This has an echo in Turkmenistan, where it was reported that those under the age of thirty were being stopped from leaving the country in an attempt to arrest the brain drain and to prevent the workforce becoming depleted.114 Or there is Pakistan and India, where intimidation of journalists is increasingly common and often violent.115 Kazakhstan offers yet another case where protestors have been detained to prevent anti-government messages reaching a wider audience—which at least would seem to scotch suspicions that the opposition in the country had been set up by the government to provide the semblance of democratic reforms.116
There are basic and significant problems too that may not just curtail progress so much as compromise it altogether. The uneven distribution of the natural resources in Central Asian republics has led to a lack of jobs—and prospects—for the young, raising questions about long-term political stability.117 The inability to tolerate dissent in any form has led to children of activists being deprived of medical treatment or taken off planes out of the country, to jail sentences for those who dare to criticise the government and to the blocking of the internet.118 Despite the welcome progress in Uzbekistan, meanwhile, indices such as those measuring press freedom across Asia—from Turkey to Thailand, Iran to India, Pakistan to the Philippines, China to almost all the states of Central Asia—are not just failing to improve; they are in decline, in some cases dramatically.119 A new world is emerging in Asia, but it is not a free one.
The question of whether to show the Silk Roads in the best or the worst possible light is a perennial concern for specialists who work on the bridge between East and West. It is perfectly possible to point to progress and to the opportunities that are not just emerging but already being taken advantage of; but it is equally true that the hot air of soundbites, the trail of broken promises and the very real frictions, dislocations and fragilities are also part of the reality of a region that has proved to be the bellwether for global affairs for millennia.120
Talk of the revival of old connections across the spine of Asia masks the fact that many of the countries and regions linking East with West are poorly connected, economically underdeveloped and in some cases geographically ominous—Kazakhstan alone is the size of most of Europe. Most if not all have poor human rights records, limited religious freedom and suffer from poor social mobility. Nevertheless, the fact that they are resource rich means that those with access to the natural wealth, who control the decisions and the networks that allow resources to reach hungry and wealthy markets, play an important role in shaping the regional and global future.
Part of the difficulty of interpretation comes from the fact that Central Asia is a piece of a much bigger puzzle—and is affected by moving pieces at each end. To the west, of course, is the civil war in Syria, and the continued struggle in Iraq to rebuild a state more or less from scratch. For the last few years, things have looked more promising in Iran—at least superficially. After signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 and the lifting of sanctions, the country was able to double exports of oil—helping the economy to grow by 12.5 per cent in the following twelve months.121 Although the pace of growth had already slowed, the threat of the JCPOA deal being cancelled helped fuel already rising inflation to the point where the government has resorted to desperate measures to try to shore up the value of the rial, the Iranian currency.122
The uncertainties concerning the future of Iran’s international relations, coupled with the failure of living standards to rise, unemployment figures that are far higher than official figures suggest, especially among the young, and increased mobile-device ownership have played a role in street protests at the end of 2017 and early 2018 that raised the familiar question of whether to concede grounds to protesters or to stamp out any dissent.123 Much, though, depends on evaluating the motivations and aims of those who took to the streets—where at least some of the anger against the government seems to have come from those demanding the adoption of more, rather than less, conservative policies.124
Such nuances were lost on President Trump, who took to Twitter on 1 January 2018 to declare that “the great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food and for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”125 Trump’s close advisor Rudy Giuliani put things more forcefully a few months later, when he told reporters that the president was committed to regime change in Tehran, and that not only was the fall of the Iranian government “the only way to peace in the Middle East,” but that it was more important than an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians—whose troubles have plagued the region for decades.126 What is more, boasted Giuliani on another occasion, the street protests were neither spontaneous nor local. They were “being co-ordinated,” he said, “by many of our people in Albania,” a suggestion so odd as to beg simple questions not just about his basic grasp of geography but of reality.127
Of course, statements like these do more to unite Iranians than almost any policy that an Iranian government might adopt and implement. The same is true of the announcement made by President Trump that the US would withdraw from the JCPOA in May 2018, which he dismissed as a “disastrous deal [that] gave this regime—and it’s a regime of great terror—many billions of dollars, some of it in actual cash—a great embarrassment to me as a citizen and to all citizens of the United States.”128
As we shall see, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, which came despite inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency verifying that Iran was compliant with the original agreement, plays into the hands of hardliners in Tehran by undermining the credibility and confidence in the current leadership of Iran under President Rouhani, who is a moderate and a reformer—at least by Iranian standards.129 Pulling out of the JCPOA strengthens the hand of hardliners and factions more likely to be much more hostile to the US. For all the gung-ho talk by American politicians, then, it would be ironic if the regime change is one that makes life for Iranians more oppressive and makes international agreements less, rather than more, likely to be reached in the future.
