Labban Hybrid Geopolitics

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The Struggle for the Heartland: Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

Mazen Labbana
a
Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami, FL, USA
To cite this Article Labban, Mazen(2009) 'The Struggle for the Heartland: Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian',
Geopolitics, 14: 1, 1 25
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Geopolitics, 14:125, 2009

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 online
DOI: 10.1080/14650040802578641
The Struggle for the Heartland: Hybrid

Geopolitics in the Transcaspian
Geopolitics, Vol. 14, No. 1, November 2008: pp. 144

1557-3028
1465-0045
FGEO
Geopolitics
Hybrid Labban
Mazen
Geopolitics in the Transcaspian
MAZEN LABBAN
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Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami, FL, USA
Geopolitical rivalry in the Transcaspian region is irreducible to

competition for Caspian oil and gas. Nor has the rivalry between
East and West dissolved into an alliance in the war on terror.
It is part of a broader process of expansion into the former Soviet
republics, particularly in Central Asia, to integrate them into competing economic, military and security structures. In this process,
the Transcaspian region itself is not the ultimate object of the competition; rather, global hegemony. Thus, processes of integration
appear to have been accompanied by opposite processes of containment. I propose the notion of hybrid geopolitics to explicate this
dual process, examined primarily through military expansion
across the continent, in the form of military aid and bases, strategic
alliances, security arrangements and arms trade.
Accepted theses on US geopolitics trace the roots of US foreign policy to

ideas deriving from classical geopolitics, particularly the theses of Mackinder, according to which the territorial control of the Eurasian Heartland
the geographical pivot of history formed the basis for the domination of
the Eurasian landmass, and ultimately the globe.1 Thus, the control of the
Eurasian Heartland by any single power or combination of powers hostile
to US interests represented a direct threat to the military and economic
security of the US and must, therefore, be contained by a counter-expansion
of US ideological, political, and economic influence and, if necessary, by
direct territorial and military control. This policy was formulated more
explicitly during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union, and subsequently
communist China, as its ostensible target. It appears, however, to have
Address correspondence to Mazen Labban, Department of Geography and Regional

Studies, University of Miami, 1000 Memorial Dr., Ferr Bldg., Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA.
E-mail: mlabban@miami.edu
1
Mazen Labban
survived the end of the Cold War and the gradual transformation of Russia
and China from communist rivals to capitalist competitors and potential
allies against new rivals. Notwithstanding such concrete historical-geographical
transformations, the fixation on the Eurasian Heartland remains a dominant
moment in analyses of US foreign policy in the postCold War period.2
Indeed, Mackinders geopolitical theses have enjoyed a renaissance in the
aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which benefited from
increased interest in Central Asia the pivot of the pivot throughout
the 1990s and especially after the attacks on the US in September 2001 and
the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.3 It is thus argued that the
direct penetration of Central Asia by US and NATO forces lent Mackinders
theses contemporary geopolitical resonance, especially that the US seems
driven by anxieties about its global strategic future similar to those of the
British Empire at the turn of the twentieth century.4 On this account, US
direct expansion of Central Asia, along with the expansion of US influence
in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, is not only continuous with the Cold
War strategy of containment, but also with British imperialism.
This account begs two questions that provide a starting point from
which to re-examine the form of postCold War geopolitics. First, is the US
today at the same historical geographical juncture as the British Empire at
the turn of the twentieth century? Or, more precisely, as the British Empire
in 1904, 1919, or 1943 the years in which Mackinder formulated and reformulated his theses in search of strategies to uphold the hegemony of declining
British imperialism? Second, does US foreign policy (and strategy) have its
foundation in Mackinders geopolitical theses? Is such a foundation necessary for formulating US strategy, and for explaining geopolitics in Eurasia?
There is no simple answer to any of these questions. I argue, however,
that contemporary US policies and strategies in Central Asia as well as
Russian and Chinese policies are driven less by geographical abstractions
of Mackinders concerns about the British Empire than by immediate geopolitical realities that call into question the application of Mackinders formulations to the present. Mackinder developed his theses in relation to declining
British imperialism in competition with nascent rivals in Europe and Asia,
Germany and Russia in particular and arguably the US, notwithstanding
the underlying transatlantic rhetoric that would later inform Cold War geopolitical discourse. Thus, Mackinders ideas may have been more relevant to
British than US geopolitics in the Cold War period. As Britain and the Soviet
Union sought buffer zones and spheres of influence in Europe, Roosevelts
administration sought a global open door policy that would expand liberal
capitalism under US hegemony, beginning with Europe, including Eastern
Europe, the European colonies, and potentially the Soviet Union.5 Trumans
policy of containment, which did not abandon the post-war globalist
project, followed the Soviet Unions voluntary refusal to join the Bretton
Woods institutions, particularly the International Monetary Fund, and to
Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian
participate in the Marshall Plan and thus in the global expansion of a liberal
capitalist economy under US hegemony. It is the similarity between the
conclusions that could derive from Mackinders theses and the immediate
geopolitical dictates of the moment the expansion of liberal capitalism
translated as the necessary containment of Soviet Russia that made Mackinders theses seem to coincide with US Cold War strategy, rather than their
geographical premises or geopolitical reasoning.6
Yet, even if Mackinders theses could be made to coincide with Cold War
geopolitics, their application to contemporary geopolitics remains problematic.
More than the containment of post-Soviet Russia by expansion into bordering
territory, geopolitical rivalry in Central Asia can be explained from a different
perspective as part of a broader process aimed at the elimination of what
Smith calls the interstices of globalization geographical entities of all scales
that have so far threatened the total expansion of (US-led) capitalism.7 Hence,
it seems that what is more relevant to US policy and to the competition for
Central Asia today is not Mackinders geopolitical map with its ever-expanding
Heartland, but Barnetts new map, which identifies at the level of the whole
globe non-integrating gaps territories that have so far remained external to
US-led globalisation as target areas for US military expansion.8 That the integration of such territories, interstices and gaps, has taken an increasingly military form does not necessarily translate the process into a classical geopolitical
rivalry based in Mackinder. Nor is it the case, however, that geopolitical rivalry
has become a thing of the past, replaced by more benign forms of geoeconomic competition and multilateral and cooperative relations.
I propose the notion of hybrid geopolitics as a heuristic device to open
the question on the nature and form of geopolitical rivalry developing in the
postCold War period. The fluidity and complexity of the contemporary
geopolitical moment requires going beyond mono-casual explanations, and
to think the relation between political power and geographical space in
terms that transcend the restraining legacy of Mackinder and take into
account disparate processes shaping contemporary geopolitical space. The
articulation of a notion of hybrid geopolitics in this article is only one
attempt at transcending explanations that reduce geopolitical rivalry to a
quest for the exclusive control of this or that territory because of an
economic, demographic, or strategic significance, without downplaying the
significance of such processes in accumulating political and economic
power. On this notion, contemporary geopolitical space is irreducible to
maps divided into concentric circles, centred on one place privileged by the
objective facts of geology and physical geography. Instead, it is a space
structured by the fusion of sets of seemingly opposite processes processes
of exclusion or containment, through economic, military, ideological expansion overlaid by processes of integration through the same processes of
expansion. This hybrid geopolitical space is riddled with tensions and contradictions, some of which are resolved through shifts from one process to
Mazen Labban
another, depending on the political expediency of the moment and the

