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Viewing cable 09MOSCOW835, RUSSIAN EXPERTS DISCUSS CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CIS

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09MOSCOW835 2009-04-02 09:14 2011-08-24 01:00 UNCLASSIFIED Embassy Moscow
VZCZCXRO7369
PP RUEHDBU RUEHLN RUEHPOD RUEHPW RUEHSK RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHMO #0835/01 0920914
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 020914Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 2677
INFO RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHAH/AMEMBASSY ASHGABAT PRIORITY 2058
RUEHTA/AMEMBASSY ASTANA PRIORITY 0250
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING PRIORITY 4467
RUEHEK/AMEMBASSY BISHKEK PRIORITY 2693
RUEHDBU/AMEMBASSY DUSHANBE PRIORITY 0034
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL PRIORITY 2770
RUEHNT/AMEMBASSY TASHKENT PRIORITY 0001
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 4226
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHMFIUU/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL PRIORITY
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 000835 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL RS CH AF KZ ZK
SUBJECT: RUSSIAN EXPERTS DISCUSS CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CIS 
WITH U.S. AMBASSADOR TO KAZAKHSTAN HOAGLAND 
 
MOSCOW 00000835  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
1.  (U)  This message is sensitive but unclassified and is 
not intended for internet distribution. 
 
2.  (SBU)  Summary. In conversations with U.S. Ambassador to 
Kazakhstan Richard Hoagland March 23-24, Russian experts on 
the CIS listed maintaining dominance in the region, 
protecting Russia's economic interests, and preventing the 
spillover effects of instability as the main forces driving 
Russian policy in the post-Soviet space.  They had divided 
views on prospects for cooperation between the United States 
and Russia in the CIS region, with some seeing the United 
States challenging Russian interests in every sphere while 
others point to Afghanistan and counter-narcotics as obvious 
areas of coinciding interests.  In the experts' view, China's 
slow but determined expansion of influence in the Central 
Asian economies and its increasing control of the Shanghai 
Cooperation Organization (SCO) added to the complexity of 
Russian policy in Central Asia.  While many in the region 
tended to differentiate Kazakhstan from the rest of Central 
Asia, all five countries shared common challenges such as 
water resource usage and regime survival.  End summary. 
 
3.  (U)  U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan Richard Hoagland, in 
Moscow March 23-24 for consultations, met with a number of 
Russian experts to discuss Russian foreign policy in the CIS 
region.  These experts included Director of the Carnegie 
Moscow Center Dmitriy Trenin, the CIS Institute's Head of 
Central Asia and Kazakhstan Section Andrey Grozin, Director 
of the World Security Institute Ivan Safranchuk, head of the 
Heritage Foundation's Moscow office Yevgeniy Volk, and 
Carnegie Moscow Center analyst Aleksey Malashenko. 
 
Russian Priorities in the CIS 
----------------------------- 
 
4.  (SBU) The Carnegie Moscow Center's Dmitriy Trenin divided 
Russian interests in the CIS into three tiers of priorities. 
At the top, Moscow did not want the CIS countries to form 
alliances with third countries, whether it was the United 
States and NATO today, or China tomorrow.  At the second 
tier, Moscow would like to ensure that no CIS country 
deployed troops to third countries without its consent or 
discriminated against Russian economic interests.  At the 
third tier, Russia would like to continue its cultural 
influence in the CIS.  If a CIS country ran counter to the 
first tier of Russian interests, war might result, while 
conflicts in the second-tier areas could lead to the cooling 
of relations.  In Trenin's view, Moscow wanted to maintain 
its status as the ultimate insider in the region and to wield 
veto rights on the top-tier issues. 
 
5.  (SBU)  Andrey Grozin of the CIS Institute added that 
Russian policy in the CIS was driven by the need to preserve 
stability, often achieved through support for existing 
regimes, and the desire to maintain Russian dominance in 
specific sectors of the economy.  In this regard, Moscow's 
self-declared special and privileged relations with the CIS 
countries were pragmatically focused on economic interests. 
More specifically, the GOR would like to control transport, 
hydrocarbon and metallurgical resources in the region, and to 
develop Central Asia's dependence on Russia as the main 
transit corridor for its raw material exports. 
 
6.  (SBU)  Looking at Central Asia specifically, Ivan 
Safranchuk pointed out that Russia had no choice but to 
maintain a forward policy in the region, since it had no 
constructed land border with Kazakhstan to keep out the 
spillover effects of instability, radical ideology and "other 
diseases" down south.  To construct such a border would cost 
more than $18 billion, including staffing costs for customs 
and immigration officials.  However, both Grozin and 
Safranchuk believed that the GOR lacked a coherent, 
conceptualized approach to dealing with the specific 
challenges in Central Asia.  This problem was compounded by 
the reality that the five countries in the region share more 
differences than similarities these days, and they treat the 
 
MOSCOW 00000835  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
tools of regional integration, such as the Eurasian Economic 
Community (EurAsEc) and the Collective Security Treaty 
Organization (CSTO), more as protocol opportunities than 
channels for resolving problems. 
 
