American military personnel observe a nuclear weapons test in Nevada, late 1951

Fourteen years ago this May, India and Pakistan overtly conducted nuclear tests and declared themselves nuclear powers.

India conducted its first test in 1974 and termed it a “peaceful nuclear explosion” while by the late 1980s, Pakistan had acquired the technological capacity to produce a bomb as well. Although many opposed and still oppose the tests due to various reasons and on many grounds, at least the two countries let the world and each other know that they had the bomb.

Nuclear weapons played the role of deterrent and helped in the deescalation of tensions which could otherwise have resulted in war.

For the first time in a war against Pakistan, in 1999 at Kargil, the Indian army did not cross the Line of Control. Even after the attack on the Indian parliament in 2002 and the Mumbai massacre that was carried out by militants based in Pakistan, war was averted. The regular exchange of fire along the Indo-Pakistani border has not resulted in an escalation of hostilities.

As it is, India and Pakistan are nuclear powers and this cannot be reversed or changed despite antinuclear protests and a global push for denuclearization. Hence, it’s better to adapt to the situation.

The two countries have taken many measures to prevent accidental use of their atomic weapons. Chief among them is that India and Pakistan since 1988 are regularly exchanging information about their weapons. They also inform the other side before carrying out military exercises near the border areas or testing their missiles.

The real challenge is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. Whereas states behave in a rational and responsible way, this cannot be expected from nonstate actors.

The weapons in both countries are kept in disassembled form and physically apart. They have each set up commanding hierarchies to take decisions about its assemblage and use. Any effort to steal or capture even a single part cannot go unnoticed by the security agencies nor the political leadership. To take possession of a nuclear weapon, a terrorist group would help from the inside, as Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, had.

The presence of Taliban and other Islamic extremists in Pakistan complicates the challenge of securing the nation’s nuclear weapons. To check this, the credentials of defense staff and scientists responsible for providing security and maintenance of nuclear technologies must be properly scanned.

The bomb has acted as deterrence but that does not mean it will always be that way. High escalation of bilateral tension may become a reason to trigger nuclear war. Hence, as responsible nuclear powers, India and Pakistan must continue to build confidence between them, if only to avert the accidental use of a nuclear weapon.

British Hägglunds BV206 All Terrain Tracked Vehicles participate in a military exercise in Norway, February 28, 2010 (Defence Images/Mez Merrill)

NATO may take a different form as “the Great Melt” heats up. After the expected pullout from Afghanistan in 2014, pressure will mount on the alliance to turn north. “The Arctic represents the emergence of a new geopolitical arena.”

As a result of climate change, many states in the Northern Hemisphere could soon pivot to the pole. “As global demand for resources grows, the Arctic region becomes a new field for international competition as new sea lanes open due to ice melting,” says Lorenzo Nannetti in a month long analysis of NATO’s future for the geostrategic consultancy Wikistrat.

The Arctic is estimated to contain some 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and so much as 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas. Combined, these figures amount to 22 percent of the planet’s untapped but technically recoverable hydrocarbons.

Graham O’Brien, who worked with Nannetti on Wikistrat’s analysis, believes that the effect of resources being found in the Arctic is sure to prompt nearby countries to bolster their military and technological capabilities—and to forge alliances.

“NATO has conducted war games in the Arctic in recent years in possible preparation for a future security regime to happen in the region,” he says. March sixteen thousand soldiers from fifteen countries participating in Norway’s Cold Response exercise.

This saber rattling is causing consternation in another cold place, according to O’Brien. “Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said in several interviews that he believes NATO has no place in the Arctic, whether it be for political or security reasons.”

Russia accounts for the bulk of Arctic land and has made its designs abundantly clear in recent years. In good Cold War fashion, it has resumed patrolling the area with bomber planes and warships while Moscow invested more than a billion dollars in the expansion of the port of Murmansk which is supposed to double its capacity by 2015.

