#10
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
March 29, 2002
AMERICAN MARINES ON THE STEPPES OF KAZAKHSTAN
Growing American influence means less Russian influence in Central Asia
Author: Armen Khanbabyan, Mikhail Khodarenok

THE UNITED STATES HAS RECOGNIZED KAZAKHSTAN AS A NATION WITH A MARKET ECONOMY. RUSSIA HAS BEEN STRIVING FOR THIS STATUS FOR A LONG TIME, WITHOUT MUCH SUCCESS. NOW RUSSIA WILL FACE EXTRA DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH THE EXPANDING COOPERATION BETWEEN THE US AND CENTRAL ASIAN STATES.

Yesterday, Kazakhstan became the first CIS country that Washington recognized as a nation with a market economy. U.S. Trade Secretary Don Evans made a special phone call to President Nursultan Nazarbayev to inform him of this "important news" and to offer appropriate congratulations on this occasion.

Russia has been trying to attain this status, without much success. US recognition has considerably strengthened the position of Kazakhstan at the talks starting in Moscow today with Kazakh foreign minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev.

Thus, the multilateral strategic Kazakh-US cooperation has entered a qualitatively new stage, having finally buried Moscow's weak hopes for the possibility of reviving the process of political and economic integration, which Moscow cherished until recently.

However, Kazakhstan's foreign policy agenda had been determined much earlier. On the quiet of talks about "Eurasian unity", in September last year Astana was the first among Central Asian capitals to announce officially full support for the American revenge operation in Afghanistan and to offer Washington assistance by promising to furnish airdromes in Chikment and Lugovaya, as well as a base to deploy a contingent of the counter-Taliban coalition. By the way, this happened after George Bush called Vladimir Putin who was at the moment holding a difficult conference with force agencies chiefs at his residence of "Bocharov Ruchei" in Sochi and openly let him understand that U.S. military interaction with countries of the region is a fait accompli and no more requires approval on the part of Moscow. But still earlier, American military delegations regularly visited Kazakhstan, studying the possibilities to update the armed forces and military infrastructures of the republic.

It should be noted that there was no trace of the counter- terrorist campaign when Astana, if only at the semi-official level, was considering the possibility of stationing a U.S. motorized brigade near Karaganda, numbering up to 5,000 people. This period was marked with working out the Defense Cooperation Plan for the defense departments of Kazakhstan and the US, as well as the Program for Military Contacts between the Kazakhstan Armed Forces and the U.S. Central Command. According to these documents, they are consistently and purposefully accomplishing numerous exact programs for overseas studies of Kazakh military people, financing and holding of joint maneuvers, formation of a Kazakh peace-keeping battalion, etc., while American task force train instructors from task force personnel and mobile forces of Kazakhstan's army, which are to practice at training centers overseas. At the end of last year, at a meeting of the two countries' defense chiefs in Brussels, they discussed in particular the possibility for Kazakhstan to expand utilization of the funds of the American program for Foreign Military Financing. At the same time, Astana doubled its defense budget and announced considerable expansion of the number of mobile (i.e. the most efficient) army units.

It would be naive to think the matter is just about cooperation for the counter-terrorist operation. The latter is more likely a plausible pretext for Astana to progressively expand cooperation with the US. Otherwise, how could the fact be explained that, according to veritable data, another group of American experts visited the country in connection with the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which chose to focus its attention on the nuclear test ground at Semipalatinsk and the radioactive waste depot near Chikment? Kazakhstan is striving to minimize the danger of nuclear stuffs proliferation and apparently has abandoned the hope to receive assistance for this matter on part of Russia. Meanwhile, Americans render such assistance readily. Besides, U.S. DOD representatives will soon arrive in Almaty to continue current programs for providing biological security and working out plans of joint actions with Kazakh scientists from the Institute of Quarantine and Zoonal Infections and the Agricultural Research Institute in Otar.

Astana also counts to on getting Washington's consent to receive information from U.S. spy satellites about the situation in the adjacent geopolitical region. So far, the matter was about regions where "international terrorist activity is possible". However, the Russian territory is also an "adjoining space". Meanwhile, taking into account that the number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan is progressively reducing (in 10 years, they will be less than 20% here) and the number of Kazakhs in regions bordering upon Russia is increasing at the same rapid rates, it might be assumed that the Southeast of Russia will inevitably turn into a "special interests zone" for Astana.

As we can see, the state and prospects of the military-political cooperation between the US and Kazakhstan are no less radiant that in those countries of the region where American military objects are already dislocated. Appearance of NATO base stations here is only a matter of time. The American military presence will inevitably expand northwards, since it is Kazakhstan that is the key link in the plans for accomplishing grandiose transnational transportation and energy projects such as TRACECA and INOGATE. Astana, like, however, other Central Asian capitals, understands that socio-economic progress is out of the question without reaching international energy markets. Friendship with the US is an obligatory condition to accomplish similar hopes. The aforementioned market economy status furnished for Kazakhstan testifies to this. Besides, leaders of the region have made sure that Russia is incapable and unwilling to secure solution of the problems they are facing. They have simply no way out other than to expand interaction with the West.

(Translated by P. Pikhnovsky)