Cooperation and Competition with the U.S. 
----------------------------------------- 
 
7.  (SBU)  The experts had divided views on whether the 
United States and Russia could develop a truly cooperative 
relationship in the CIS sphere.  Yevgeniy Volk of the 
Heritage Foundation commented that at each of the three tiers 
of interests articulated by Dmitriy Trenin, Russia was being 
challenged by the United States through NATO expansion, 
competition for energy resources, and increasing American 
cultural influence.  In his view, it seemed inevitable that 
the core of Russia's CIS policy would be to contain the 
United States.  He warned both sides against expecting too 
much from a "reset" in the bilateral relationship:  Russia 
thinks about the United States much more than vice versa, 
because it is important for Moscow to be acknowledged as a 
superpower again.  With such a mindset, disappointment was 
bound to happen. 
 
8.  (SBU)  Ivan Safranchuk agreed, noting that looking at 
U.S. policy in Central Asia through the eyes of those 
suspicious of Washington's motives, it would appear that the 
United States was encouraging the Central Asian countries' 
political and economic independence from Russia.  U.S. 
efforts to diversify the Central Asian economies and their 
oil and gas export routes would not directly benefit the U.S. 
economy -- Europe would be the greater beneficiary.  To some 
in the Russian leadership, this was proof enough that the 
real intent of U.S. policy was to counter Russian influences 
and take Central Asia away from Moscow. 
 
9.  (SBU)  Andrey Grozin, on the other hand, believed that 
there was wide room for Russia to cooperate with the United 
States in maintaining stability in Central Asia. 
Afghanistan, drug trafficking, and countering extremism were 
the obvious areas where our interests coincided, especially 
because Russia would be expected to clean up any major 
problems in the region, including the spillover effects from 
Afghanistan.  The United States, he asserted, also wanted a 
stable Central Asia, if for no other reason than to protect 
the economic interests of the American companies there. 
 
Cooperation and Competition with China 
-------------------------------------- 
 
10.  (SBU)  The experts pointed out that no discussion about 
Russian policies in Central Asia should ignore China's role. 
Andrey Grozin, in discussing the GOR's desire to maintain 
special and privileged relations with the former Soviet 
republics, stated that such a policy was also meant to check 
China's slow but determined expansion of its interests in the 
raw materials sector in Central Asia.  While supportive of 
maintaining good relations with China, Grozin at the same 
time believed Russia should keep its distance.  Otherwise, he 
argued, China, being the larger, stronger, and more unified 
country, would make Russia the junior partner in any attempt 
to form an alliance. 
 
11.  (SBU)  The Carnegie Moscow Center's Aleksey Malashenko 
supported Grozin's view, stating that increasingly, the SCO 
was becoming a China-controlled organization and was looking 
at effective ways to address emergency situations.  In 
contrast, the CSTO, designed to maintain Russian political 
and military influence over the CIS countries, appeared 
anemic under Russian leadership, and it would be difficult to 
envision the CSTO playing a key role in a serious crisis.  To 
Malashenko, this was a sign that Russian influence in the 
post-Soviet space was waning. 
 
Central Asia and Kazakhstan 
--------------------------- 
 
MOSCOW 00000835  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
 
12. (SBU)  The experts agreed with Ambassador Hoagland's 
observation that many in the region tended to divide Central 
Asia into two parts, Kazakhstan and the rest.  Grozin stated 
that most Russians considered Kazakhstan the leader of the 
five countries, more developed and sophisticated, with more 
serious economic potential.  Malashenko asserted that 
whenever one went to Central Asia, one could feel an 
immediate difference between Astana and Almaty on the one 
hand, and Tashkent and Bishkek on the other. 
 
13.  (SBU)  Nevertheless, the region shared some similar 
problems, among them the division of water resources and 
complicated internal political struggles.  In Grozin's view, 
water has emerged as a serious regional issue in the last 
five years.  While ideas such as an international consortium 
to manage water resources sounded good on paper, the Central 
Asian leaders were too locked into a mentality of competition 
with each other to make it a reality.  On the political 
front, regime survival was a central issue in each of the 
five countries, with leaders capitalizing on their 
populations' fear of instability and arguing for the 
consolidation of power as a way to weather the current 
financial crisis.  In countries such as Kyrgyzstan and 
Kazakhstan, the opposition is too split and "has no flesh" to 
their movement.  Speaking about the reported $300 million 
loan from Russia that would form part of the $2.3 billion 
assistance package for Bishkek, Grozin assessed that most of 
it would be spent on food and other social programs designed 
to address the Kyrgyz population's discontent so as to 
stabilize the regime in advance of the presidential elections 
and to ensure a Bakiyev victory. 
 
14.  (U)  Ambassador Hoagland has cleared this cable. 
BEYRLE