“As Russia appears the most active in defining—and expanding—its area of influence, NATO nations will join forces to ensure they present a united front to discourage any escalation,” says Nannetti who is also an analyst and researcher for the Italian oil and gas company Eni.

That has yet to happen. While Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper insists that “the north has never been more important” to his country and Norway even reached out to Russia in March to improve military relations and expand cooperation in the Arctic, the Americans are notably missing in action

Canada boast one of the few year round sites of human habitation close to the North Pole at Alert, a military base at the tip of Ellesmere Island, east of Greenland. Such permanently occupied sites matter if nations are to assert their sovereignty over Arctic territory.

Norway aims to convert one of its High North battalions into a dedicated Arctic brigade comprising naval and special forces units. Russia last year announced plans to create an armored Arctic brigade of its own on the Kola Peninsula. But the United States Coast Guard fields just three icebreakers, two of which are antiquated and slated to be retired. If NATO is to look toward a cold future, Washington will have to step up its game.

Despite the military buildup, Graham O’Brien cautions that “a military confrontation between Russia and NATO is way off in this era. However a freezing of relations, seen in other contexts with NATO and Russia in the past, will disable any chances of a fully sustainable system of security in the Arctic.”

British prime minister David Cameron, American president Barack Obama and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso observe a moment of silence in honor of NATO military personnel that have lost their lives, Lisbon, Portugal, November 19, 2010 (White House/Pete Souza)

The key for the future of NATO is to once again establish a clear strategic rationale for its existence.

This was a relatively easy task during the Cold War, when the threat of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was very real and perceived as existential. In the years since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, this is no longer the case and it has forced NATO to evaluate exactly what role it should play in the twenty-first century.

While it seems that many in Europe and the United States have a desire to turn NATO into some sort of “GloboCop” looking perennially abroad for new monsters to slay, NATO’s actions since the conclusion of the Cold War raise serious questions about the wisdom of such a course. Its use of military force against Serbia during the Kosovo crisis in the 1990s, its extensive work in Afghanistan and, most recently, in Libya illustrate how NATO can work and how it really cannot.

The key question is this: Should NATO in this century be used primarily to defend Europe from external aggression while facilitating intra-European stability or is it to be a platform for external stabilizing missions in other geographic regions, such as the Middle East or East Asia? 


The answer is that it should remain focused on what it can do and do well.

If NATO was largely created “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” as stated memorably by the alliance’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, this should in large measure be maintained as a raison d’etre.

The questions of Russia and Germany continue to be, as they always have been, of paramount importance to European stability. NATO can and should deal with this.

The alliance should remain a serious player in Europe, capable of defending against any potential external aggression. It should also retain the ability to maintain a sense of order in the continually tumultuous southern side of Europe, especially the Balkan tinderbox. 



Meanwhile, NATO must reexamine its capacity to engage in missions outside of Europe and should probably scale back any extra-European ambitions. The fiscal and military resources are not available to engage in global operations and the scarce resources that are available are better spent in the European neighborhood.

Referring again to the Kosovo air campaign, it appears that NATO can use force effectively when deployed against malefactors within the general European area.

By contrast, although NATO has played a significant role in Afghanistan, the ambiguities of general policy toward that nation and the larger issues pertaining in particular to stability in Pakistan have made it a far less successful endeavor.

Granted, much of this is due to internal policy divisions within the United States, which is quite evidently the largest player in the Afghan theater. However, the projection capabilities of NATO are not all that impressive when looking at the difficulty in doing what is necessary to win a small scale conflict beyond Europe.

The Libyan intervention reinforces this impression. Aside from the question of whether the regime crackdown in Syria is of more strategic importance to the region than whatever Colonel Muammar Gaddafi did, the point is, if one is to engage, one must engage fully. That NATO proved only half willing to do so elongated the conflict and could have facilitated the stealing of many weapons that are now finding their way into a myriad of other conflict zones like Mali.