shifting relations among the contenders, rather than the inherent physical
properties of certain regions.
The present study focuses on geopolitical rivalry in the Transcaspian
region developing in the postCold War period.9 I argue that the Transcaspian
itself is not the ultimate object of this rivalry, although it plays a significant
part in it, especially if the rivalry is seen in its hybrid nature. In what
appears to be a geographical paradox, the centrality of the Transcaspian,
particularly Central Asia, resides in its peripheral position at the intersection
of Europe, Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and to a certain extent
India. The geopolitical significance of the Transcaspian region is in that
the relations of the contenders with each other are partly shaped by their
relations with (the countries of) the region. Thus, expansion into the
Transcaspian serves as an instrument in the broader rivalry among competing
hegemonies, which has led to the cultivation of allies, partly through
military connections ranging from the establishment of military bases and
direct military presence, to military aid, arm sales, and military training. In
this respect, military expansion into the Transcaspian does not only serve
strategies of territorial control for the purpose of securing access to the
hydrocarbon riches of the region, the containment of Russia, or the war on
terror, as opposed to strategies of geoeconomic integration and multilateral
cooperation. Those are elements of one hybrid process. Indeed, the development of various forms of military relations between the great powers
and the countries of the Transcaspian as much as among the great powers
themselves is one form of economic integration, rather than a moment
that precedes it, let alone opposes it. The expansion of military relations
thus acquires two inter-related aspects: the expansion of military power and
reach of the contenders, in strategic competition with each other; and the
simultaneous expansion of the markets for arms and other military services
markets for industries that are dominant in, and close to the governments
of, the US and Russia (and China). While this process has not transcended
remnant policies of containment, it is irreducible to them. On one side, the
US has sought the integration of the former Soviet republics, including
Russia, into Western economic and military structures, while containing
Russian influence in the Transcaspian (and Eastern Europe). Indeed, as the
case of NATO shows, the integration of Russia in the West premises its
containment. On the other side, Russia has oscillated between, and at times
tried to combine, forging a pragmatic alliance with the US in the common
war on terror and forging strategic and military alliances in Asia to counter
US hegemony and to contain the military and political expansion of the US
in the Transcaspian. While this process has curbed the expansion of US
hegemony in Asia to a certain extent, it has also produced partnerships
with China and India that exhibit similar hybrid relations of integration and
containment.
In the following, I first show that the hydrocarbon riches of the Caspian
are not sufficient reason to explain contemporary geopolitical rivalry in
Eurasia. The section that follows presents a summary of the evolution of US
and Russian policy towards the Transcaspian and analyses their respective
expansion into Central Asia beyond the question of terrorism. This leads to
the discussion of the hybrid geopolitics resulting from Russias return to the
West in the section that follows. The alliance between Russia and China to
counter US and Western expansion in Asia is discussed in the last section,
which examines the strategic partnership developing since the late 1990s,
focusing finally on the development of hybrid geopolitics in the expansion
of the Russian arms trade with China and India.
CASPIAN OIL
Although the competition for oil in the Caspian Basin and the common
struggle against international terrorism in Central Asia figure prominently
in analyses of geopolitical rivalry among the US, Russia and China, both
are not satisfactory to explain its source and pattern (the question of the
war on terror is taken up in the next section). Many analysts have interpreted the regional and global competition for the control of the Transcaspian since the collapse of the Soviet Union as primarily a race to the
control of the oil and gas reserves of the region, especially the former
Soviet littoral states other than Russia Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and
Turkmenistan.10 Certainly, political and economic gains can derive from
controlling the hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian Basin, but the growing
rivalry in the Transcaspian, particularly between the US and Russia (and
China), cannot be reduced to competition for natural resources. It is not
that the control of oil extraction and transportation is not in itself important, but that this must not be construed as the ultimate object of the
competition. If at all related to oil, the strategic interest in the region is not
the control of oil per se but in the integration of the economies of the
region, including Russia, into the global economy through the exports of
oil in exchange for imports and opening for competing investment capital
from the west and the east.
Throughout the 1990s, the Caspian region was thought to contain
hydrocarbon resources of global significance, enough to relieve the US and
Europe of their dependence on Gulf oil and to present a counterweight, if
not an equivalent rival, to OPEC. The size and significance of Caspian oil
and gas reserves, however, were deliberately exaggerated by governments
eager to attract foreign investment and, particularly, by the US Department
of State, to attract US investors and justify the interventionist strategy of the
US in the region. After being placed at around 7 billion barrels (bbl) in the
early 1990s, the speculation on the proven reserves of the Caspian grew to
Mazen Labban
hysterical proportions by the mid-1990s, placing them at around 200 billion

bbl in 1995, compared to Saudi Arabias 250 billion bbl.
By the late 1990s, however, the Caspian oil frenzy calmed as the oil
and gas reserves turned out to be much smaller than anticipated. Moreover,
in the context of low oil prices and sluggish demand in oil markets, they did
not justify the already high costs of extracting and transporting them out of
the Caspian region. By 1998, the proven oil and gas reserves of the Caspian
were estimated at around 68 billion bbl; but after actual drilling, they were
re-estimated in the early 2000s at around 2030 billion bbl.11 But oil reserves
and production are highly uneven across the region and regional estimates
conceal wide differences among the different countries. Most of Caspian oil
is concentrated in Kazakhstan, whose reserves at the end of 2006 amounted
to 40 billion bbl approximately, compared to Russias 80 billion bbl.12 In
comparison, Azerbaijan had 7 billion bbl and Turkmenistan, richer in gas,
contained around 500 million bbl. The significance of Kazakhstan, however,
is not in the size of its reserves but in the difference between its share of
world reserves (3.3%) and share of world production (1.7%), compared to
Russias 6.6% and 12.3%, respectively. Thus, despite the doubling of its production capacity in the past fifteen years, Kazakhstans production capacity
is not yet fully realised. This is due primarily to internal institutional limits
and a small economy incapable of absorbing large monetary surpluses from
increased production.13 If those were removed, Kazakhstan can potentially
produce 3 million bbl/day in 2015, with much of it to export and probably
much of that to China, placing it at best in the league of Norway and
Venezuela, rather than OPEC or the Middle East.
The Caspian, with its modest hydrocarbon potential, appeared as a
viable alternative to the Persian Gulf as long as the latter remained closed to
US oil companies. The opening of the upstream oil and gas sector of more
profitable producers shifted the interest of the oil companies away from the
region, with the voluntary opening of the Saudi, Iranian and, until recently,
the Russian upstream oil sector to foreign companies, and the forced opening
of Iraq specifically to US oil companies, with 115 billion bbl in proven
reserves and an estimated 200300 billion in probable reserves. With this
shift, the interest of the US administration in the Caspian region shifted from
a focus on oil to questions of security. The region did not lose geopolitical
significance, but this was no longer primarily attached to the regions hydrocarbon riches.
THE US AND RUSSIA IN THE TRANSCASPIAN

There are striking parallels in analyses of the foreign policies of the US and
Russia concerning the Transcaspian region in the postCold War period.14
Two general assumptions are common in varying accounts of both. First,
during much of the 1990s, the Transcaspian region remained strategically

peripheral to the interests of the US. Those were defined negatively to
ensure that no other power, namely Russia and Iran, advanced into the
geopolitical vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia, in
its turn, sought to disengage, or distance itself from the newly independent
republics of the Transcaspian throughout most of the 1990s, a period in
which its relation with the US oscillated between close alignment and rejection
of US global hegemony. Notwithstanding differences in relation to individual
republics, Russias policy was mostly defensive a policy of obstruction
aimed at preventing the expansion of external powers that may undermine Russias precarious stability. Yeltsins policy of divorce had deliberately severed Russias ties with its less developed partners to the south,
especially the Central Asian republics. In what became the Yeltsin-Kozyrev
foreign policy, Russia instead concentrated on its own modernisation in its
attempt to reintegrate with the West, economically and politically, as well as
ideologically by forging a national identity that placed Russia in European
civilisation.
Second, both US and Russian foreign policies shifted in the second half
of the 1990s. The strategic significance of the Transcaspian came to the fore,
which propelled the US and Russia into direct expansion into the region. In
the US, especially in the last years of the second Clinton administration, US
policy shifted from a narrow focus on economic security to broader issues
of political security and stability. This developed further with the Bush
administration into an explicit expansion under the banner of the war on
terror, thus lending the region further strategic significance. Central Asia
came to be perceived in US foreign policy as both a potential breeding
ground for terrorism and an indispensable base from which to launch
the war on terrorism originating elsewhere: to prevent the infiltration of
external disruptive forces men, ideas and guns and to battle internal
opposition and uprisings that may spread instability throughout the whole
region. In Russia, the so-called Yeltsin-Kozyrev policy gave way by around
1996 to a more nationalistic stance. Russia was now bent on establishing
prevalence over the former Soviet republics. This was coupled to an explicit
rejection of US hegemony over the international system and a quest for
multipolarity, which reached its apogee in the late 1990s with the development of the Russo-Chinese strategic partnership (see below). This presumably lasted until September 2001, when the declared war on terror brought
Russia full circle to align itself (again) with the US, as a partner in a
US-centred hegemonic alliance. The expansion of Russias influence in
Central Asia henceforth took an increasingly economic form. Rather than territorial or militaristic restoration of Russian big space, Russia expanded its
influence through a set of multilateral and cooperative agreements that accelerated economic integration and ensured the expansion and dominance of
Russian companies against foreign competitors, especially in the energy sector.
Mazen Labban
The implication drawn from the accounts sketched above is that US

