Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble. A Regional Approach to Afghanistan and Its Neighbors S. Frederick Starr

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1 Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble Regional Studies A Regional Approach to Afghanistan and Its Neighbors S. Frederick Starr restrictions on use: This PDF is provided for the use of authorized recipients only. For specific terms of use, please contact <publications@nbr.org>. To purchase the print volume Strategic Asia : Challenges and Choices in which this chapter appears please visit < or contact <orders@nbr.org> Fourth Avenue, Suite 1600 Seattle, Washington USA

2 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.

3 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 <sfstarr@jhu.edu>.

4 334 Strategic Asia 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 the region will acknowledge this principle and work with it. How can the United States position itself in the region as a balance to China and Russia? Success in Afghanistan is a prerequisite, and to this end the United States should help the Afghans expand their army to 150,000 and help Kabul deliver good governance to the population. Many related aspects of reconstruction can be effectively advanced by engaging firms from the rest of Central Asia rather than from further abroad. The United States is the only country in a position to broker an understanding between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The chapter considers how this might be done and proposes specific rewards to Pakistan following an agreement, including support for Pakistan s various trans-afghan transport projects that are now languishing. Since these benefit the rest of Central Asia as much as Pakistan or Afghanistan, they can become the key to a new region-wide strategy. To date, the United States has proposed no serious response to the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO), which has now even approached Afghanistan. A first response by the United States might be to greatly expand the trade and investment framework agreements (TIFA) that it has signed with regional states. The chapter suggests that the countries themselves, mindful of their need for balance, will welcome this. U.S. officials will surely ask about the cost of what is proposed here. Bluntly, the total cost for Afghanistan since 2001 is far less than what the United States spent in the 1950s and 1960s to transform South Korea or

5 Starr Central Asia 335 Taiwan. 1 Moreover, U.S. expenditures on Central Asian countries are surpassed by expenditures on dozens of countries of far less geopolitical significance. 2 Between 1998 and 2006 the average annual expenditure on each of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia was only $54 million, as compared to $97 million for each of six Balkan countries. One must also compare these costs with the price the United States would pay for strategic failure in the region. Starting with a review of Russian and Chinese policy toward what might be called Greater Central Asia, the following presentation discusses the policies of other relevant countries and of the United States. The next section then considers how Central Asian states and Afghanistan respond to the realities confronting them, and the extent of their recent progress. Following this, the chapter proposes principles for a new, positive phase of U.S. policy toward the region, and suggests how they might be implemented. The chapter concludes by listing immediate actions to be taken. The Environment of Greater Central Asia Between the collapse of the USSR and September 11, U.S. policy assumed that Central Asia consisted only of five former Soviet republics, i.e., Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Following the defeat of the Taliban government, U.S. policy acknowledged that through the millennia Afghanistan, too, has been an integral part of Central Asia. The establishment in 2006 of a new Bureau of Central and South Asian Affairs in the Department of State reflected this understanding. In a cultural sense, one might also suggest that the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang, with its large Turkic and Muslim population, and the northwestern part of Pakistan should also be borne in mind when considering any future U.S. policy for the region. The case pro et contra for including Iran is discussed below. All these diverse states and regions interact with one another in important ways. They also interact significantly with countries beyond the region, including the United States. This leads to the obvious conclusion 1 The only person to have attempted this important budgetary comparison is Sam Brandon of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. While the Afghan expenditure is, of course, ongoing, Brandon s evidence indicated clearly the vastly greater sum spent by the United States to bring about transformation in South Korea and Taiwan. See Sam Brannen, Comparison in Real and Nominal Dollar Terms of the U.S. Foreign Assistance to Taiwan and South Korea, (unpublished manuscript, 2004). 2 See United States Agency for International Development, U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants [Greenbook], 2007, sas&_service=default&unit=r.