20 years after the jubilant fall of the Berlin wall, and 10 years after the tragic collapse of New York's World Trade Center, the demise (death, or assassination, depending on one's perspective) of Osama bin Laden opens a new chapter in US foreign relations, especially with Central Asia and the Middle East; the Post-bin Laden era.
The question is, does this development, following Mitchell's glib phraseology, put US-Central Asian relations into a 'Tri-Post-al' paradigm, or does it instead herald the end of 'post-alism' altogether?
Consider what is meant when US policymakers refer to the underlying stratagems they employ being based on 'Post-Soviet' or 'Post-9/11' considerations. The former suggested an awareness of the bureaucratic, economic and social vestiges of Soviet central planning, and limited political freedom. In the 20 years that have passed, the Former Soviet Republics have actually taken a diverse number of trajectories, including the wholesale rejection evidenced by the Baltic states as well as the more lenient embrace of former glory and methods found in Belarus or Turkmenistan. All of these modern states, ranging from free democracies with vibrant markets, to closed autocracies, and the more common shades of grey in-between, are equally 'Post-Soviet,' yet US policy differs widely even from Russia to Ukraine. While these states may still, may always, historically be 'Post-Soviet', the term has been stretched so far as to be virtually meaningless today, and likely more so into the future. US foreign policy toward the region is undoubtedly more focused, at least within the past 5-10 years, on its impact on the US 'War on Terror,' and the balance of US-Russia influence (initially, and mistakenly, referred to as the 'New Great Game,' or 'New Cold War').
If the Post-Soviet era is over - and by all accounts, it is so and has been for some time - what of Post-9/11 syndrome? Today, it is difficult to separate the normal considerations of national security, human rights, or due process of law, from the bizarrely overriding paranoia of international terrorist networks, with almost singular focus on al-Qaeda.
In the immediate aftermath of 2001, 'anti-terror' became the absolute priority of US foreign policy, pushing aside human rights, geopolitics, and possibly even economic concerns in a quest for 'security' (a term which, to my mind, has come to embody an emotional blend of public safety and national revenge). But inevitably, policy fatigue set in. Two invasions have turned into drawn-out civil wars, and there have been no equivalent terrorist attacks on US soil in 10 years (albeit, the events in Madrid, London and Mumbia, as well as scores of other suicide bombings and other acts of terror have been horrendous, but have not had a dramatic impact on US policy priorities).
The Post-9/11 era saw its zenith in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and since then 'anti-terror' has progressively held less sway over US policymakers, even as it has increasingly been used by foreign governments, especially those of less distinguished character, as a shield to repress both legitimate opposition movements and lesser criminal elements. But the war in Afghanistan has remained, through all the years, more distinctly about fighting terrorists than other avenues of US foreign policy. Long after the war in Iraq turned to being a mission of 'nation-building', Afghanistan remains an effort to find and disrupt al-Qaeda, and any of its collaborators, writ-large as the Taliban. This has resulted in a string of decisions, especially in Central Asia, in which US policy has been directly tied to the Afghan war effort, often by reasoning of the lowest imaginable tensile strength.
The death of Osama bin Laden, then, as the terror network's supreme commander, inspirational figurehead, and operational mastermind, throws open not only US objectives in Afghanistan, but the entire matrix of foreign policy decisions based on those objectives. It took less than a moment following the announcement of bin Laden's death for experts and pundits to remind us that al-Qaeda was not 'defeated,' whatever that means. However, it is highly likely that with his removal , the central peg in US-Central Asian policy has disappeared.
While the world, or at least the US public, were still reveling in the machismo of Seal Team Six, US Congressmen began a renewed call for a full withdrawal from Afghanistan. While this is surely political posturing of some degree, it is difficult to imagine anyone in elected office advocating such a stance in a world driven primarily by 'Post-9/11' concerns (barring the few committed pacifists, such as Rep. Kusinich).
The Post-bin Laden era, then, finds the US either recalibrating, or altogether reshaping its policies and priorities in Central and Southern Asia. The short-term implications are likely to be less dramatic - shifts in language and rationale about how the US goes about its relationships with regional powers. Promises, as we've seen recently from Barak Obama, for large, but only partial, decreases, and those to take place only on a contingent timeline.
