rooting out the influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Former Soviet basing facilities in Central Asia have been used — with the initial agreement of the Russian government — to contribute to carrying out the attack against terrorist forces.
An earlier, but similar, version of this chapter was published as ‘O Desafio dos Estados Unidos à Influencia Russa na Ásia Central e no Cáucaso’, [The U.S. Challenge to Russian Influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus], Relaçoes Intemacionais (Lisbon), no 12 (December 2006), pp. 29–48, with the agreement that it would appear here in English.
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Notes
Olga Oliker and Thomas Szayna (eds), Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus: Implications for the U.S. Army (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2003), pp. 220–21.
For discussions of US policy, see Oliker and Szayna, ibid.; Celeste A. Wallander, ‘U.S. Policy toward Russia and Eurasia in the 1990s’, in Brian Loveman (ed.), Strategy for Empire: U.S. Regional Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2004), pp. 155–72
Rajan Menon, ‘“Greater Central Asia”, Russia and the West: Challenges and Opportunities for Cooperation’, in Alexander J. Moyl, Blair A. Ruble and Lilia Shevtsova (eds), Russia’s Engagement with the West: Transformation and Integration in the Twenty-First Century (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), pp. 209–22
On Russia’s initial support for US military presence in Central Asia after 9/11, see Lena Jonson, ‘Understanding Russia’s Foreign Policy Change: The Cases of Central Asia and Iraq’, in Jakob Hedenskog et al. (eds), Russia as a Great Power: Dimensions of Security Under Putin, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 182–200.
Cited in J.L. Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order: Looking East, Looking West? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), p. 289.
Ilan Berman, ‘The New Battleground: Central Asia and the Caucasus’, Washington Quarterly, 28/1 (2004–05).
Richard F. Staar, ‘Decision Making in Russia’, Mediterranean Quarterly, 13/2 (2002), pp. 9–26.
For an excellent assessment of Russian policy in Chcchnya and its relation-ship to Islamic fundamentalism across Euraisa, see Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002). On the expansion of the Islamist chal¬lenge to Russin rule, see John B. Dunlop and Rajan Menon, ‘Chaos in the North Caucasus and Russia’s Future’, Survival, 48/2, (2006), pp. 97-114.
Robert Legvold, ‘U.S. Policy Toward Kazakhstan’ in Robert Legvold (ed.), Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), p. 100.
James M. Goldgeier, ‘Prospects for U.S.-Russian Cooperation’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia after the Fall (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), p. 291.
Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004)
Roger E. Kanet, ‘The Bush Revolution in U.S. Security Policy’, in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), The New Security Environment: The Impact on Russia, Central and Eastern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 11–29
Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Alexander V. Kozhemiakin and Roger E. Kanet, ‘Russia as a Regional Peacekeeper’, in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), Resolving Regional Conflicts (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998), pp. 225–39
Gabriela Marin Thornton and Roger E. Kanet, ‘The Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States’, in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), The New Security Environment: The Impact on Russia, Central and Eastern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 165–82.
Roger E. Kanet, ‘Zwischen Konsens und Konfrontation: Rußland und die Vereinigten Staaten’, Osteuropa, 51/4-5 (2001), pp. 509–21.
The first of these, the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, was opened in May 2005. It begins in Azerbaijan and brings oil from the Caspian area via Georgia to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. At the same time, however, a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey under the Black Sea has also begun operating. See Aida Sultanova, ‘Pipelines to Speed Flow of Caspian Oil to West’, AP Report, Miami Herald, 25 May 2005, p. 18A; Erin E. Arvedlund, ‘Pipeline Done, Oil from Azerbaijan Begins Flowing to Turkey’, New York Times, 26 May 2005, p. C6; ‘Oil Over Troubled Waters’, The Economist, 28 May 2005, p. 54; and Charles E. Ziegler, ‘Energy in the Caspian Basin and Central Asia’, in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), The New Security Environment: The Impact on Russia, Central and Eastern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) pp. 210–18.
Andrew S. Weiss, ‘Russia: The Accidental Alliance’, in Daniel Benjamin (ed.), America and the World in the Age of Terror: A New Landscape in International Relations (Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2005), pp. 125–72; and Evangelista, as note 16 above.
See Bacevich, The New American Militarism as note 29 above; John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
Lieven, as note 29 above and Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Robert Ebel and Rajan Menon (eds.), Energy and Conflict in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Lanham, MD and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); and Ziegler, as note 32 above.
Richard Sokolsky and Tanya Charlick-Paley, NATO and Caspian Security: A Mission Too Far? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1999).
Ottar Skagan, Caspian Gas (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1997); Ebel and Menon, as note 36 above.
Cited in Rettman, as note 28 above; see, also, Martha Brill Olcott, Central Asia’s Second Chance (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005).
Rouben Azizian, Central Asia and the United States 2004–2005: Moving beyond Counter-Terrorism? (Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2005).
Douglas Blum, Sustainable Development and the New Oil Boom: Comparative and Competitive Outcomes in the Caspian Sea Program on New Approaches to Russian Security, Working Papers Series No. 4 (Cambridge, MA: Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University, 1997), p. 21.
Robert Legvold, ‘Great Power Stakes in Central Asia’, in Robert Legvold (ed.) Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), p. 4.
Martha Brill Olcott, ‘State Building and Security Threats in Central Asia’, in Andrew C. Kuchins (ed.), Russia after the Fall (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), p. 231.
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© 2007 Roger E. Kanet and Larisa Homarac
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Kanet, R.E., Homarac, L. (2007). The US Challenge to Russian Influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. In: Kanet, R.E. (eds) Russia. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590489_9
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