0.6 The end of the west  (Page 16/19)

Despite this, Russia will not confront the West and will cooperate in key areas, like the war on (Islamic) terror, when its interests so dictate. Trenin points to an area of short-term tension: Kosovo’s separation from Serbia will serve as a model in Moscow’s view for Georgia and Moldova, where the West insists on maintaining territorial unity. But sensible realpolitik will rise above this and above the challenge of Putin’s succession in 2008. The risk lies in miscalculation by any or all sides in Central Asia and the Caspian, where Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and the United States have overlapping and competing interests and where statehood is immature, hydrocarbon deposits rich and local tensions rife.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice re-organized the State Department's South Asia Bureau to include Central Asia after her tour of the region in October 2005, and announced a US-Greater Central Asia program to wean the Central Asian states from Russia and China. But the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, created in June 2001 with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as members, has admitted Mongolia (in 2004) and Iran, India and Pakistan (in 2005) as observers, and called on US forces to pull out of Uzbekistan. The SCO’s priority is to combat “terrorism, separatism and extremism as well as illegal drug trafficking”, but its scope now includes economic cooperation and joint military exercises. China and Russia, while wary of one another, and conscious of their competing interests in Central Asia, both resent the US military presence there. Moscow fears political interference in its ‘near abroad’ and Beijing sees the US presence as part of Washington's containment strategy. After Indian media suggested in March that the Administration’s offer to formalize India’s nuclear status but not that of Pakistan, was due to its desire to tie India into its efforts to contain China, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said that Washington had not been a ‘constant friend’ like Beijing. Mismanagement by Washington might even tempt China to support nuclear programs in Iran and Pakistan.

Russia, meanwhile, sees US goals in Iran as being to replace the regime, establish control over Iranian oil and gas resources, and pipe hydrocarbons from Central Asia and the Caspian Sea across Iranian territory under US control, bypassing Russia and China. In Kazakhstan, it believes the US wishes to control the Kazakh oil reserves and pipe them from Baku to Ceyhan. Kazakh President Nazarbayev’s visit to Moscow in April was thus focused on his commitment to continue to use Russian pipelines. Careful management of these competitive relationships is essential.

Dealing with Islam

The emergence of radical Islamism as a global phenomenon and the migration of some parts into terrorism, captured the attention of the world on September 11, 2001, though the phenomenon was not new. There are two distinctive elements: the Islamic state (al-dawla al-Islamiyya) must be based on the rule of God (al-hakimiyyat Allah); and Islamic law (al-shari’a) must provide the legal framework of the community (umma). Although the West progressively abandoned similar religious principles over the past four hundred years, their analogues underpinned Christendom for at least thirteen centuries.