While terrorism, counter-terrorism, and the domestic variant (counter-insurgency, given the Washington lingo treatment as "COIN") will remain a salient boogey-man available both to military-industrial proponents in the US as well as foreign governments, the rabid US approval of all 'anti-terror' activities is on the wane. The years of US intelligence accepting tenuous, or even wholly-unsubstantiated terrorist links for every shade of political discontent from friendly (and even not-so-friendly) foreign states is patently over. A new age of skepticism, fueled in no small part by a not-entirely credible belief that no terrorist organization could be as dangerous as al-Qaeda, will put the brakes on the effective use of terrorist labeling to engender US acquiescence on domestic acts of suppression.
The eventual drawdown of forces, or even the shift of forces from Afghanistan to another regional, or non-regional theater (Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, to name a few) will decidedly decrease the US military's logistical interest in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan.
Should this come to pass - should US foreign policy interest decline in Central Asia concurrent with the reduction of military involvement in Afghanistan - that seems the most convincing evidence to date that the supposed 'New Great Game' is not only over, but was a fallaciously resurrected metaphor to begin with. US interest in Cental Asia has never been about 'influence' in Central Asia; it has for the last 10 years been about Afghanistan.
Interestingly, I believe this is exactly what will happen, but not anytime soon. So long as there are any US troops in Afghanistan, the Manas Transit Center will remain a paramount priority for the Pentagon. This is for the same reason it has always been so oddly important - not as a source for putting supplies into Afghanistan (while a busy logistics hub, it never carried a substantial % of total resupply), but rather (as Alex Cooley of Columbia University has argued) it is the 'escape valve'. Should things turn sour in Kabul - like, Fall of Saigon sour - the US military will not have the benefit of a naval airlift, and the prospects of rapidly evacuating by road or rail through the treacherous mountain passes are inconceivably dismal. That just leaves Manas, which suggests that an airman in Bishkek will very likely be the last US military to leave the region.
So while 30,000 US troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the fall, smart commanders at Manas should be locking in their lease until at least 2015.
Beyond Manas, once the lights are turned off and the last KC-135 and C-5A have left the tarmac, US interest and political will be equally dim and absent. The same will be true for Tajikistan much earlier, while Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan at least have the emerging oil and gas card to play. Pipeline politics will become the dominant factor in whether or not the US remains engaged in these countries over the next decade, and the most likely outcome is a non-uniform result.
What seems most interesting to me is not the reduction of US involvement in the non-petro states of Central Asia resulting directly from Afghanistan troop withdrawals (and indirectly from the death of bin Laden), but the real potential that a new diplomatic power might step into that gap. Russia has long flexed its muscle among the Former Soviet Republics, while China has continued to play a larger, and more tactile, role in the infrastructure, economy, and regional dynamics of Central Asia.
But just over the horizon is not the ascendance of a strong SCO block, even with the admittance of India and Iran, but rather a growing interest and involvement from Europe. Unlikely as it seems, Europe has essentially leapfrogged the Transcaucasus after many frustrating years of political and economic stalemate, and is taking a hard look at the Steppe and Ferghana. Whether anything comes of this new curiosity is impossible to say, but it is not at all difficult to imagine an entirely new regional political dynamic within the next 2-5 years.
Add to this the realization that, after almost 20 years in power, many of the region's autocrats are facing their own crises of legitimacy and succession schisms. Odds are good that by 2016 (and certainly by 2020) every Central Asian national will have undergone a seismic political change. Whether that will be a change for better or for worse (however hard the latter may be to imagine in certain autocratic regimes) is less certain. Sadly, most signs (naive 'Arab Spring' optimism not withstanding) point in the direction of increased repression until, and perhaps even after, extralegal transfers of power are undertaken. The model of electoral revolutions, made so popular in the mid-2000's by Colored Revolutions seemingly across the FSU, if anything seem less salient, less likely, and less permanent as we look toward 2020.
For the moment, bin Laden looms large, no longer as the specter of lurking danger and indomitable hatred, but now as the watershed, the high-water mark of transnational terror's influence on global politics. So long as this remains a salient component of policy discussion, we live in a Post-bin Laden era, but like all the other Post-'s that have come before, this too will soon fade away.
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