M.K. Bhadrakumar, my colleague at Asia Times Online, must be the world’s most infuriating journalist. A former Indian ambassador to Turkey and various points in Central Asia, he can be counted on to take Russia’s side on any issue that might arise. His rambling portmanteau reports read like diplomatic cables, not English prose. But after scouring the American foreign policy blogs (as well as various specialized services such as Stratfor), Bhadrakumar proves himself indispensable once again. As usual, the Washington blogs of left and right obsess on hot-button issues, e.g. the Israel-Palestine sideshow. Meanwhile, in the decisive theaters of foreign policy, the Obama administration has made itself worse than irrelevant. It has become an annoyance.
His Aug. 1 analysis entitled “China Dips Its Toe in the Black Sea” is the one piece to read about foreign policy this month. The upshot is that China has effectively taken over the economy of the tiny USSR-fragment of Moldova with Russian blessing, in the context of a Russo-Chinese agreement to contain radical Islam from the Black Sea to Western China. Now, that’s something new under the sun. Bhadrakumar has the whole story, spelled out in dry diplomatese.
Neither the Americans nor the Western Europeans (I just returned from ten days in Italy and had the chance to trade thoughts with some well-informed folk) have oriented themselves to the key change that occurred last month with the Uyghur uprising in Western China. The Uyghurs made clear that gradual absorption into Han China with its attendant economic benefits did not please them. Their ethno-linguistic cousins, the Turks, responded to China’s suppression of an uprising by accusing China of “genocide,” as did Prime Minister Erdogan on July 10.
Erdogan was the very model of a moderate Muslim, the expression of a kindler-and-gentler Sufi variety integrated into a Westernized Islamic society, or so thought everyone in Washington on right and left — with the exception of Michael Rubin at American Enterprise Institute, Daniel Pipes, and a few stalwarts at the Hudson Institute, and of course this writer. Erdogan’s mass arrests of mainstream leaders of Turkish civil society on far-fetched charges of coup plotting attracted almost no media attention in the US, an odd sort of negligence, given that the Turkish leader was supposed to exemplify moderate Islam.
Whatever Erdogan’s intentions inside Turkey, his missionary agenda towards Turkic peoples in Central Asia has alarmed Russia and China (and by implication India), the countries that really mattter in the region. As Stratfor reported July 10,
Erdogan’s statement is the latest in a stream of bold moves by Ankara to internationalize Beijing’s struggle with its minority Uighur population. Turkey’s interest in the violence between ethnic Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs is motivated in part by domestic politics, but is also a manifestation of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s contentious desire to push a pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic agenda.
The Russian and Chinese reaction has been remarkably forceful, perhaps because Washington always has played games with the Turkophone Islamist organizations as a way of gaining leverage over the region. As Bhadrakumar quotes the Peoples Daily of China in the linked piece,
To the Chinese people, it is nothing new that the US tacitly or openly fans the winds of resentment against China ... the US indiscriminately embraces all those forces hostile to China ... Perhaps, it is a customary practice for the US to adopt the double-standard when weighing its interests against others. Or, perhaps, it has some ulterior motive behind to ensure its supreme position will not be challenged or altered by splitting to weaken others ... Since the end of the 1980s, the US has never moderated its intention to stoke so-called ‘China issues’ ... This time, in their efforts to fan feuding between Han and Uighur Chinese by harboring and propping up separatist forces, the US is jumping out again to be the third party that would, for the secret hope, benefit from the tussle.
As Bhadrakumar reports, the Chinese and Russians are closing ranks, both bilaterally and through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, against a prospective Islamist threat:
Within 48 hours of the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned his Russian counterpart and Moscow issued a statement strongly supportive of Beijing.
On July 10, a similar statement by the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) followed, endorsing the steps taken by Beijing “within the framework of law” to bring “calm and restore normal life” in Xinjiang following clashes between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. The SCO statement reiterated the resolve to “further deepen practical cooperation in the filed of fighting against terrorism, separatism, extremism and transnational organized crime for the sake of [safeguarding] regional security and stability”.
Bhadrakumar adds that “Moscow would have sensitized Beijing about its intention to set up a second military base in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, which is located in close proximity to China’s Xinjiang, and is a principal transit route for Central Asian Islamist fighters based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” By the same token, Moscow has encouraged China to take a dominant role in the economy of Moldova, an element of its “near abroad” on the Black Sea. China has just given Moldova a $1 billion, 15 year-loan at 3% interest (the country’s budget is just $1.5 billion), to finance infrastructure building by Chinese firms.
The world looks radically different than Washington thinks — or thought under the Bush administration. The encounter of Central Asian Turkic Muslims with modernity via China is tragic, and the Chinese will take whatever steps are required to ensure that the tragedy is not theirs. The human rights organizations who squeaked and gibbered over Israel’s incursion into Gaza are about to learn the meaning of the word “crackdown.” Iran is not the pillar of stability for the region that the Obamoids hallucinated, but a dying society flailing out as it falls.
Large tracts of the world are becoming unmanageable. Looming above all these other issues as truly frightening threat is Pakistan, which cannot be stabilized by any measures Washington might undertake. Look for a quiet conversation between India and China as to how to dry this problem out.
Obama’s obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue has made him slightly worse than irrelevant. If you betray your friends (as Obama surely did by ignoring agreements with Israel on “organic growth” of settlements) and propitiate your enemies (as Obama attempted to do with Iran and Syria) you merely make yourself an object of ridicule and contempt. The rest of the world is taking measures to address real problems in the absence of American help, and in the fear of American maliciousness.
Never in history has a great power cast away so much influence in so short a period of time.
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