The take away from this state of affairs is that NATO should remain focused on European stability, not out of theater operations. Efforts to use NATO outside of Europe leave much to be desired and fundamentally risk making the Atlantic alliance look weaker, not stronger

Attempting to bolster NATO in order that it essentially becomes some kind of global constabulary force seems unwise. Each region of the world will require its own multilateral (though not panglobal) institutions.

The United States will, for as long as it remains the single most powerful nation in the world, play a key role in each of these regional institutions. Yet these institutions should remain regional, focusing on their own neighborhoods so that they can be more effective, rather than morphing into grandiose institutions with ambitions far exceeding capabilities. That is a sure fire recipe for ineffective institutions that spend more time talking than acting on the imperatives of the moment.

Europe and the United States are the pillars of transatlanticism and the “West” more broadly conceived. They must hang together or they will hang separately. Narrowing NATO’s focus in such a way that it maintains stability in the European heartland is a key step to making sure they hang together even if economic power seems to be shifting eastward in the twenty-first century.

At the end of the day, NATO leaders should say no to “GloboCop” and yes to their own backyard.

This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared at the Atlantic Community, September 3, 2010.

An American Marine patrols the surroundings of the village of Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, April 28

Iran denounced the recently signed Strategic Partnership Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. It sees the basing of American forces in the country and across the Persian Gulf as a security threat and has even reached out to the Sunni Taliban to balance this perceived threat.

The Iranians have long voiced discomfort with the prospect of a long term American presence on its eastern border. They have attempted to use their clout within the political system of Afghanistan and the means of bribery to influence Afghan parliamentarians to vote against any security pact with the United States.

The American forces in Afghanistan, far from being a solution to the problems of the region, are seen by Tehran as likely to intensify the regional insecurity and instability. Yet Iran’s own threat perception is in part fueling insecurity in Afghanistan and instability throughout the region.

The pact appears to have already strained relations between Afghanistan and Iran with Afghan diplomats in Tehran claiming that they are being intimidated and their movements have been severely curtailed. This may be a sign of worse things to come in the future.

Iran believes that the presence of American military bases and troops and access to military facilities in several other countries in the region such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar, is part of a deliberate strategy of encircling and containing Iran. Tehran fears that such a strategic position would enable the United States to monitor its nuclear program and launch attacks against it.

The capture of an American unmanned drone aircraft in December of last year, which was used by the United States to look for tunnels, underground facilities and other places where Iran could be producing centrifuge parts or enrichment facilities, confirm Iranian suspicions.

It has also been alleged that the United States are using their bases in Afghanistan to extend covert support to Sunni and Balochi insurgents, such as the Jundullah group, in Iran’s southeastern most Sistan and Baluchestan Province.

It is no surprise then that the Strategic Partnership Agreement is bound to enhance Iranian anxieties about the American troops in its neighbourhood, even if the pact explicitly states that America cannot use Afghanistan to launch attacks on a third country.

The mere presence of the United States in Afghanistan will pose an obstacle to the expansion of Iran’s influence in the country, particularly in its traditional sphere of influence—western Afghanistan, where Iran has spent millions of dollars over the past decade.

Iran has resorted to several means to undermine the American mission in Afghanistan, many of which are far from being positive in nature.

Iran has been accused of sending shiploads of text books into western Afghanistan with the aim of promoting the Shī’ah culture, the contents of which have been found offensive by the Sunni population. Such attempts at fueling sectarian tensions in Afghanistan make the task of managing the country much tougher for the Americans.

Similarly, it has been alleged that Iran exerts its influence over Afghanistan’s education curriculum through institutions like the Khatam-al Nabyeen Islamic University in Kabul, with the aim of promoting Iranian culture, win over the Afghan Shī’ah community and spread anti-Americanism.

Iran has also, in the past, cut off its fuel supplies to Afghanistan, which caused massive outcry in Kabul, as it believed that petrol and diesel, which was meant to be used by Afghans, was siphoned off to NATO.