policy shifted from isolating Russia and excluding it from the Transcaspian
region to integrating it in the campaign against terrorism. Similarly, Russia in
its turn shifted from a rejection of US hegemony and obstruction of US
expansion into the region to an acceptance of both in the period following
the events of September 2001. Consequently, the relations between the US
and Russia shifted from a more confrontational stance in the second half of
the 1990s to something close to an alliance after 2001. Yet, the empirical circumstances point to limitations in both assumptions and their implications.
First, US military expansion into Central Asia preceded the invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 the primary justification for US military deployments
in Central Asia and was well on its way by the mid-1990s. The events of
September 2001 confirmed the interventionist and militaristic stance of US
policy in Asia rather than initiating the shift towards it. The same in the case
of Russia. Despite the policy of divorce, the integration of the South
Caucasus and Central Asia into military and security arrangements did not
begin with the reassertion of Russian nationalism under Putin, but had
already proceeded in the 1990s. Here also, the events of 2001, but more
significantly the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent political events
in the region, accelerated a process that was already in the making a
process that was by no means displaced by purely economic arrangements.
Second, the rivalry between the US and Russia, in the Transcaspian and
Eastern Europe, did not subside with the rapprochement of 2001, but seems
to have intensified. Despite a sympathetic stance in the US administration
towards Russian influence in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East,
as a better alternative to the influence of Iran or Islamic fundamentalism,
Russia remained to the US a source of disrupting influence an obstacle to
the efforts of the US to spread democracy in Eastern Europe and to curb
the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, as the current conflict over Iran demonstrates. The alliance in the war on terror did
not prevent the Bush administration, replete as it is with Cold War veterans,
from treating Russia as an opponent to be contained. On the other side,
Russia saw in the US a useful ally in curbing the spread of Islamic movements and eradicating terrorism across the region, by providing the material
means that Russia lacked and by providing the very discourse that defines
terrorism and legitimates intervention against it. Yet, US military expansion,
under the pretense of the war on terror, ranging from US military bases in
Central Asia to missiles in Eastern Europe, including the invasion of Iraq,
appears in Russia as a threat equal to, if not more menacing, than the threat
of terrorism. Both threats would propel Russia to seek security and military
alliances with the Central Asian republics and China. In the following, I shall
develop the first point further by arguing that the military expansion of Russia
and the US in Central Asia is irreducible to the question of terrorism. The next
two sections develop the second point further on two levels, the first
examining the hybrid nature of US-Russia relations, and the second examining
the emerging alliance between Russia, China, and India, as a reaction and
challenge to the expansion of US hegemony.
Lily Pads Along the Arc of Instability: Central Asia

in the War on Terror
It is generally assumed that Central Asia, as a region, acquired critical importance for the US after US oil companies signed contracts with Kazakhstan in
1993 and 1994. As it gained further strategic importance in the war on
terror after 2001, Central Asia became a major recipient of US assistance,
most of which in the area of security, including border control, narcotics
and arms control.15 Because of its location, Central Asia also became a strategic launch pad in the war on terror, a base from which to project [US
and NATO] power into the region.16 But the military expansion of the US
into Central Asia was already in progress in 2001, and must be seen against
a more general transformation in the global military footprint of the US in
the postCold War period taking place well before the war on terror.
US military expansion into Central Asia has proceeded since the early
1990s, indirectly through NATO sponsored programmes such as the Partnership
for Peace programme (PfP) and the Central Asian Battalion (CENTRASBAT).
The Partnership for Peace programme was adopted at the NATO summit in
January 1994. It is primarily a US initiative designed to provide NATO with a
flexible system of halfway houses that allows for its expansion without
requiring an expansion of membership.17 The Central Asian Battalion, on
the other hand, was formed in 1995 by an agreement between Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, to operate under the auspices of the United
Nations for the purpose of peacekeeping and preventing conflict in
volatile areas.18 But CENTRASBAT quickly became the focus of major
military exercises sponsored by the PfP. Moreover, the sponsorship of
CENTRASBAT shifted from Atlantic Command to Central Command following
the modification of the US Unified Command Plan to include Central Asia in
Central Commands area of responsibility.
CENTRASBAT exercises were intended to prepare US forces for assaults
in Central Asia and to prepare the militaries of the Central Asian republics to
work with US and NATO forces to upgrade their interoperability. One military analyst, writing before the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan,
described the PfP programme as part of the US strategy of extraordinary
power projection activities that would facilitate transition [of Central
Asian republics] to war and participation in its initial stages.19 What war the
US was preparing for in 2000 is not evident. Still, the US military footprint has
only expanded after September 2001, and a quasi-permanent, pre-emptive
war on terror, which has become much less localised and more openended, has served to justify and legitimate such an expansion. Indeed, the
10
Mazen Labban
discursive campaign on terrorism served to globalise the military footprint

of the US as it transformed its structure.
The transformation of perceptions of the nature of security threats and
areas of potential conflict in the postCold War world led to the transformation
of the footprint of the US military forces in terms of location and structure.
The current geography of US military bases resembles a palimpsest
composed of a splintered network of non-permanent, small, and austere
operations bases so-called lily-pads flung across the whole globe to
deal with local, small-scale security threats, laid over the larger, more permanent bases established on the edges of Eurasia to contain the Soviet
threat during the Cold War. Only on this second level the geographical form
of US deployment seems to replicate that of containment and this is how
it is perceived in Russia, together with the eastward advance of NATO and
plans to place a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. But more than
encircling Russia, or fighting terrorism in Central Asia, the footprint of the
US military forces reflects on the ground a broader strategy of global expansion.
It coincides with the so-called arc of crisis or arc of instability, spanning
across the Global South from Central and South America through North
Africa to Southeast Asia, and bisected by Central Commands area of
responsibility, stretching from Kenya, Sudan and Egypt in the southwest
all the way northeast to include the five republics of Central Asia, in addition
to the Arab Peninsula, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The combination of
these two areas coincides with the region designated by Barnett as the nonintegrating gap, the region that is most likely to incubate the next generation of
global terrorists i.e., represent potential threats to US-led globalisation
and that became more visible after September 2001. The significance of
Central Asia is that it sits at the intersection of these two areas, perceived by
the US Department of Defense as problem areas and, therefore, areas that
may require military intervention. Equally important, Central Asia also sits
between Russia, China and India three developing economies with potential regional power, and whose cooperation has further significance at the
global scale. The three have had their own, often conflicting, strategic plans
for Central Asia, and, together with Iran, have strengthened and established
new economic, political, and military ties with the former Soviet Republics.
As such, Central Asia is critical for the further expansion, or obstruction, of
US-led globalisation and the stationing of military forces there goes beyond
the immediate threat of terrorism or the protection of oil installations.
In the Steppes to Stay? Reclaiming the Heartland

The expansion of US military forces and assistance in Central Asia and the
brief interlude of strengthening US-Uzbek relations provoked a doubletiered strategic competition between the US and other major powers with
interest in the region, particularly China, India and Russia, and among the
11
Central Asian republics themselves. The forging of a US-Uzbek strategic

partnership in 2002 pushed the republics of Central Asia to pursue Russian
and Chinese involvement in order to balance Uzbekistans ascendancy
and potential regional hegemony. Yet, not wanting Uzbekistan to be the
sole beneficiary of US assistance, the other Central Asian republics sought at
the same time to strengthen their own bilateral relations with the US and to
cultivate its willingness to spend millions of dollars on the modernisation of
military infrastructures, equipment, training of personnel, etc. to secure a
geopolitical foothold in the region. An initial opening to the US invited
greater Russian involvement, and this was to expand with the shift in
attitude towards US presence in Central Asia, especially in the case of
Uzbekistan after 2005.
After 2001, Russia (and China) accepted US expansion in Central Asia
both as a welcome effort to strike terrorism at its presumed source, and to
give some legitimacy to its own war on separatist rebels in Chechnya wars
that the US had frowned upon during the 1990s and has been uneasy in
supporting. Russia, thus, tolerated US military forces in its southern periphery
as long as they were temporary and aimed at a single objective: the eradication
of the Taliban. The Russian government even opened its air space to nonmilitary US flights and provided the US military forces with intelligence and
a decade-long strategic experience in Afghanistan, in addition to modest,
yet effective, influence with the Central Asian republics, which were eager
to cultivate closer relations with the US and NATO, without completely
relinquishing their good relations with Russia. Central Asian republics facing
internal opposition could not risk losing Moscows support, as US calls for
political reform and promotion of democracy throughout the 1990s, culminating in the Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and change in the relation
with Uzbekistan in 2005, have made the support of the US against domestic
opposition questionable. The more the relation between the US and Russia
soured in subsequent years, the more Central Asian republics in need of
such support turned towards Russia. But in the early years of the war on
terror, with apparent collaboration between the US and Russia, it seemed
that the Central Asian republics could balance their relations with both.
Kyrgyzstan, with a government propped by Russian support, was the first in
the region to open its airspace to the US Air Force and to allow the US to
establish a military base near the capital. The US returned the favour by
extending military and economic assistance to Kyrgyzstan.
Putins pragmatic rapprochement policy actively integrating into
rather than opposing the emerging global system did not imply, however,
an embrace of US hegemony on the continent. As it became apparent that
the war on terror had no clear end in sight and increasingly less defined
objectives, US military presence in Central Asia came to be perceived in
Russia (and China) as part of a broader geopolitical strategy not tied exclusively to the purpose and duration of the campaign against the Taliban in
12
Mazen Labban
Afghanistan. This coincided with the further expansion of NATO and a

