How we took back the Stans

last updated 8 January 2015

Russia

Sergey Chugayev

“We should say a personal thank you” to the Americans, said Sergey Chugayev in Moscow’s Komsomolskaya Pravda. They have just handed Central Asia back to Russia. That may sound surprising, given that the Americans have been trying so hard to expand their influence in the “Stans”—the former Soviet republics of the region. Conventional wisdom holds that American spies instigated both the recent putsch in Kyrgyzstan and the subsequent uprising in Uzbekistan. But the Americans forgot that making a ruckus always disturbs the neighbors—in this case, China. The Chinese were none too eager to have U.S. bases near their borders. They saw the American meddling as “a direct threat” to their own security and they made their displeasure known. And the U.S., bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and facing an increasingly hostile Iran, had to back down. The Americans decided “to concentrate on their main areas of interest” and “asked Russia to fill the vacuum” in the disorderly Stans by reasserting Russian influence—both military and political. Still, even as we thank the U.S. for its pretty gift, we have to wonder: “What does it want in return?”