However, the most intriguing development has been Iran’s measured support of the Taliban. The foreign forces in Afghanistan have often intercepted weapons, rockets and missiles that originated in Iran and were similar to the ones that were used to undermine the international counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq. There have also been suspicions of Taliban fighters being trained in Iran.

The alliance with the Taliban is one of necessity as the group posed a significant security and ideological threat to Iran when it was in power in the 1990s. The two nearly went to war in 1998 following
the massacre of Iranian diplomats in Mazār-e Sharīf in northern Afghanistan. Even today, Iran would not favor a government in Kabul that is led or dominated by the Taliban.

The support for the Taliban was envisioned as a short term measure to make the Americans bleed and keep them preoccupied in Afghanistan, thereby diverting their attention from Iran.

However, as the United States look set to stay on in Afghanistan beyond 2014, albeit in reduced numbers, Iran is likely to maintain its support for the Taliban and indulge in other covert destabilizing activities, thereby prolonging the insurgency and the instability in the country.

Pakistani men unload supplies delivered by a United States Army Chinook helicopter in Matlatan, Pakistan on September 28, 2010 (Sergeant Jason Bushong)

Western forces looking to exit Afghanistan over the next two years are playing a game of roulette, looking for the luckiest and cheapest way out of the warzone. Central Asian countries are scrambling to be the most attractive bet. Difficult and still closed, the road through Pakistan remains the preferred route.

Afghanistan’s neighbors stand to make huge profits as NATO countries move to withdraw their troops and equipment. Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan will remain under American control until the war is over but the base cannot handle all of the equipment which NATO forces must remove from the region. Land routes are numerous but difficult for a variety of reasons and Central Asia is poised to cash in on the scramble to depart.

Additionally, Central Asian states are more submissive to Russia than America. Russia and the United States have recently begun to negotiate a ”retrograde transit” agreement to use the Northern Distribution Network but the Kremlin may well seek to exploit the deal in order to achieve its aims elsewhere.

There are numerous options for getting into and alternatively out of Afghanistan but none are perfect bets.

The Pakistan route is the easiest and the cheapest but unreliable. In late November 2011, Pakistan closed the border to NATO traffic in protest after an American air strike killed nearly 30 Pakistani soldiers by accident. The border is still closed and Pakistan obstinate about reopening it without an American apology.

The Northern Distribution Network was developed by the Americans as an alternative to the Pakistan route but there are signs that its gatekeeper Uzbekistan will seek to raise transit fees. While Uzbekistan has by far the best road and railroad network among Afghanistan’s neighbors, its price gouging will prompt NATO powers to seek additional alternate routes.

The trouble is that difficult and pernicious as Pakistan and Uzbekistan can be, alternative land routes through Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are even more troublesome. Bad roads and bad winters are only where the problems begin.

There is discussion of selling some equipment to the Central Asian republics and thus removing the need to transport such equipment out of the region on NATO’s dime. In February, British armed forces minister Nick Harvey suggested trading military equipment for favorable transit fees. He alluded to the unspecified equipment as being potentially useful in Central Asia’s battle with narcotics and terrorism.

The United States have been more circumspect about leaving military equipment in the hands of Central Asian autocrats. Robert Blake, the American assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs said that arms transfers to countries along the Northern Distribution Network would be subject to the same restrictions that apply to regular arms transfers. Thus far, the Americans have been unwilling to sell any weapons to Uzbekistan, which has a less than pristine human rights record.

The bottom line is that Pakistan holds the lucky numbers. The average shipping cost of a container, as reported by Radio Free Europe, from Afghanistan to Karachi is $7,200. By northern routes shipping the same container would cost $17,500. When Pakistan decides to reopen the road to NATO convoys, it is likely to be at a higher price but still able to undercut the Central Asian route.

Money, power and politics all play a part in this game of supply route roulette. Money is on Pakistan and it is doubtful that by 2014 NATO powers will be interested in taking the longer, more expensive road through authoritarian Central Asia and into Russia’s arms. Islamabad will eventually reopen the border and happily usher the West out of its backyard.

