Last month, the West officially lost the new "Great Game." The 20-year competition for natural resources and influence in Central Asia between the United States (supported by the European Union), Russia and China has, for now, come to an end, with the outcome in favor of the latter two. Western defeat was already becoming clear with the slow progress of the Nabucco pipeline and the strategic reorientation of some Central Asian republics toward Russia and China.
Our interest in the region stems from our war in Afghanistan. We've managed to get cooperation for that.
But I'm skeptical of claims that we've lost a new "great game." The rules of the game were stacked against us. The governments of the area are old Soviet republics that decided that their best game plan was to continue as Soviet police states--just without the "Soviet" part. These states naturally gravitated toward China and Russia, two patrons who wouldn't care what the central Asian states did to their own people. Our friendship implies certain obligations to be a little nicer to your own people.
Energy pipelines won't create Russian and Chinese dominance--they just are the natural outcomes of a local preference for Russian and Chinese friendship.
So to say we lost the "great game" implies we had a real chance to push the "Stans" toward democracy so they'd be natural allies of America.
The "great game" we need to play is to offer enough to balance between the competing Russian and Chinese attempts to dominate the region so that neither Moscow nor Peking can cement their dominance over the region. That, I believe, is a game we can play.
