Russia's strategic interests in Central Asia today

and the regional states, the setting up of Russianmilitary bases, and the ousting of rivals (with theexception of China).However, after 2006 Russia’s internation-al position began to change, which could not helpbut have an effect on its Central Asian policy.Another spiral of the confrontation with the Westbegan, pulling Moscow along with it and turn-ing the region into an area where their interestsclash.There can be no doubt that the Color Revo-lutions in the post-Soviet expanse were one of themain reasons for the crisis in Russian-Westernrelations. And Central Asia was no exception—Russia (along with Kazakhstan) did not permitescalation of this kind of revolution in Kyrgyzstanand also supported Uzbekistan in its determina-tion not to allow a full-fledged civil war in thecountry as a result of the rebellion in Andijan,which was inspired from the outside.In 2007-2008, NATO’s enlargement and theU.S.’s deployment of ABM systems in EasternEurope posed a direct threat to Russia’s nationalsecurity. The relations between the Kremlin andthe White House became aggravated during theRussian-Georgian war in August 2008. In thisdifficult situation, Moscow was counting on po-litical support from its CSTO and SCO allies. TheKremlin made its military choice (as the U.S. didearlier) in favor of unilateral acts—it carried outunilateral operations in the CIS without takinginto account the opinion of its allies in the inte-gration unions. Moscow retained this approach inussia’s policy in Central Asia has arrivedat a new stage in its development. This isconfirmed both by the transformation ofthe situation in the region and by the changes inRussia’s international position.At the previous stage in its Central Asianpolicy, Moscow was busy trying to implementthe so-called Putin Doctrine. This basically con-sisted of attempts to integrate the post-Soviet ex-panse (encompassing as much territory as pos-sible) by primarily economic means. However,political means were also implied along with theeconomic levers. This policy was manifested inthe various integration formations that sprang upin the CIS, such as the EurAsEC-Customs Un-ion, the SES, the CSTO, and the Belarus-RussiaUnion State, as well as the multitude of bilateraland multilateral agreements with Russia’s par-ticipation in economic trade cooperation, the en-ergy industry, and transportation and communi-cations.This approach was most intensively imple-mented between 2003 and 2006, when Moscowwas able to greatly fortify its position in CentralAsia, enter long-term contracts in the productionand transportation of energy resources, take par-tial or complete control over the strategic branchesof several regional countries, and achieve advan-tageous conditions for building pipelines. In ad-dition, the economic penetration of Russian com-panies into the region was accompanied by inten-sification of military-technical and military-stra-tegic cooperation between the Russian Federation

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