Has the
If this trend continues,
To understand what's happening, it's useful to look back at the way
Then, the
One of the leading voices advocating such a policy reorientation was Sheila Heslin, a deceptively librarian-like National Security Council staffer in her early thirties. Drawing on work she did previously for the World Bank, the tough-minded, bureaucratically wise Heslin argued that Washington’s blanket accommodation of Moscow encouraged just the policies that the United States sought to eradicate—Russia, Heslin argued, would start to shed its authoritarian edge when it was forced to respect its neighbors’ sovereignty, and one way to accomplish that was to strengthen the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After several months, the Heslin view won the internal policy debate, causing Washington to throw itself behind the construction of huge oil and natural gas pipelines that would provide the Caucasus and Central Asia an independent link to Western markets, unimpeded by Russia. This was a major shift, though at first it went under the radar in the
The Obama administration, by contrast, has been dialing back on the Great Game. During the
President Obama's public rationale for this shift is clear. He wants arms control agreements, victory in
In addition, Obama officials believe that, while the great-power-rivalry strain of geopolitics in the region may have been necessary in the 1990s, it is now obsolete. When Heslin's policy was initially drawn up, its concrete objective was to provide the Caucasian and Central Asian states with a financial channel independent of
Crucially, the change in American policy has been more dramatic in Central Asia than it has in Eastern Europe or the
President Obama must realize that his new policy ultimately represents a trade-off. While the geopolitical gains from deemphasizing the Great Game have been substantial, the local costs of
Steve LeVine, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, is the author of The Oil and the Glory.