Strategic Asia 2008-09: Challenges and Choices

A Regional Approach to Afghanistan and Its Neighbors

executive summary This chapter considers U.S. policy toward Central Asia/Afghanistan. main argument: The challenge for the U.S. in this region is to strengthen weak sovereignties; promote effective, secular governance based on consent; eliminate poverty; and build middle classes receptive to modern education and values. This will render the region secure, self-governing, well-disposed toward the West, and an attractive model for Muslin societies elsewhere. The opening of continental trade bridging Europe, China, the Indian subcontinent, Russia, and the Middle East is a critical tool for achieving this. policy implications: • Success in Afghanistan is a prerequisite for achieving these goals. The U.S. must help Kabul significantly expand its army and police and help it deliver effective governance. The U.S. should also work to broaden security options in the region beyond existing Russian and Chinesedominated structures. • A successful U.S. strategy will acknowledge that the strategies of Central Asian states are based on the development of balanced relations with external powers. This requires a regional approach based on sustained relationships. These will offer a balancing alternative to the region’s growing dependence on Russia and China. • The 1992 trade and investment framework agreement between the U.S. and regional states could become a useful forum. Engaging Central Asian firms in Afghanistan reconstruction could also encourage regional interaction. The U.S. should welcome present and future initiatives to create purely regional consultative organs. • Steady engagement will advance human rights and democratization more effectively than punitive measures. “Democracy promotion” might be expanded beyond elections to include the development of parliamentary rights and institutions, and good governance generally. Central Asia A Regional Approach to Afghanistan and Its Neighbors S. Frederick Starr Afghanistan absorbs more money and costs more American lives than any foreign concern except Iraq. Much has been achieved there; much has not. This chapter seeks to answer the question, how can the United States “get it right” in Afghanistan? One must ask at the outset if the subject is Afghanistan alone, or the broader Central Asian region of which Afghanistan is a part. Since these two have constituted a single cultural zone for 3,000 years, the chapter assumes that they offer related challenges and possibilities today. It is convenient to view both the five former Soviet states and Afghanistan as part of a broader zone, “Greater Central Asia.” The immediate U.S. concern there is to thwart terrorism, but the region presents broader challenges: to strengthen weak sovereignties, promote effective governance, eliminate poverty, and build a middle class that is open to modern values. These are all Muslim societies whose traditions favor moderation and openness, notwithstanding recent manifestations of radicalization. Because of this, the United States has a stake in their success. How to meet this challenge must lie at the heart of any effective strategy for the region. An effective strategy would heed the interests and activities of other powers in the region and at the same time flow from an understanding of how the regional states themselves (including Afghanistan) perceive the many pressures to which they are subject. The chapter therefore reviews the strategies of Russia and China in Central Asia as well as those of Japan, India, Europe, and the United States. S. Frederick Starr (PhD, Princeton University) is Founding Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at . 334 • Strategic Asia 2008–09 It is now clear that a one-sided emphasis on Afghanistan after September 11 has eroded what were successful U.S. policies in the former Soviet states of Central Asia. This has created geopolitical space that Russia and China have rushed to fill. Convinced that the U.S. focus is elsewhere, regional countries have had no choice but to fall into line. The United States has yet to solve the Rubik’s Cube of Afghanistan, but its inaction elsewhere in the region has undermined the security of other states in Central Asia. The Central Asian states seek to advance their own agendas amidst this welter of pressures by promoting “balance” among their principal partners. These states have added a positive new twist to this old concept: instead of balancing enemies, they seek to balance friends. This enables regional states to maintain cordial relations with all their external neighbors and to use each relationship to balance the others. A successful U.S. strategy in...