Flag of North Korea (Dion Gillard)

North Korea has finished preparations for their third nuclear test at the Punggye-ri test site and is awaiting the political decision to commence detonation.

Setting off a third nuclear device is a widely expected move for the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea but it’s not one that will do them any favors.

Having already faced condemnation from the West in going ahead with their rocket test in April and rumored to have taken a massive lashing from China during high level meetings in Beijing last week, there seems to be little that North Korea can gain by proceeding with the test.

Losing foreign aide from non-Chinese powers is problematic but probably survivable. However, the DPRK’s recent rocket launch went ahead without properly warning Beijing and China is equally vexed by Pyongyang’s plans for their nuclear device. There have already been insinuations of China ceasing repatriation of North Korean defectors (this won’t actually happen, China doesn’t want to give a green light to a sudden humanitarian crisis on its soil) but a nuclear test may force China to act more concretely on their threats toward the DPRK.

China’s arrangement with North Korea rests on keeping the country afloat as long as it pays China a modicum of respect. This respect involves proper warning of North Korea’s missile and nuclear test whims, economic zone and trade privileges and covertly bowing to China when Beijing disagrees on certain issues.

In Kim Jong-un’s first few months as ruler of North Korea, he’s sought to give the North Korean military every bell and whistle to keep them in his pocket but he’s utterly failed to pay Beijing the proper reverence it has become accustomed to.

The DPRK would come to a complete halt without Chinese assistance. China still supplies much of what makes North Korea tick, Pyongyangites are becoming more and more infatuated with Chinese goods and trade with China is finally seeing some small export success. The testing of a nuclear device against China’s wishes would seriously damage North Korea’s forward momentum in these areas.

During Kim Jong-il’s lifetime, his main contribution toward North Korea was to weaken the Korean Workers’ Party’s control and its ability to overthrow his rule by putting the military above all state and party organizations. He was smart and savvy enough to keep them under his thumb.

Unfortunately, Kim Jong-un finds himself the heir to a Songun (“military first”) state that believes foreign relations are best achieved with missiles, artillery and nuclear weapons, without the ability to properly keep his military in check.

Kim Jong-un’s grandfather proved himself as a leader though a nationalistic war (and Soviet support). Kim Jong-un may feel the need to continue feeding his military to prove legitimacy of his own. But fueling his domestic military at the cost of international relations is isolating his regime at a time when it is most in need of foreign assistance.

The young Kim may be walking a fine line between proving his merit as a leader via military strength and avoiding actual war but by giving into the DPRK military’s every whim, he may be slowly sinking his regime.

If the nuclear test occurs, Kim Jong-un will be squarely in the pocket of the North Korean military and not vice versa.

This article originally appeared at Asia Security Watch, May 2, 2012.

President Barack Obama of the United States and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan meet in Kabul, May 1, 2012

In what proved to be a very busy day for the White House, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday. After being met and greeted by Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to the country, upon landing, the president quickly made his way to the presidential palace in Kabul to attend a joint signing ceremony with Hamid Karzai, thereby extending the American-Afghan relationship into 2024.

For President Obama, who is preparing for a tough reelection fight over the summer against the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, ceremony was an opportunity to not only convince Afghans that the United States would stand by them in the future but to assure the war weary American electorate that the fighting is close to ending.

Addressing the American people by television, Obama said, “we’ve traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of new day on the horizon.”

Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq five years ago, has become a battle that is increasingly unpopular at home. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released last month reported that two-thirds of Americans surveyed no longer thought the war was worth fighting.

Republicans, usually more hawkish in national security policy, are split over how much longer the United States should stay in. Swing voters, the constituency that will determine the entire presidential election in November, are more determined than ever to pull all American troops out as soon as possible. The American people will thus hold the president to his 2014 withdrawal promise, a date that he himself imposed.

Obama’s speech was also aimed at the Afghan people. Though tired of the foreign presence in their country, they are just as concerned about what the future holds once NATO troops have left.

