Sergey Bondarenko/Bolatbek Otarbayev - KzPravda/CAN
Russia is pushing for Central Asian stability over democracy (pictured L-R: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev)
By Stephen Blank (CACI Analyst/CAN)
WEDNESDAY, July 20, 2011
WASHINGTON, DC - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - During Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Tashkent on June 14, he and Uzbek President Islam Karimov indicated the need for joint approaches to deal with the common threat posed by the Arab revolutions to their rule and that of their neighbors. According to Medvedev, Russian national interest deemed it necessary “that (future) events develop along scenarios that are understandable and predictable for us”. Subsequently at the Tenth Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the members expressed the need to tighten security, with President Hu Jintao of China even advocating improved measures for rapid responses to crises. Undoubtedly revolutions along these lines featured prominently in their thinking.
BACKGROUND: These reactions to the Arab revolutions are the latest in a series of responses since those upheavals began in January. They have followed predictable lines whose origins were already visible in early 2011. Moscow has been concerned about the spread of these revolutions for several months. Anxiety about the Arab revolutions spreading to Central Asia was the topic of a public discussion in the Duma on April 13, 2011. Duma members and Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin urged these states to make timely reforms from above, lest they be swept away like the regimes in North Africa. Russia’s goal is stability, without which these states cannot draw closer to Russia. Karasin thus recommended the top-down formation of a civil society, international and inter-religious peace, improving the population’s standard of living, the development of education and work with youth.
They should thus follow the example of Russian policies to counter the specter of the 2003-2005 color revolutions and emulate what Moscow is currently doing, e.g. creating governmental “opposition parties”. This essentially involves creating a Potemkin democracy to forestall genuine reform and control political developments from above by giving governments more instruments with which to maneuver. This clearly does not suffice to ensure stability and no mention is made of economic development, freedom, or genuine political reform. Karasin’s recommendations showed that Russia can only tolerate cosmetic reforms and it is doubtful that Central Asian leaders will surpass those limits even if they approach them. Indeed, none of them harkened to Moscow’s recommendations.
IMPLICATIONS: Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev indeed preempted them by promulgating an instant election rather than a stage-managed referendum to give him life tenure, because that latter option was too egregious a move in the current climate. Western opposition made it clear that this referendum would incur unneeded criticism and it was equally certain that he would win any election no matter what its provenance. The election was nevertheless reported to have major shortcomings and Nazarbayev’s political advisor, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, told reporters that “I think the president is going to run the country for ten years more, and if someone in the West doesn’t like it, they’ll have to get used to it.”
Meanwhile, a game of balancing rival clans and factions continues while members of the inner circle, especially his daughter and son-in law, Timur Kulibayev (who are worth an estimated $2.5 billion) become targets of corruption investigations abroad. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that after his election, Nazarbayev announced his intention to strengthen the Parliament and regional governments while deconcentrating central executive power. Whatever the democratizing implications of his plan, or the ambitions for democracy Nazarbayev has, this move widens the circles of elites, dilutes the clans and factions close to him, and strengthens his hand to pick his successor while diffusing power so that nobody can amass too much power in the future.
Nazarbayev’s charge to his new government is to reduce corruption although that is difficult given the corruption at the top. Second, Yertysbayev apparently envisages reforms from the top to create state-led parties of power and of opposition. This system would allegedly be a “Presidential-Parliamentary system” able to function in Nazarbayev’s absence. There are rumors that Kulibayev would duly lead the opposition party, thus confirming the continuation of a kind of Potemkin democracy of the sort Karasin recommended.
While this plan has apparently infuriated the regime's opponents, they cannot stop it. Nazarbayev’s concept of reform is evidently to ensure a smooth transition to his successor, whoever that will be, not to strengthen the overall system’s responsiveness to society. Instead, he apparently aims to build a relatively closed but seemingly self-sustaining system of presidential-parliamentary relationships. But this will be a chimera in the absence of the rule of law, governmental accountability, and genuine reform. Indeed, it may lead to new authoritarianism or to sustained political strife after Nazarbayev leaves the scene. Since the succession remains unresolved and nobody can stop the ruling family’s machinations to revise the constitution whenever it likes, it is doubtful that genuine democracy can be initiated from the top or that the nature of the state will change substantially as long as Nazarbayev rules and possibly for some time after that. This and other trends in Kazakhstan highlight the unresolved nature of the succession and the fact that the astute economic policies followed until now depend too much on one man’s wisdom. Despite his great achievements, this is not the best augury for the future.
In other examples, Uzbekistan took control over cellular phone companies, instructing them to report on any suspicious actions by customers and on any massive distributions of text messages through their cellular lines. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have also instituted news blackouts, while Azerbaijan too has targeted Facebook and Skype. In Russia, the FSB (Federal Security Service) and Ministry of Interior (MVD) reacted to the revolutions by proposing to amend the criminal code, making owners of social networks responsible for all content posted on their sites and forcing them to register with the state. The regime also has its own cadre of bloggers like those who launched cyber-strikes against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia during the 2008 war, and is clearly prepared to use force if necessary. Central Asian leaders may have drawn hope from that. As the revolutions continued they, like Karimov, sought to harmonize their approaches against them with Moscow. As one Russian official stated at the recent G-8 summit in Deauville, “We support stability, not regimes”.
CONCLUSIONS: It seems unlikely that Central Asia will move further towards liberalization and de-concentration of power. Indeed, few analysts believe that a revolutionary wave is imminent there. Any reforms that are made will come from above to provide a minimum standard of living balanced by repression to keep the masses in line. These regimes can rely on Moscow and Beijing for support, possibly even military support given the talk of creating mechanisms for rapid response. But this also means that the underlying causes for explosion in these regimes will not be dealt with. Indeed, as compared to Kazakhstan and Russia, in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan there is not even much of an effort to advance reforms.
It is nevertheless clear that struggles for power and position exist within the inner circles of these regimes. The point is that these regimes are very aware of their inherent fragility, knowing that the spread of democracy or even of reform, not to speak of revolution in any one nearby state, immediately puts them all at risk. To them there is ultimately no difference between the spread of democracy or military defeat in their peripheries because it will amount to the same thing: the loss of their power.
We can therefore expect more resistance to U.S. calls for democratization and human rights, which have in fact been attenuated under the present administration. It makes no sense to demand that states like Turkmenistan conform to human rights obligations when we refuse to press China or Russia, the latter being a signatory of the Helsinki treaty, to uphold their treaty commitments. Indeed, Russia and to a lesser degree China are in many ways an alibi for other Eurasian states who are merely adding to their ultimate insecurity by these practices.
Consequently, to the extent that the Arab revolutions continue and possibly become more violent, and to the degree that other governments fall victim to this tide, e.g. Libya and Syria, it is likely that repressive measures directed against these democracy promotion programs will grow. This will be the case even if it seems to local rulers like pressure for reform is growing in their own countries. But by squashing demands for reform, these regimes are paradoxically ensuring that when the dam breaks it will more likely be a violent flood than a more manageable flow. It may then be too late for them, and even Moscow and Beijing acting together, to restore the broken structures.
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