Pushing Influence

Viktoria Panfilova has an interesting theory:

Russia has a chance to become the food basket for countries of the region.

Prices on bread and all other foodstuffs are rapidly growing in Central Asia. The reason is the poor harvest and the increase in cost of wheat imported from Russia and Kazakhstan. Experts fear that the food crisis in the Central Asian region may grow into a political crisis…

Of all the countries in the Central Asian region, Kyrgyzstan has been the most greatly affected. There has been a bread shortage there for several months now. Prime Minister Azimbek Atambayev was forced to sign an edict on unblocking the state reserve in order to stabilize prices on flour and bread and bakery goods. However, he was not able to reduce them. For this reason alone, 450,000 people out of the 5-million man population found themselves below the poverty level. Meanwhile, the government is discussing the repeal of unemployment subsidies: The budget, 60 per cent of which goes for various social payments, can no longer withstand them. The opposition may make use of the social tension in Kyrgyzstan, and has promised to renew protest actions in the Fall. In connection with this, local analysts are predicting “big political shake-ups,” up to the dismissal of government and early parliamentary elections.

To draw several threads together, her basic theory is that Russia might use its grain surplus to exercise greater influence on the region, starting with Kyrgyzstan. Lo’ and behold: it would seem Gazprom will begin gas exploration in the south of the country next month. More details of what this will entail are a bit sketchy, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gazprom take this opportunity to buy up available shares of distribution and pipeline companies, as it has done in Europe and the Caucasus.

But it doesn’t take a food shortage or discussion of gas rights to tempt Russia to flex its muscles. Nitin Pai also has some interesting Russia news from way further south:

If Yeltsin-era Russia was somewhere between being dismissed and taken for granted, Putin’s Russia has come to distinguish itself as a determined, even aggressive geopolitical player. Indeed, acquiring this reputation could well be an important goal of Russian foreign policy. For that reputation helps in many situations. Like, for example, it helps make the threat to evict India from its first foreign military base at Ayni, near Dushanbe in Tajikistan, more credible…

Russia is compelling India to award the US$10 billion tender for the purchase of multi-role fighter aircraft to Russian manufacturers. India’s overall defence technology relationship with Russia is worth a lot more, but this angle cannot be ruled out. But it is unlikely that Russia would have considered issuing such a threat in isolation to the emerging geopolitics in Central Asia…Realpolitik, often in its offensive variant, guides Russian foreign policy, and India would do well to engage Russia accordingly.

He makes a strong case for it—Russia is out to revive its Great Power status. Manipulating food shortages is one way; playing games with basing rights and arms purchases is another. Indeed, Russia’s foreign behavior of late is distressingly similar to that of my own country—not because it is that of a bully, but because America’s behavior is often that of a bully as well.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.