The signing of the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreement was designed to mitigate much of that worry, committing the United States and its NATO allies to a continuation of support for the Afghan Government after 2014.

Afghans may not take much solace in the alliance, however, since the document is short on details and questions regarding any future troop presence in Afghanistan still needs to be negotiated.

The Taliban insurgency, in the meantime, will be sure to test the strength of the civilian government in Kabul any case. The Afghan people will expect their security forces, hampered with logistical and command problems, to respond to any such attacks quickly and efficiently.

President Obama and the American people are ready to get out. The Afghan Government and people will have to live with the outcome.

The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman operates in the Arabian Sea, November 23, 2010 (US Navy/Kilho Park)

Despite spending billions on American manufactured antimissile platforms, the Arab Gulf states have yet to agree on building a unified umbrella and joint early warning system which Washington has long argued is the best means of defense against an Iranian attack.

The secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to which the six Sunni monarchies of the region belong, Abdul Latif Bin Rashid Al Zayani, urged the development of a joint missile defense system last month. Such a shield, he said, could be “backed by the United States and Western allies.”

However, the six countries remain uneasy about sharing data, Reuters reports. Nor can they decide on the location of a central command.

Saudi Arabia, the second largest oil exporter in the world and a key American ally in the Middle East, is by far the most populous and powerful member of the GCC. Its neighbors, the United Arab Emirates in particular, are uneasy about the kingdom’s domineering role. Saudi Arabia already hosts the GCC headquarters and is home to the Peninsula Shield, a joint defense force set up in 1986 which was most recently deployed in Bahrain when demonstrations erupted against the ruling Al Khalifa there last spring.

The emirates pulled out of a planned monetary union among the GCC states in 2009 after Saudi Arabia was voted as the host of a common central bank.

The Gulf states share a mistrust of Iran’s nuclear intentions and seek to contain its regional influence. The joint military intervention in Bahrain last year was inspired by fears of Iranian involvement in the island nation’s Shī’ah uprising. Iran is among few Shī’ah majority countries in the Muslim world. The Arab Gulf states are all ruled by Sunnis.

A pan-Gulf defense shield would likely be supervised by the Americans which is another reason for skepticism on the part of Arab states. The United States would like to integrate an early warning system with their navy ships deployed in the Persian Gulf but allies, including Saudi Arabia, are hesitant to surrender control of such a system.

In the absence of a joint missile shield, the United Arab Emirates in December spent $3.6 billion to buy Lockheed Martin’s Theater High Altitude Area Defense to protect their cities and oil installations. The system is designed to destroy short- and intermediate range ballistic missiles both inside and outside the planet’s atmosphere.

Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi of Yemen in Sana'a, February 7 (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

Until last year, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi was a name that many people in the Arab world and the West knew little about. Yemen’s vice president since 1994, he was typically overshadowed by Ali Abdullah Saleh, the one who made all of the government’s important decisions and had the authority to run Yemen like his personal fiefdom.

The protests that engulfed the Middle Eastern country last year changed the picture, peaking in a power transfer agreement, brokered by Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states, that pushed Saleh out and elevated Hadi into his post.

In February, millions of Yemenis formally voted Hadi in as their next president although he was the only name on the ballot.

Two months later, Hadi has been juggling his responsibilities in order to ensure that the new unity government in Sana’a is operating effectively.

In a bold and surprising decision, Hadi dismissed two high profile figures of Saleh’s extended family, paving the way for new leadership in the air force and presidential guard.

The new president and his allies have spoken out when signs of obstruction have pointed to Saleh’s loyalists, attracting the support of the United States in the process.

The most significant decision that Hadi has taken to date has been in Yemen’s fight against Al Qaeda and its terrorist allies in the south of the country. If 2011 was the year that allowed Al Qaeda to expand its control over towns and cities in the south and southeast, 2012 is turning out to be a year when the group is facing an unprecedented amount of pressure.

