Moscow thus showed that it means businesses and is perfectly willing to use force to redraw Eurasian boundaries if so moved. And unlike 2008 when China supported Central Asian governments against Russia’s annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in 2014 Beijing has refused to take a stand. Therefore all these governments publicly, if visibly reluctantly, accepted the outcome of the Russian-initiated referendum in Crimea. The equivocal formal responses of Central Asian states despite their visible distress are therefore quite understandable.
China should be who these states look for support, but China doesn't seem interested.
Although perhaps they'll have a little more interest now that Russia is attempting to rebuild the Russian Empire in Central Asia.
Pity we can't figure out how to encourage Russia to focus on Central Asia by making NATO (with a minor in Ukraine) too tough to handle and encourage China focus on Central Asia, too, rather than the East and South China Seas.
That would be smart diplomacy that leverages hard flanks in Europe and the Pacific to push China to support the "stans" who would really like support against Anschluss with Russia.