more aggressive effort by the US to install its nuclear defence system in
Eastern Europe (see below), which provoked in Russia (and China) a sense
of creeping containment, or encirclement, the reaction to which was a
renewed expansion of Russian influence in Central Asia.
Russia now was caught between two evils, and its active expansion in
Central Asia in competition with the US had to combine with an affirmation
of its alliance with the West in the war on terror. On one level, Russia
aimed to expand its leverage over the Central Asian republics in order to
curb the expansion of US influence.20 But on another, equally significant
level, Russia (and China) benefited from delegating some responsibility to
the US in cracking down on Islamic movements, thus ostensibly preventing
political instability in Central Asia by making Russias southern borders less
vulnerable to the infiltration of Islamic militants that may threaten political
stability at home. Both Russia and the five Central Asian republics have long
perceived a common security problem in the rising and spreading militant
Islamic movements to the south and, despite Yeltsins divorce policy,
Russia has been involved in Central Asia since 1992, when the civil war
erupted in Tajikistan, threatening to spread Islamic fundamentalism
throughout Central Asia up to the Russian borders. This translated into more
tangible efforts beginning in the mid-1990s, namely in 1996, when the Taliban
took over Kabul, at around the same time that the rebellion in Chechnya
threatened to bring militant Islamic movements all the way up through the
North Caucasus to Moscow. The Shanghai Five, which would develop into the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with the inclusion of Uzbekistan in
2001, was founded in 1996 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Tajikistan to resolve boundary disputes with China, but expanded later in
1998 to include issues of terrorism, separatism and extremism i.e., militant
Islamic movements, especially in Russia (Chechnya), China (Xinjiang) and
eventually Uzbekistan (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan). In April 2000,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, signed a security pact
whose chief aim was to control the powerful ideological expansion of
Islamic fundamentalism emanating from Afghanistan. The agreement
provided for joint military action in case of an attack. Shortly after, in May
2000, Russia signed a number of bilateral agreements with Uzbekistan
providing for military cooperation to help the latter fight the surging Islamic
movement, and in July China and Russia agreed with Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to establish an antiterrorist center in Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan, and reiterated their desire again in August with Uzbekistan, to
crush the Islamic guerillas using the most decisive measures. Threats of
militant Islamic movements became the cement that locked Central Asia in
bilateral and multilateral agreements with Russia (and China) well before
2001. Russia at times even offered Central Asian republics unilateral guarantees
against the threat of terrorism, but due to the state of its military forces,
13
and its costly involvement in Chechnya, Russia could not commit to actual
military operations. Even its subsequent rhetorical support for the US war
on terror did not translate into actual military engagement. Nonetheless, by
the end of the decade, Central Asia had become, for Russia (and China), the
route through which the inspiration and support of the Taliban for separatist rebels at home travelled from its original source in Afghanistan.21 For
Russia, Central Asia was its security buffer against a potential Muslim
corridor stretching from the Persian Gulf north to the periphery of Moscow.
By October 2000, Russia was still reinforcing its defensive positions on the
border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, rather than its own border with
Tajikistan, to protect the gateway to Central Asia against the spread of the
Taliban. By December 2002, Russia had begun deploying military aircraft
from those defensive positions to Kant in Kyrgyzstan, where the US had
established its military base one year earlier.
Direct US military infiltration of central Asia and increased assistance in
military and security programmes resuscitated Russias efforts to strengthen
its security ties to the Central Asian republics through multilateral and bilateral agreements, after those faltered after 2001. Those agreements were no
longer centred only on the security threats of militant Islamic movements,
but also, more prominently, on the direct expansion of US and NATO forces
into Central Asia. Thus, in 2002 Russia established the Collective Security
Treaty Organization, partly to counter the eastward expansion of NATO and
as a similar, alternative security provider in Central Asia.22 The invasion of
Iraq in 2003 exacerbated anxieties about US unilateralism and the prospect
of US military presence lasting even longer than Russia had anticipated. This
prodded the six members of the SCO to revive it, and in 2004 the SCO set
up the Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure, a permanent organ in Tashkent,
and has since held joint military exercises.
The summer of 2005 was to bring further developments that expanded
Russias presence in Central Asia further, in addition to widening the sphere
of security and military cooperation in Asia. At its annual conference in
Kazakhstan in July 2005, with India, Iran and Pakistan present as observers, the
SCO demanded US withdrawal from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
This came on the heels of a joint communiqu issued in June by Russia,
China and India, emphasising, again, the multipolarity of the international
system and a pledge by Russia and China to cooperate against (US) monopoly
of world affairs. The strategic partnership announced in 1996 with the
formation of the Shanghai Five was back on the agenda, after the common
alliance in the war on terror took centre stage for a short while after 2001.
The revival of strategic partnerships and Central Asian security ties with
Russia (and China) was lent additional momentum by the re-orientation of
Uzbekistan towards Russia and China. Crackdown by Uzbekistans government on demonstrators in 2005, and the massacre that ensued, pushed a
reluctant US administration, under pressure from Congress, to criticise
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Uzbekistans government and to demand investigation into the incident.

Uzbekistan retaliated first by restricting airlifts from the US military base
at Karshi-Khanabad and, when the US supported the transfer of Uzbek
refugees to Europe, the Uzbek government gave the US its six months
notice to evacuate the base and terminate the agreement that established it.
The complete evacuation of the base in November 2005 coincided with a
military pact between Uzbekistan and Russia, which were already conducting
joint military exercises by August 2005.
Thus, contrary to the dominant account, US and NATO military expansion
into Central Asia was less a response to the resurgence of Russian nationalism
in the mid-1990s, and Russias reassertion of its national interests in its
traditional sphere of influence, than a cause, or at least a catalyst for
renewed Russian interest in alliances with the Central Asian republics, as a
response to perceived security threats from increased Western military presence in Russias southern and western peripheries. If indeed the advance
into Central Asia was meant to contain Russia (and China) and prevent the
formation of Eurasian alliances, it seems to have actually accelerated such
process as Russia, China, and to a certain extent India, have since sought to
strengthen their ties with Central Asia and with each other as a response
to perceived threats of US expansion. Once again, Central Asia is not itself
the ultimate object of geopolitical rivalry, but one site through which the
contenders enter a complex, hybrid space that is defined by their hybrid
relations with each other.
HYBRID GEOPOLITICS: FROM THE COLD WAR