In fact, responses to the JCPOA withdrawal included calls in Tehran for more expenditure on the armed forces, defence and “cultural and propaganda plans” and statements from the powerful Revolutionary Guards that trying to deal with “the criminal, war-mongering, deceitful and reneging” US government is pointless.130 The reimposition of sanctions in 2018 will force Iran to deal with a series of pressures in the coming months and years.
It may well be that the US is able to force Tehran to the negotiating table and perhaps even manage to demand stricter and better terms than had been the case when the JCPOA deal was agreed. But that comes at the expense of laying the seeds for bitterness in the future, and potentially for Iran to buckle under the strain of food shortages, civic unrest and the mass repression that is likely to follow. Those who look forward to the implosion of yet another state in this region might pause to reflect on the lessons of the recent histories of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Iran’s problems are not confined to the fallout of the JCPOA or to domestic affairs. Support for President Assad of Syria and for disruptive parties across the Middle East also come at significant cost. According to H. R. McMaster, then US national security advisor, “Iran has provided over $16 billion to the Assad regime and to other proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen” between 2012 and 2018, placing a heavy burden on an already strained economy.131 Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been strained, but in recent years they have threatened not only to deteriorate but to lead to problems that would have major consequences across the region and beyond.
Name-calling is bad enough. “I believe the Iranian supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] makes Hitler look good,” said the ambitious young Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, in April 2018. Hitler only wanted to conquer Europe, said the prince, warming to his the
me; but Iran’s leader “is trying to conquer the world.”132 Previous remarks comparing Khamenei with Hitler had been dismissed by an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman as being the words of an “adventurist” crown prince whose comments were “immature, inconsiderate, and baseless.”133
At least this was better than the threats of direct action that were being openly bandied about in the middle of 2017. There was no prospect of dialogue with Iran, said the Saudi crown prince in a TV interview. “We know we are a major target for the Iranian regime,” he said. As a result, he hinted strongly, plans were being made accordingly to pre-empt military action with a first strike: the Saudis would have no hesitation moving first, rather than being forced to respond. Far better, he said, “to have the battle in Iran rather than in Saudi Arabia.”134 The response from Tehran was equally emphatic: “If the Saudis do anything ignorant,” said an Iranian defence spokesman, “we will leave no area untouched except Mecca and Medina.”135
The dramatic changes in the world’s centre of economic, political and military gravity are prompting old alliances to be reviewed and new ones to be made. A case in point comes from the warming relations between the Saudis and Israel. For seven decades, Riyadh has refused to recognise the State of Israel or even to concede that country’s right to exist, with the result that there have been no official diplomatic relations between the two. That has started to change as a result of the shadow cast by the fear of Iran.136
Years of the Saudis funding and supporting the Palestinian cause are giving way to trying to outmanoeuvre the regime in Tehran—a mutual goal that has brought Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US into what would have seemed an unlikely alliance until recently. The Saudis are looking to force a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians at almost any price: the Saudis “don’t care, they don’t give a damn about what will be in the agreement,” said Yaakov Nagel, the former Israeli national security advisor—as long as one is reached quickly.137 That might explain why the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia not only issued a fatwa declaring that it was inappropriate for Muslims to fight Israel and to kill Jews, but stated that Hamas was “a terror organisation”—an important symbolic and legal statement, as well as a clear indicator of the shifting sands in the Middle East.138
Israel has played its own part in this fundamental reconfiguration of alliances and, indeed, the geopolitics of the Middle East. “We have many contacts, partly secret, with many Muslim and Arab countries,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister and a member of the security cabinet, told Israeli Army Radio. The “connection with the moderate Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, helps us block Iran.”139
While there are still regular diatribes against Israel in the Saudi press, such as a sustained attack on laws that the latter claim “perpetuate racial discrimination,” these can be set alongside more progressive signs of growing cooperation, which include allowing airlines to use Saudi airspace to fly between Tel Aviv and India—rather than forcing them to undertake a lengthy diversion, as has been the case in the past.140
The new alignment has produced other remarkable results too, including widely reported efforts by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to support the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, after the latter was accused of playing a leading role in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives.141
A large part of the impetus for reconfiguration of the Middle East has come from a hardening of decision-making in Washington, driven in the first instance by a sustained focus on Iran. Working with Israel and Saudi Arabia—two long-standing rivals to the regime in Tehran—has led President Trump to talk confidently of resolving the long-standing problems between Israel and the Palestinians once and for all. It will be “like a real-estate deal,” he said in the autumn of 2018, one that will in time be thought of as the “deal of the century.”142 The world in the East is on the move.