The Yemeni armed forces, once beaten and bruised by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, are taking back the land it lost only a few months earlier, launching air strikes on terrorist bases daily and sending in reinforcements to drive the group away from villages that were converted into Al Qaeda havens. The terrorist organization has faced its most significant operational setback in nearly a year, with Zinjibar, a city that it had controlled since May of last year, reportedly recaptured by Yemeni military forces after weeks of combat.

All the while, the United States have used their drone assets and warplanes to augment the Yemeni Government’s offensive, a sign of an enduring defense partnership that will outlast Saleh’s downfall

The United States have fired more missiles in Yemen this year than at any time since 2002, another indication that Hadi views the relationship is similarly valuable terms.

Ali Abdullah Saleh was once viewed as an indispensible asset in Washington’s counterterrorism strategy. Over the past few months, it has become quite obvious that Saleh was not only replaceable but perhaps lazy and manipulative when compared to his successor.

A C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft takes off at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base, Uzbekistan, March 26, 2005 (US Air Force/Master Sergeant Scott T. Sturkol)

At a time when the United States are preparing to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, American cooperation with Russia, compromised on other foreign policy issues, including the missile defense program in Eastern Europe and the situation in Syria, turns out to look like a promising deal for both sides.

American authorities have come to understand the importance of securing Russian support in order to operate the departure from Afghanistan in safety.

Another factor adding to American-Russian cooperation is the continuing souring of relations between Washington and some of its regional allies, namely Pakistan, especially after last year’s killing of more than twenty Pakistani soldiers by an errant NATO air strike.

Analysis

Despite their many differences in such parts of the world as Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Russia and the United States have embarked on a vast project aimed at facilitating the future withdrawal of American armed forces from Afghanistan across the Russian territory. This project will complement previously signed agreements allowing the transit of combat troops bound for Afghan battlefields.

Up to this day, the United States military has mainly relied upon Pakistan and a few Central Asia states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan) to transport its troops and equipment to Afghanistan. The so called Northern Distribution Network represents a collection of routes which cross these countries’ territories and link them with western parts of Russia.

With the departure of forces from Afghan soil planned for 2014, American authorities are actively negotiating “retrograde transit” agreements to allow the reverse movement, from Central Asia back to the Western Hemisphere. Despite the signing of such accords with the majority of Central Asian states, some of them are not really willing to aid Washington in this vast enterprise.

It is not only about Pakistan which decided to cut off supplies after the November 2011 incident when twenty-four of its soldiers were killed as a result of a misguided air strike.

Uzbekistan, whose president Islam Karimov became a staunch supporter of the NATO coalition in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks but soon ousted all foreign troops from the Khanabad military base in 2005, is one of these fair weather allies playing a double game.

Uzbekistan is reportedly trying to extort generous transit fees from the American Government in exchange of its full support of the withdrawal operation.

In this context, an interesting agreement is being negotiated with Russia. It is expected that Russian authorities will create a regional transport hub in the Volga River city of Ulyanovsk from where American troops and equipment would be flown into Europe and North America after having been transported by trucks or rail from Afghanistan.

In response to those Russians who think that a rapprochement with the United States on the Afghan issue is not only useless but harmful to their country’s strategic interests in the region, the Kremlin affirmed that this cooperation is based exclusively on commercial calculations and will directly benefit Russia’s state budget.

The Diplomat reports incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin’s words from a recent statement about NATO:

We understand what is happening in Afghanistan, right? We are interested in things there being under control, right? And we do not want our soldiers to fight on the Tajik-Afghan border. Well, NATO and the Western community is present there. God give them good health. Let them work.

Russia is clearly not only expecting to gain from its upcoming cooperation with the United States but also seeking to weaken ties between Washington and its Central Asian partners.

According to the Kremlin’s reasoning, if the United States need less of Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan, it will lose interest in cooperating with them. Time will tell if this strategy of Russian policy makers will actually succeed.

Wikistrat Bottom Lines