TO THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS
Russia and the US occupy a prominent place in each others strategies in the
Transcaspian each is the others ultimate object in what I refer to as hybrid
geopolitics, irreducible to containment or territorial control along the lines
of Mackinders Heartland thesis. This is in part because each regards the
other as a contender in the global system, yet, as discussed above, also an
ally against threats of terrorism and political instability. But this is also
because US policies towards Russia have their roots in heterogeneous to a
certain extent contradictory strains in successive US administrations in the
postCold War period. A similar contradiction can be traced in Russian
attitudes towards the US and Western Europe, especially regarding the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU.
Generally, the US administration has tried to combine a clash of civilisation with a neoCold War policy towards Russia in the postCold War
period. The former stressed the need to strengthen US relations with Russia
and integrate Russia into the West, while the latter reiterated the necessity to
isolate Russia from its actual and potential allies, and contain the spread of
15
its influence in its traditional sphere. NeoCold War factions in the US, not
unlike their Russian counterparts, are closely associated with the oil and,
especially, arms industry. They perceive in Russian policies an inexorable
logic of deep rooted national interests an almost primordial drive
towards geopolitical expansion echoed on the other side in Russian perceptions of a permanent expansionist drive in Anglo-Saxon geopolitics
(see note 3). Given the current state of the Russian military forces, however,
Russia would presumably resort to its energy companies to exert its political
influence, not only in the Transcaspian, through its monopoly over pipelines out of the region, but also in Western and Eastern Europe, since Russia
supplies most of Europes gas. Russias opening and reorientation towards
the West is therefore most likely a deceptive manoeuvre to prepare for
rebuilding its national power and restoring its former colonies. The
clash of civilisation campaign, running parallel and almost opposite to the
neoCold War trend, has instead encouraged the incorporation of Russia in
an alliance against the spread of militant Islam in a war between western
civilisation and Oriental barbarism. This has encountered in Russia a similar desire to eradicate the radical Islamic threat from the South, buttressed
by the desire among certain Russian intellectuals and policy makers to
return to Europe. Accordingly, Russias rivalry with the West has become
increasingly meaningless, and the threats that Russia has faced since the
Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, and later from Tajikistan and Chechnya,
have shifted the focus of its strategists to a North-South axis as a major
source of insecurity instead of the West-East confrontation of the Cold War.23
The return of Russia to the West, however, and its integration into
Western economic and security arrangements has proceeded on the
premise that Russia is integrated as a contained Russia, deprived of its presumed imperial impulses. The eastward expansion of NATO (and the EU) is
a case in point. The US administration has pushed for an accelerated, direct
enlargement of NATO since 1998, despite internal criticisms that the eastward expansion of NATO would, on one hand, dilute NATO and make it
less cohesive and, on the other hand, antagonise Russia and disrupt potential
arms control agreements. Notwithstanding, in 1998 NATO added Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic; and in April 2004, seven new members
joined: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia,
all of which, conveniently enough, have supported the further involvement
of the US in Iraq, and have been active in rebuilding Afghanistan.
Although Russia has not strictly opposed the expansion of the EU and
the integration of countries of the former eastern bloc in it an expansion
that the US is more enthusiastic about than both Western and Southern
Europeans it has perceived a more serious threat in the eastwards expansion
of NATO, despite all assurance from the US and other NATO members that
NATO is no longer aimed at Russia, but has rather become a peaceful
political association for cooperation and democracy that Russia could
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eventually join.24 The inclusion of Russia in NATO in 2002, and the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council, was thus partly intended to relieve
Russia from its anxiety about NATOs expansion. But it was also intended to
relieve the West from anxieties about potential Russian expansion and the
restoration of Greater Russia as an alternative to the West. The extension
of NATO membership to Eastern Europe, thus, was motivated partly by a
strategy to protect it from any (perceived) potential Russian expansion. The
confluence between the integration and containment of Russia is reflected
in its truncated participation in NATO, and is expressed as integration of an
isolated Russia. Russia was admitted to NATO not as a full member bound
by the alliances collective defence agreements; moreover, it was admitted
as a member without the power of veto over NATO decisions. The reassurance of Russia by NATO members had to be reciprocated by an assurance
on the part of Russia about the seriousness of its cooperation with NATO.
This reassurance, however, came coupled to announcements about Russias
reserved right to launch pre-emptive military interventions in former Soviet
republics to protect the rights of ethnic Russians.
As paradoxical as it may seem, the integration of Russia into an alliance
ostensibly designed to contain Russia reproduces an essential aspect of
NATO, which is to uphold US hegemony over its Cold War allies by
integrating them within an asymmetrical military alliance that sets limits to
their political autonomy.25 Thus, the integration of Russia into NATO could
be explained as an attempt to contain Russia as an ally, and containment in
this case is not opposed to integration, but is achieved through it, as a step
to aid the transition of Russia into a free market capitalist economy without
allowing a resurgent Russian empire to threaten the global expansion of
capital under US hegemony. That this has not succeeded so far is due to
the economic and military independence that contemporary Russia enjoys
compared with contemporary Eastern Europe and with post-war Western
Europe. Indeed, the eastward advance of NATO, and the erection of a
missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, has only resuscitated plans for a
strategic partnership and the forging of closer relations between Russia and
China.
EURASIAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS:

ANOTHER HYBRID GEOPOLITICS?
Certainly, the sharing of security concerns in Central Asia fostered new
alliances and transformed geopolitical rivalry such that it could no longer fit
Cold War models, or the so-called Great Game.26 Geopolitical rivalry, however, did not altogether disappear and has curiously promoted an alliance
of a potentially Eurasian scale. Russias pragmatic turn to the West did not
prevent it from cultivating economic and security ties with China, India and
17
Iran to counter US global hegemony. Since 1997, shortly after the foundation of the Shanghai Five (SCOs predecessor), Russia and China issued a
joint statement pledging to promote the multipolarisation of the world and
to establish a new international order. In all but name, US hegemony,
and expansionism in the postCold War period, was the object of this and
subsequent statements and partnerships. The increased penetration of Central
Asia by US military forces, as early as 1997, has heightened the sense of
encirclement in Russia and, especially, in China, enhanced by US support
of the active remilitarisation of Japanese imperialism and the shift in
Japans defence policy from a local passive strategy to a regionally oriented
active defence strategy.27 The projection of US military power and the readiness of the US to resort to the use of military force, which gained increasing
significance with the Kosovo war in 1999, culminating in the invasion of
Iraq in 2003, did nothing to alleviate concerns about US military expansion
in Asia. Further rejection of US hegemonialism was reiterated in a joint
communiqu issued on the eve of the SCO summit in 2005 (see above), in
which Russia and China, with India this time, pledged, once again, cooperation towards multipolarity as they called for withdrawal of US troops from
Central Asia.28 In the meantime, economic and military ties between Russia
and China have grown the two countries have trade to the tune of $48 billion
(in 2007) compared with $10 billion in 2000.
The strategic partnership between Russia and China that developed
during Yeltsins presidency, and which Putin consolidated further in his
multivectored foreign policy, did not entirely eliminate strategic competition
and tensions over Central Asia. Chinas economic prowess in particular
raises concerns in Russia about Chinas potential influence in the Central
Asian republics (especially Kazakhstan), and about the revival of its territorial
claims in the Russian Far East.29 Moreover, not unlike Maoist China, which
provided the third world with a model of development as the West stood
unimpressed, China today provides the Central Asian states with a viable
model of capitalist development, its most admirable feature being the combination of economic growth with a tightly controlled political regime
i.e., an authoritarian state. (In fact, this combination is arguably an indicator
that authoritarian capitalism may be the most successful form of neoliberal
capitalist development). The concession of territory from the former Soviet
republics to China remnants of old Sino-Soviet border disputes is an
additional indication of the willingness on the part of the Central Asian
republics to recognise Chinas potential hegemonic role.30
Similar issues complicate the relations between India and China. India,
like China and Russia, is involved in its own war against separatist groups
and Islamic fundamentalism, infecting the large, already discontent, Muslim
population of India. With the war on terror, Central Asia thus became part
of Indias extended security horizon, especially with the decline of
Russias capacity to manage the security of the region, and has lent the US
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support in establishing military presence in Central Asia.31 India, which

competes with China for Central Asian resources and markets, especially
energy-rich Kazakhstan, has also offered military assistance and arms deals to
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, mainly as a bulwark against Pakistani
support of the Taliban and its influence on Islamic threats in Central Asia
a threat shared by both India and the Central Asian republics. Indias
support for US military presence in Central Asia and economic-military
penetration of Central Asian markets did nothing to alleviate almost half a
century of geopolitical tensions with China.32
Despite concerns in both Russia and India about Chinas rearmament,
which has grown in pace and scope in more recent years, Russia has in fact
contributed to the build-up and development of Chinese military capabilities.
This is partly due to the dependence of Russian industry on Chinese and
Indian purchases of Russian weapons, spare parts, and ammunition, which,
with the transfer of defence technology and training of Chinese personnel,
alleviates some of the concerns about the hypothetical possibility that
China might use Russian arms to launch an offensive against Russia. Hence,
if the strategic triangle can potentially integrate Russia, China, and India in
an alliance to counter US hegemony on one hand and to fight threats of
Islamic fundamentalism on the other, it can also serve to contain suspicions of
the three partners regarding each others economic and military expansion. In
such an alliance, China has been mostly focused on US interventionism in
Central Asia and its broader military implications; India has been more interested in curbing Islamic threats as well as Chinese hegemony, or potential
expansion; Russia has strategic and economic interests in all three, but also
an economic interest in keeping its military-industrial complex running.
The Arms Trade Triangle

