For the first time in centuries, the region from Western China to Iran and from the steppes of Russia to Northern India can and, this essay argues, should be viewed as an entity. Possessed of significant natural resources, and forming the backyard of five important world powers, the region has great possibilities for economic development, but it also contains the potential for conflict among nuclear-armed neighbors. One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be to ensure that the region becomes an engine for growth, not for conflict. Ed.
In the complicated world that has emerged since the end of the Cold War, many developments that will have a significant influence on the world throughout this century have gone virtually unnoticed by both professionals and the public at large. The re-emergence of Central Asia as a key region is one such development.
Who Rules the Heartland Rules the World
The New Paradigm: Viewing Central Asia as an Entity
Academic and popular analyses of geo-political change since the end of the Cold War have largely dealt with developments in Asia in discrete contexts. The former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia are viewed in terms of their own conflicts and their efforts to strengthen their political and economic independence. Russia is analyzed with reference to its relationship with Europe and the United States. China and India are usually considered individually as economic powers or perhaps in terms of the potential competition between the two. Focus on Pakistan concerns its internal political trials, its connection to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, and its relationship with India. Iran is considered, in the United States at least, as a Middle-Eastern country. Unfortunately, there has been little analysis of the current and potential interplay of those countries to either achieve dominance over the heartland or to avoid dominance by another power.
The Key: Competition for Access to Resources and Control of Trade Routes
The ability to move relatively freely across the region for almost the first time since the demise of the Silk Road opens other economic possibilities. All told, these countries are home to probably half of the worlds population, much of which is only now aspiring to become consumers of more and better products. The demands of trade bring with them demands for improved communication. Old divisions still prevent railroads from crisscrossing the region, but that will happen. Road transportation is now open, but only over highways that are often rudimentary and still subject to blockages and significant bureaucratic delays. Electricity is already flowing from Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran, and the regions hydrocarbon and hydroelectric resources mean that potential for greater trade in that commodity is enormous.
The Dominant Players
Critical to this equation is the fact that four of the large regional powers Russia, China, India, and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, and a fifth, Iran, appears determined to acquire nuclear weapon technology. In fact, much of the analysis of Irans apparent desire to acquire nuclear technology focuses, incorrectly in my view, on the implications of that development for the United States and Israel. I would argue that Iran is motivated at least as much by its awareness of developments in Central Asia and its status as the only non-nuclear power in the region. After all, the heartland of the continent is Persias traditional power base, and all Iranians are aware of their countrys history of dominance in much of that region.
The Smaller Players and the Regions Diversity
In fact, Afghanistan is a microcosmic reflection of the extraordinary ethnic and religious diversity in Central Asia which serves both to bind the region together and to divide its inhabitants. Farsi-related Dari is the dominant language in Afghanistan, but Turkic languages dominate in the north. Conservative, Sunni Islam as practiced by rural Pashtun tribesmen conflicts both with the Shia Hazara ethnic group and the more liberal Sunni practices of the formerly nomadic Uzbek and Turkmen peoples.
These differences pervade the region. Turkic languages are spoken in much of the north and east, from Azerbaijan to Xinjiang; while Farsi and associated dialects dominate in the south and west, from Iran to northern India. Although Islam dominates, as noted in the case of Afghanistan, it serves more to differentiate between ethnic groups than to unify them. Central Asian Islam continues to reflect syncretic influences from Zoroastrianism to Sufism, and ranges from the extraordinarily conservative practices in rural Afghanistan to mainstream forms of both Shia and Sunni branches in the major cities.
The other key player has been the United States, which was one of the first countries to recognize the new states born from the ashes of the USSR and has played an important role in shoring up their economic and political independence. With its military involvement in Afghanistan, the Unites States is also playing an active, if unrecognized, role in shaping political dominance in the region. Some American commentators have suggested that it will play an important long-term role in the region. I suggest this is unrealistic. Central Asia is far from the United States and beyond its determination to eliminate Al Qaeda, America has few vital interests in the region. Hydrocarbon or mineral resources are largely fungible, and while those from Central Asia are unlikely to find their way to America, their addition to world supplies will free up others for consumption here. Politically it is becoming clear that the world of the twenty-first century will not be uni-polar, dominated economically and militarily by the United States. Rather, the emergence of other important countries, perhaps not on a par militarily with the United States, but still capable of dominance in their own regions, suggests that this century will be characterized by a balance of power. In the heartland of the World-Island, that balance will be among the emerging Asian powers with the United States playing at best little more than a supporting role.
Europeans learned to live, although often not peacefully, with a balance of power among competing states. The states of Central Asia, many of which have existed in their current form for less than half a century, are now facing a similar challenge. For them to meet that challenge peacefully, the international community must develop new, equitable standards to ensure that the competition for influence in Central Asia remains peaceful and contributes to improvement in the human condition.
This essay was originally published in Caucasian Review of International Affairs, Spring, 2008