Last week, I posted critical thinking from the blogosphere on the metaphors commonly used when discussing Afghanistan. Now I want to contribute my own two cents on a common metaphor used in Central Asia: The New Great Game. The N.G.G. is a term that now stands for more than one aspect of Central Asian affairs, which has confused the set of facts it represents. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure the term N.G.G. has been inaccurate for some time now.
History
The original “Great Game” was “played” between Tsarist Russia and the British Empire, as each country attempted to increase their sphere of influence from centers in Moscow and India, respectively. The area of contention was little-mapped and poorly-known by its contenders, encompassing a region from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. The term was first used in an 1829 letter by Arthur Connolly, a British intelligence officer associated with the Bengal Light Lancers and the British East Asia Company, and it was used in the sense of cultural superiority. The term became more publicly used after being part of the emotional and physical landscape in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim (1901). Anglo-Russian treaties of 1907, which supposedly settled the regional “contest”, were nullified in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution. In the next phase of geopolitical struggle, The Soviets subdued the Central Asian region surrounding Bukhara, and Great Britain went on to treat with Afghanistan, until the end of Second World War.
The first “New Great Game” occurred when the US became a world superpower, and it was an adjunct to Cold War geopolitics. N.G.G.-1 culminated in the Soviet-Afghanistan war, where the U.S. armed the mujahedin and then retired to the locker room. The term became further muddied as the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the US and Europe began to take more interest in the Westernization of Central Asia.
Contemporary Use
In current parlance, the term is used for the political economy of Caspian oil, competing collective security arrangements and bilateral diplomacy rivalries in the Central Asian region, and (less often) the presence of ISAF in Afghanistan.
Many great Central Asian thinkers have used this trope, and their works remain important to understanding Central Asia's history of cross-cultural dialogue, and well worth reading. (Most spectacular example: Mr. Hopkirk's The Great Game.) But the use of the term in a current article should be a sign that the analysis has been narrowed to a very minimal list of international actors. Therefore, the author has given him/herself an already tightly-edited list of possible outcomes: “In this Great Power X failed, and Great Power Y triumphed.” The N.G.G. forgets that the object of their sentence (s/he who is to be acted upon–i.e., Central Asia) also has the power to reciprocate (s/he can also act). Most specifically, using “Great Game” metaphors essentially ignores the sovereign wishes of Central Asia's Republics and action they take in their own interest. Therefore, we need to read invocations of the N.G.G. with a healthy skepticism.
Limits
The New Great Game could not predict the Tulip Revolution or the Andijan Massacre. It can't account for the diplomatic facility of the President of Kazakhstan or the bizarre isolationism of the late President of Turkmenistan. It does reveal, however, a latent parochialism. Under N.G.G. parameters, Central Asia is a grand b-ball court for Titanic Teams, and the court owners cower under the thud of gigantic, well-shod feet. Recourse to the N.G.G. metaphor, whether for its strategies or against them, reveals more about the writer's view of Central Asia than what its states want to do or how its people react. And as these states develop multiple diplomatic efforts with an expanding number of states, intergovernmental organizations, private businesses, and markets, they fit this paradigm less and less.
In short, the N.G.G. is not all that New; changing attitudes about what accomplishes Greatness have made old, single-minded powerplays obsolescent; and, for those who must meet with the obnoxious people who insist upon bouncing on in, it cannot be enough fun to be called a Game.
References:
Wikipedia, “The Great Game”
A timeline of the “Great Game“–a little messy in format, but taken from Hopkirk's important book
Update: Registan.net has a review of Hopkirk's book made today
Photos: customersarealways.com; Answers.com; The Kirk Report
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