Russian export of arms and military-industrial assistance to India and China
expresses in material terms a growing, albeit precarious, economic and
military cooperation among the three countries, as part of a broader alliance
that may challenge US hegemony. Although in recent years Russia, China,
and India have repeatedly reiterated their commitment in the war on
terror, they have also repeatedly reiterated shared views on multilateralism,
multi-polarisation of international relations, the necessity of diversifying
development models, and a more prominent and effective role for the
United Nations all thinly veiled criticisms of US monopoly over international affairs. This fledgling alliance, however, as is the case with the
alliance between the US and Russia in the war on terror, did not transcend
the contradictions and conflicts among the three regional powers, some of
which are inherited from the Cold War. The hybrid geopolitics that characterises the rivalry between the US and Russia in their alliance against terrorism
has produced another hybrid geopolitics, embedded in an alliance between
19
Russia, China and India in which the three have to reconcile their varying
relations with the US yet shared position against US hegemony with their
varying precarious relations with each other and mutual suspicions of each
others influence particularly, China. Russian arms exports to China and
India have played an instrumental role in negotiating these precarious relations.
Throughout the 1990s, Russia embarked on revitalising its two sources
of material power the energy sector and the armed forces. Closely related
with the latter is Russias defence industry, which is the only manufacturing
industry in Russia that is still fairly competitive in the world market. Russia
inherited from the Soviet Union a huge inventory of arms, military wares
and technologies, and navy fleets that sit rusting in harbours. The end of the
Cold War, however, and the transformation of Russias strategic requirements
the loss of arms exports to former Soviet clients decreased Russias overall
arms exports from $25 billion in 1987 to $2$3 billion in 1990. Since around
2000, Russia has expanded its arms exports, especially to China and India, its
largest arms trade partners, to subsidise its defence and aerospace industries.
In 2003, Russian arms exports were slightly above $5 billion, representing
around 25% of the international market share and second only to US
exports, with 50% market share. They grew steadily to $5.7 in 2005, $6.4 in
2006 to reach $7 to $7.5 billion by 2007. A significant share of those exports
went to China, under a Western arms embargo since 1989. Of all Russian
arms exports between 1992 and 2006, valued at around $58 billion, around
$26 billion in fighter jets and fighter jet engines, bomber aircrafts and submarines, were delivered to China, in addition to the transfer of technologies
to help China develop its domestic defence industries.
Although China accounts for the biggest share of Russian arms exports,
long-standing rivalry between Russia and China over their respective
regional hegemony and over territorial claims in the Russian Far East has
stirred concerns in Russia about prospective Chinese military self-sufficiency.
This has resulted in more sophisticated Russian weapons and weapon
technologies going to India rather than China, and for more than strategic
reasons. While India purchases complete systems and finished defence
products, in addition to production technologies, in exchange for hard
currency, Chinas purchases have so far consisted mostly of small amounts
of off-the-shelf items, negotiated in barter and in-kind arrangements (in
addition to a modest transfer of manufacturing technologies). Yet, an
expanding Chinese military budget combined with a continued embargo on
arms exports from the West can potentially expand future sales and military
contracts between Russia and China.33 Moreover, although Russia is Indias
major supplier, it is not the only one, which makes China even a more guaranteed outlet for the Russian arms industry in a rather saturated world market.
India by contrast buys arms from the US, France, Sweden and Israel, and is
therefore not entirely dependent on Russia for its defence requirements as
much as Russia is dependent on Indian purchases of arms.
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In the absence of a self-sufficient Indian defence industry, however,

Indias military prowess remains dependent on the import of Russian arms
and especially on military-technical assistance, cooperative projects, and
joint ventures that may help India develop its domestic defence industries.
US military support of Pakistan, and reluctance to expand military cooperation with India after the nuclear tests of 1998, has only reinforced Indias
reliance on Russian military exports, as part of a broader set of economic
exchanges between India and Russia. Indias rapid economic development
in recent years has pushed state-owned Indian oil and gas companies to
search for supplies and investments in Russia and Central Asia. India
already has investments in the Sakhalin oil projects in addition to investments in Iran and Kazakhstan. (This is also an important area in which
India and China have enjoyed different relations with Russia: although
Russia has supplied China with oil in exchange for Chinese loans that
helped Russian state companies acquire private oil companies, Russia has
not opened its oil industry to direct investment by Chinese companies).
Russia has also benefited from the import of telecommunication technology
from India (computer chips, silicon products, especially for space and
missile programmes, otherwise embargoed) available from Western
sources at much higher prices. In short, both countries, in addition to
China, represent to each other alternatives to the West, especially under
conditions and threats of embargo in the high-tech and arms industry. With
an expanding physical transportation network across the continent, the
prospect of an integrated economic space, tying the economies of Russia,
China and India together with Central Asia, seems a possible foundation
upon which a geopolitical entity can challenge US-led globalisation,
despite conflicts and mutual suspicions among the three. More than
Caspian oil and terrorism, it is this prospect that has led the US to expand
into Central Asia almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
to lay the ground for the integration of the former Soviet economies into
Western markets and security arrangements. Ironically, US expansion has
only accelerated the integration of Central Asia in an economic-strategic
space centred on a precarious, hybrid Sino-Russian alliance.
*
* *
Military connections of various sorts, justified and framed by threats ranging

from terrorist attacks to drug trafficking, nuclear proliferation and US hegemonialism, are simultaneously elements of economic expansion and integration not only because they aim at establishing the secure environment
necessary for economic expansion, but because they contribute directly to
the process of economic expansion. Capital does not follow the sword, as
the adage goes, as much as it accompanies it, or inheres in it. Geopolitical
competition for, or in, Central Asia, with consequent US military expansion
and assistance packages to the central Asian republics and the arms trade
21
triangle between Russia, China and India, is part of a broader competition to