Change in the twenty-first century is stimulated by many factors—from demographics to the shift of economic power, from the role played by digital technologies to climate change. The Silk Roads are rising fast because they are being galvanised. What happens in the heart of the world in the coming years will shape the next hundred.
| THE ROADS TO BEIJING |
Late on 6 September 2013, President Xi Jinping of China arrived in Astana, the gleaming new capital of Kazakhstan, which is adorned with modernist buildings such as the Shatyr shopping mall, the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation and the turquoise Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall—just three of the bold new structures constructed in the city since the late 1990s.
The following morning, Xi arrived at Nazarbayev University to give a speech with the title “Promote People-to-People Friendship and Create a Better Future.” Few can have guessed its significance. It is a “foreign policy priority,” said the president, for China to have good relations with its neighbours. Inspiration should be taken from the network of connections that bound people together in the past. “Throughout the millennia,” said Xi, “the people of various countries along the ancient Silk Road have jointly written a chapter of friendship that has been passed on to this very day.” Study of the Silk Roads showed that peoples of “different races, beliefs and cultural backgrounds are fully capable of sharing peace and development.”
This was a model not just to study and admire—but one that should be replicated. It was time, he said, “to forge closer economic ties, deepen cooperation and expand development space in the Eurasian region.” It was time to build an “economic belt along the Silk Road.” To do so required taking several joint steps, such as improving policy communication and coordination, upgrading transport links, promoting unimpeded trade and enhancing monetary circulation. The time had come to reinvigorate the Silk Roads.1
Such initiatives had been suggested before. In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, US diplomats and policy-makers began to talk with increasing frequency about reviving links across the heart of Asia as part of a formal policy: “Our goal,” said Richard A. Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, in comments to the International Relations Committee in Congress in 2006, “is to revive ancient ties between South and Central Asia and to help create new links in the areas of trade, transport, democracy, energy and communications.”2
Statements such as this—and in particular a position paper written the previous year by S. Frederick Starr, an eminent scholar on Eurasian affairs—drew stinging reactions in China. “US Scheming for ‘Great Central Asia Strategy,’ ” complained one headline in People’s Daily. “It has always been a consistent goal of the United States to penetrate Central Asia and then control this region,” said the editorial. “The 9/11 incident,” it went on, gave the United States the opportunity and excuse to gain a foothold in Central Asia and refashion the region to suit its own ends.3
Then there were speeches like those given by Hillary Clinton, when secretary of state, that talked about reviving the past. “Historically, the nations of South and Central Asia were connected to each other and the rest of the continent by a sprawling trading network called the Silk Road,” Clinton said in Chennai in 2011. “Let’s work together to create a new Silk Road. Not a single thoroughfare like its namesake, but an international web and network of economic and transit connections. That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure…upgrading the facilities at border crossings…removing the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people…and casting aside the outdated trade policies.” This was nothing less than a “vision for the twenty-first century.”4
Like many visions, however, this was more about hope than substance. Talking about improving connections is one thing; funding them quite another. So when President Xi followed up his talk at Astana with concrete proposals and the commitment of hard cash, it quickly became clear that something serious was afoot. Work had gone into preparing the framework for what qu
ickly became known as the One Belt, One Road policy—the belt representing overland connections to China’s neighbours and beyond, and the road a “maritime sea road” ultimately linking waterways as far as the Indian Ocean, the Gulf and the Red Sea. As minutes of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from November 2013 testify, plans to implement these ideas were quickly being put into practice—which means they had been thought about for some time beforehand. “We will set up development-oriented financial institutions, accelerate the construction of infrastructure connecting China with neighbouring countries and regions, and work hard to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and a Maritime Silk Road to form a new pattern of all-round opportunities.”5
The idea of encouraging Chinese businesses to look outside the country for new opportunities had been encouraged with the formal adoption of the “going out” strategy (zouchuqu zhanlue) in 2000 as part of the Ninth National People’s Congress and the adoption of the National Economy and Social Development Five-Year Plan. Xi’s ambitions are much more expansive—and what is more, they have been made reality with astonishing speed and enthusiasm.
By the middle of 2015 the China Development Bank, one of the country’s key financial institutions, declared that it had reserved $890bn to spend on some 900 projects mainly focusing on transportation, infrastructure and energy.6 Six months later, the Export-Import Bank of China announced that it had begun the financing of what it expected to number more than 1,000 projects in forty-nine countries as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (as OBOR had been renamed).7 As with the Silk Roads of the past, there is no specific geographical criterion to be part of the initiative; indeed, the maritime element of it is intended precisely to allow parameters of inclusion to be extended as far as the eastern coast of Africa and beyond.
The New Silk Roads Page 7