integrate the economies of this territory in competing political economic
hegemonies. The significance of this region is not so much in being a permanent source of danger for Western civilisation, or simply in the natural
resources embedded in its soils, but in its implication on the nature and
shape of global hegemony. The fixation on Eurasia on the side of the US
emanates from the challenge to its declining global hegemony while the
search for a Eurasian alliance on the other side springs from the attempt to
challenge further declining US hegemony. A complex geopolitical space is
forged from this process as opponents become allies and new enemies are
produced a space characterised by forces that push for integration,
engagement, and cooperation and forces that push for exclusion, isolation,
and containment. A study of the extent and variety of such divergent forces
at the heart of contemporary geopolitical space is beyond the scope of this
essay. I proposed the notion of hybrid geopolitics as a device to make sense
of these forces as they take place in the competition for the Transcaspian in
an attempt to move beyond accepted, traditional geopolitical conceptualisations, constrained by seemingly universal and eternal truths about Central
Asia and the physical and metaphysical geography of Mackinders geopolitics.
Geophysical realities do not form objective foundations for geopolitical
realities and strategies, but it is rather that the dictates of geopolitical rivalry
of competing hegemonies, which perceive one region or another as strategically significant, attach to that region geophysical facts, or exaggerate ones
that are already present, and produce its physical geography as an objective
fact. The absolute grammar of physical geography is not the basis of
geopolitical rivalry, as traditional geopolitics would have it, but its necessary
product.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and Richard
Grant for their critical remarks and suggestions.
NOTES
1. See S. Dalby, American Security Discourse: The Persistence of Geopolitics, Political Geography
Quarterly 9/2 (1990) pp. 171188. For an extensive and historical treatment, see J. Agnew, Geopolitics:
Re-Visioning World Politics (London: Routledge 2003). For more recent examination of Mackinders
influence on US foreign policy, see N. Megoran and S. Sherapova, Mackinders Heartland: A Help or
Hindrance in Understanding Central Asias International Relations?, Central Asia and the Caucasus 4/34
(2005) pp. 820; U. Khasanov, On modern Geopolitical Pluralism or One-Nation Hegemonism, Central
Asia and the Caucasus 4/34 (2005) pp. 2936; C. Seiple, Uzbekistan: Civil Society in the Heartland,
Orbis 49/2 (2005) pp. 245259. Theres an interesting contradiction in Seiples account: Mackinders thesis formed the foundation of US foreign policy in the Cold War, yet the US failed to recognise the
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geostrategic significance of Mackinders thesis until 2001 and has yet to recognise its geopsychological
component in dealing with the Muslim nations of Central Asia. For an extended discussion, see
C. Seiple, Revisiting the Geo-Political Thinking of Sir Halford John Mackinder: United StatesUzbekistan
relations, 19912005 (PhD dissertation, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 2006). For a critique
from a different perspective, see N. Megoran, Revisiting the Pivot: The Influence of Halford Mackinder
on Analysis of Uzbekistans International Relations, The Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004) pp. 347358;
The Politics of Using Mackinders Geopolitics: The Example of Uzbekistan, Central Asia and the Caucasus
4/34 (2005) pp. 89102.
2. The domination of Eurasias two principle spheres . . . remains a good definition of strategic
danger for America, wrote Kissinger, Cold War or no Cold War, for such a grouping would have the
capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily. H. Kissinger, Diplomacy
(New York: Simon and Schuster 1994) p. 813 (emphasis added). See also Z. Brzezinski, The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books 1997).
Kissinger repeats almost verbatim Walter Rostows statement on US national security at the height of the
Cold War: It is the American interest that no single power or group of powers hostile or potentially hostile to the United States dominate that area [Eurasia, including Africa and the Middle East] or a sufficient
portion of it to threaten the United States or any coalition the United States can build and sustain
(quoted in Dalby (note 1) p. 178). Taking Mackinder to metaphysical proportions, Colin Gray argued
more recently that no matter the identity of the foe, it is a timeless truth that great peril to the West
can come only from Eurasia. The grammar of world physical geography allows for no other assumption. C. S. Gray, In Defense of the Heartland: Sir Halford Mackinder and His Critics a Hundred Years
On, Comparative Strategy 23/1 (2004) pp. 925; quote from p. 21.
3. See the articles collected in the special issues of The Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004) and
Central Asia and the Caucasus 4/34 (2005). The collapse of the Soviet Union also unleashed a (paradoxical)
interest in Anglo-American geopolitics in Russia, which was condemned during the Soviet era. In very
brief terms, Cold War containment and the expansion of NATO since the 1990s are explained in various
strains of Russian geopolitical discourse as expressions of a permanent Western drive in accordance with
Anglo-Saxon geopolitics to weaken Russias power over the Heartland, if not to establish Western
control over it. See A. P. Tsygankov, Mastering space in Eurasia: Russias Geopolitical Thinking after the
Soviet Break-Up, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36/1 (2003) pp. 101127; E. G. Solovyev,
Geopolitics in Russia Science or Vocation?, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 37/1 (2004)
pp. 8596; M. Bassin and K. E. Aksenov, Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse, Geopolitics 11/1 (2006) pp. 99118.
4. K. Dodds and J. D. Sidaway 2004, Halford Mackinder and the Geographical Pivot of History: A
Centennial Retrospective, The Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004) pp. 292297; J. Hyndman, Revisiting
Mackinder 19042004, The Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004) pp. 380383. Dalby (note 1) provides an
interesting dialectic of the relation between explicit geopolitical discourse and US hegemony. He argues
that despite the persistence of classical geopolitics, there is no direct reference to Mackinder or Spykman in
US security discourse in the post-war period, especially in relation to containment. This silence was
symptomatic of the implicit hegemonic position and structuring role that the discourse on containment
enjoyed during this period. Direct references to geopolitics appeared with the decline of US hegemony and
with it the policy of containment as a viable basis for US security. On this reading, the revival of geopolitics in the postCold War era could be seen as evidence of the further decline of US hegemony, which is
underlined further by the resort to explicit imperialist and colonialist practices. On the simultaneous militarisation of US foreign policy and the decline of its global economic hegemony, see S. Amin, The Liberal
Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World (New York: Monthly Review Press 2004); and
J. Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005).
5. See M. Walker, The Cold War: A History (New York: Henry Holt 1993); N. Smith, Endgame of
Globalization (London: Routledge 2005).
6. In this respect, Spykman proved more relevant in arguing that the real prize in any rivalry in
Eurasia was the Rimland rather than the Heartland. The significance of Central Asia thus lay in its political geographical location rather than any intrinsic physical geographical value (e.g., natural resources or
industrial and agricultural potential), the control of which prevented Soviet expansion into the richer
territories of Europe and the Middle East. See L. Hekimoglu, Whither Heartland? Central Asia, Geography
and Globalization, Central Asia and the Caucasus 4/34 (2005) pp. 6680.
7. N. Smith, American Empire: Roosevelts Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press 2003).
23
8. T. P. M. Barnett, The Pentagons New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century
(New York: G. P. Putnams Sons 2004).
9. The Transcaspian region encompasses the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the
South Caucasus: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; Armenia, Georgia,
and Azerbaijan.
10. The literature on the Caspian in the postCold War period is vast. See M. P. Croissant and
B. Aras (eds.), Oil and Geopolitics in the Caspian Sea Region (Westport, CT: Praeger 1999); M. P. Amineh,
Towards the Control of Oil Resources in the Caspian Region (New York: St. Martins Press 2000);
H. Amirahmadi (ed.), The Caspian Region at a Crossroad: Challenges of a New Frontier of Energy and
Development (New York: St. Martins Press 2000); R. E. Ebel and R. Menon (eds.), Energy and Conflict in
Central Asia and the Caucasus (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield 2000); R. H. Dekmejian and H. H. Simonian,
Troubled Waters: The Geopolitics of the Caspian Region (London: I. B. Tauris 2001); M. T. Klare, Resource
Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Metropolitan Books 2001); L. Kleveman, The
New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 2003). S. L. OHara,
Great Game or Grubby Game? The Struggle for Control of the Caspian, Geopolitics 9/1 (2004) pp. 138160;
S. OLear, Resources and Conflict in the Caspian Sea, Geopolitics 9/1 (2004) pp. 161186; A. N. Stulberg,
Moving beyond the Great Game: The Geoeconomics of Russias Influence in the Caspian Energy
Bonanza, Geopolitics 10/1 (2005) pp. 125. Although they differ in interpretation and conclusion, all
authors emphasise, and often exaggerate the significance of Caspian hydrocarbon resources and put
them at the centre of the competition for geopolitical competition and conflict in the Caspian Basin.
11. See Dekmejian and Simonian (note 10); A. Rasizade, The Mythology of Munificent Caspian
Bonanza and its Concomitant Pipeline Geopolitics, Central Asian Survey 21/1 (2002) pp. 3754.
12. BP, BP Statistical Review of World Energy (London: BP p.l.c. 2007). The Energy Information
Administration gives lower estimates of 30 billion bbl and 60 billion bbl for Kazakhstan and Russia
respectively.
13. See R. Ahrend and W. Tompson, Caspian Oil in a Global Context, Transition Studies Review
14/1 (2007) pp. 163187; B. Bauer, Kazakhstans Economic Challenges: How to Manage the Oil Boom?,
Transition Studies Review 14/1 (2007) pp. 188194.
14. See G. Smith, The Masks of Proteus: Russia, Geopolitical Shift and the New Eurasianism, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24/4 (1999) pp. 481494; T. Ambrosio, From Balancer to Ally?
Russo-American Relations in the Wake of 11 September, Contemporary Security Policy 24/2 (2003) pp. 128;
T. Bukkvoll, Putins Strategic Partnership with the West: The Domestic Politics of Russian Foreign Policy,
Comparative Strategy 22/3 (2003) pp. 223242; O. Gladkyy, American Foreign Policy and U.S. Relations with
Russia and China after 11 September, World Affairs 166/1 (2003) pp. 323; D. Trenin, Southern Watch:
Russias Policy in Central Asia, Journal of International Affairs 56/2 (2003) pp. 119131; R. Allison, Strategic
Reassertion in Russias Central Asia Policy, International Affairs 80/2 (2004) pp. 277293; R. Allison, Regionalism, Regional Structures and Security Management in Central Asia, International Affairs 80/3 (2004)
pp. 463483; P. K. Baev, Assessing Russias Cards: Three Petty Games in Central Asia, Cambridge Review of
International Affairs 17/2 (2004) pp. 269283; A. M. Jaffe and R. Soligo, Re-Evaluating US Strategic Priorities
in the Caspian Region: Balancing Energy Resource Initiatives with Terrorism Containment, Comparative
Review of International Affairs 17/2 (2004) pp. 255268; S. N. McFarlane, The United States and Regionalism
in Central Asia, International Affairs 80/3 (2004) pp. 447461; J. Peroviy, From Disengagement to Active
Economic Competition: Russias Return to the South Caucasus and Central Asia, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 13/1 (2005) pp. 6186.
15. Of the $90 million budgeted by US government agencies for assistance in Kazakhstan in 2002,
$41.6 million were allocated for security and law enforcement, $13.7 million for democracy
programs, which include anything from the support of political parties, NGOs, to internet access,
and $14 million for market reforms. In all other four Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) military assistance exceeded assistance for market reform, democracy
programmes, and other forms of assistance; only in Tajikistan did the budget for humanitarian assistance
exceed that of military assistance. See M. B. Olcott, Taking Stock of Central Asia, Journal of International Affairs 56/2 (2003) pp. 317; see also Allison (note 14); A. Bohr, Regionalism in Central Asia: New
Geopolitics, Old Regional Order, International Affairs 80/3 (2004) pp. 485502.
16. See L. J. Goldstein, Making the Most of Central Asian Partnerships, Joint Force Quarterly 31
(Summer 2002) pp. 8290; E. Ahrari, The Strategic Future of Central Asia: A View from Washington,
Journal of International Affairs 56/2 (2003) pp. 157166; S. E. Cornell, The United States and Central
Asia: In the Steppes to Stay?, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17/2 (2004) pp. 239254.
24
Mazen Labban
17. See J. Borawski, Partnership for Peace and Beyond, International Affairs 71/2 (1995)
pp. 233246.
18. M. B. Olcott, Regional Cooperation in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, in Ebel and
Menon (note 10) pp. 123144.
19. S. Blank, American Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region, World Affairs 163/2 (2000)
pp. 6579.
20. Some argue that Russia exerts such leverage through sizeable Russian and Russian-speaking
populations in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and especially Kazakhstan. This leverage is enhanced by the
defection of opposition and dissident elites to Moscow.
21. Russia threatened the Taliban with airstrikes on targets in Afghanistan should the Taliban lend
support to the Islamic rebels in Chechenya or Central Asia. The US appealed to Russia not to attack
Afghanistan, ironically two years after the Clinton administration had bombed suspected terrorist
camps there in 1998, and shortly before the US mounted its own military campaign on Afghanistan
under Bush.
22. The Collective Security Treaty Organization is a collective security system based on the 1992
Tashkent Collective Security Treaty, and including Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, in addition
to Armenia and Belarus. (US-oriented) Uzbekistan and (neutral) Turkmenistan opted out of these
security agreements, and the other Central Asian states remained doubtful of Russias ability to be
effective and impartial in its military intervention. Uzbekistan eventually joined in 2006. For Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, the main attraction in the Treaty was the potential sales of military equipment
for Moscow, this promised potential long-term military cooperation.
23. See D. Trenin, A Farewell to the Great Game? Prospects for Russian-American Security
Cooperation in Central Asia, European Security 12/34 (2003) pp. 2135.
24. See H. J. Wiarda, The Politics of European Enlargement: NATO, the EU, and the New
U.S.-European Relationship, World Affairs 164/4 (2002) pp. 178197.
25. See J. Kolko and G. Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy,
19451954 (New York: Harper and Row 1972); D. Harvey, The Geopolitics of Capitalism [1985], in
Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge 2001) pp. 312344; E. Mandel,
The Meaning of the Second World War (London: Verso 1986). For a similar, though specifically
Mackinder-inspired reading, see S. Sherapova, Mackinders Heartland Theory and the Atlantic Community, Central Asia and the Caucasus 4/34 (2005) pp. 103116.
26. Historically, this term refers to the war of espionage between the Russian and British empires
in Central Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has been used in recent years in reference
to the geopolitical competition that emerged in the Transcaspian region from the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Some have expanded the New Great Game to include regional hegemons, in addition to the US
and Russia, and the multiplicity of forces that reach beyond the region itself. (See R. Menon, The New
Great Game in Central Asia, Survival 45/2 (2003) pp. 187204). Others have argued that the real new
game is between the US and China, with Russia bound to play a secondary role in a Sino-Russian partnership against the US while China will enjoy the longest lasting and broadest impact in Central Asia.
(See S. Atal, The New Great Game, The National Interest 81 (2005) pp. 101105; J. P. Pham, Beijings
Great Game: Understanding Chinese Strategy in Central Eurasia, American Foreign Policy Interests 28/1
(2006) pp. 5367). Finally, there are those who are critical of the applicability of the concept and the
term to the current geopolitical environment, since the Central Asian republics have become independent states that are part of the competition rather than mere cipher states. Moreover, cooperative
relations among the competitors coexist with, and undermine the competition, thus rendering the accuracy of the concept even more problematic (see M. Edwards, The New Great Game and the New Great
Gamers: Disciples of Kipling and Mackinder, Central Asian Survey 22/1 (2003) pp. 83102; A. Sengupta,
9/11 and Heartland Debate in Central Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus 4/34 (2005) pp. 820;
I. Torbakov, The West, Russia, and China in Central Asia: What Kind of Game is Being Played in the
Region?, Transition Studies Review 14/1 (2007) pp. 152162).
27. See G. Achcar, The Strategic Triad: the United States, Russia and China, New Left Review I/228
(March/April 1998) pp. 91126; D. Shambaugh, Chinas Military Views of the World, International
Security 24/3 (2000) pp. 5279; O. M. Lee, The Impact of the U.S. War on Terrorism upon U.S.-China
Relations, Journal of Chinese Political Science 7/12 (2002) pp. 71123; G. McCormack, Remilitarizing
Japan, New Left Review 29 (Sept./Oct. 2004) pp. 2945.
25
28. A more recent joint statement on US unilateral interference and military posture came out of
Medvedevs first visit to China, as the new Russian president. See E. Wong and A. Cowell, Russia and
China Condemn U.S. Missile Shield Plan as Threat to Stability, New York Times, (24 May 2008) p. A8.
29. See B. Lo, The Long Sunset of Strategic Partnership: Russias Evolving China Policy, International Affairs 80/2 (2004) pp. 295309. Indeed, Pham (note 26) traces Chinas influence in Central Asia
to the fourteenth century, through a mixture of commercial exchange, diplomatic ties, migration of Han
Chinese, and military force.
30. Olcott, Taking Stock of Central Asia (note 15).
31. S. Blank, Indias Rising Profile in Central Asia, Comparative Strategy 22/2 (2003) pp. 139157.
32. The direct Sino-Indian rivalry has its roots in the war of 1962, followed by stronger ties
between China and Pakistan, which pushed India closer to the Soviet Union. Although China has not
considered India to be a serious strategic threat, the latters nuclear tests of 1998 changed Chinese
perceptions of the military potentials of India. India perceives Chinas military ties with Pakistan, Myanmar,
and Bangladesh and other smaller countries on the periphery of India as part of a Chinese plan to encircle
India, exacerbated by Chinas development of its maritime capabilities and increased naval activities in
the Indian Ocean, especially since much of Indias trade is seaborne.
33. Chinas military budget grew to around $59 billion in 2008, from approximately $50 billion in
2007 and $42 billion in 2006. These are official figure that the Pentagon, chiefly concerned about US
military hegemony in Southeast Asia, speculates represent only half the amount of actual military spending.

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The Struggle for the Heartland: Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

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Geopolitics, 14:125, 2009

The Struggle for the Heartland: Hybrid

Geopolitics, Vol. 14, No. 1, November 2008: pp. 144

Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami, FL, USA

Geopolitical rivalry in the Transcaspian region is irreducible to

Accepted theses on US geopolitics trace the roots of US foreign policy to

Address correspondence to Mazen Labban, Department of Geography and Regional

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

another, depending on the political expediency of the moment and the

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

hysterical proportions by the mid-1990s, placing them at around 200 billion

THE US AND RUSSIA IN THE TRANSCASPIAN

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

during much of the 1990s, the Transcaspian region remained strategically

The implication drawn from the accounts sketched above is that US

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

Lily Pads Along the Arc of Instability: Central Asia

discursive campaign on terrorism served to globalise the military footprint

In the Steppes to Stay? Reclaiming the Heartland

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

Central Asian republics themselves. The forging of a US-Uzbek strategic

Afghanistan. This coincided with the further expansion of NATO and a

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

Uzbekistans government and to demand investigation into the incident.

HYBRID GEOPOLITICS: FROM THE COLD WAR

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

EURASIAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS:

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

support in establishing military presence in Central Asia.31 India, which

The Arms Trade Triangle

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

In the absence of a self-sufficient Indian defence industry, however,

Military connections of various sorts, justified and framed by threats ranging

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

triangle between Russia, China and India, is part of a broader competition to

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

Hybrid Geopolitics in the Transcaspian

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