IIAS | IIAS Newsletter Online | No. 18 | Regions |Central Asia

Dear Editor Reading the Kuleshiv / McKay exchange in IIAS Newsletters 13 and 17 leaves me rather flabbergasted. Basically, we either have to revise virtually the entire diplomatic and military history of the nineteenth century or Drs Kuleshiv and McKay are making a basic error at the epistemological level. Let me clear up this error by making a modern comparison. I have no doubt that a researcher studying files from the State Department in the near future will have no trouble in finding some which argue that the USA had no vital economic and military interest in defending Afghanistan in 1979. What is `diplomatic interest', by the way? Diplomats represent the interests of a country, so a country can never have `diplomatic interests' in another country. My presumed hard-working researcher will argue, too, that in 1979 Pakistan was far from being a US-pawn, and that the various anti-communist groups in Afghanistan were following their own, rather than US interests. And that there were few, if any, CIA agents in Pakistan in 1979 and the Agency was largely ignorant of Afghanistan. So far, so good. But now our researcher agues that therefore the 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan was not related to any US/Russian conflict. Since that was not the case in Afghanistan, he will go on to argue that there were no conflicting interests in the Middle East either. And that, since that was the case in the Middle East, the entire Cold War was `rhetoric'. Now, should we - most of us who have lived through this, certainly Dr Kuleshiv I presume - not say that our researcher is overshooting his target? That he is extrapolating from a single case - in fact a single group of documents - generalities applying to a much longer period, a much larger area, and that even perceived conflicts of interests may turn into a real conflicts of interest if they are seen as such by statesmen? Still, this is exactly what both McKay and Kuleshiv are doing here. Kuleshiv first says that there are no documents to prove that Russia had any vital interest in Tibet in 1906 - quite so, this seems obvious. He argues too that the few Russian agents in the area were not directly engaged by the state - all right, stands to reason if only since the Russian state had rather more pressing concerns than Tibet in 1904-1906! He then reasons that neither British India nor Russia had any really vital interests in Tibet. Of course, the administration of British India thought that Tibet was threatened by the Russians, but this in the light of documents we know now was wrong. Therefore, if the administration of British India was worried, this was not London's business. But if so, then why was Tibet included in the negotiations leading to the `Triple Entente'? Or was the `Triple Entente' not London's `cup of tea' either? If I have not grasped this strange argument, now consider the rest. Since here was no 'real' conflict over Tibet, there was no conflict over Central Asia either. But does not Central Asia also include Afghanistan, Mashad, or Marw? In the 1890s the Government of India had good reasons to be concerned that its entire security and alliance system would collapse upon Russia's advance to Marw and, nearly, to Herat. It had even better reasons to be concerned during the Iranian revolution with the risk that Persia would be occupied by Russia. Therefore, it wanted to seal-off the Russians by a cordon sanitaire, of which Tibet was a part. While Tibet was certainly not vital to British India, Persia surely was. As there was, then, no conflict over Central Asia in 1906, the argument is pursued, there was not, nor had there ever been, a `Great Game' between London and St. Petersburg. But, actually, the `Great Game' was pursued throughout a whole century - if as Edward Ingram has argued - in my view convincingly - the `Great Game' dates way back to the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and Napoleon's plan for an Indian and Persian expeditions in 1809 (with Russian help). This was not in the eighteenth century, as Dr Kuleshiv writes, and the Government of India had pretty good reasons to be concerned about Russia's advance on Persia in 1807. And it could be argued that this policy was pursued by the Government of India right up to 1923. For the Great Game was not, as Dr McKay writes, 'a legendary struggle between British and Russian frontiersmen for control of the Central Asian territory between their two empires'. No - as Edward Ingram and Malcolm Yapp, who McKay ought to have considered, have argued it was a policy of the government of India, in the main supported by London, to build up a buffer of smaller - preferably allied - states between itself and the Russian Empire. Either because a direct boundary between Britain and Russia might lead to a war between them, or because this might lead to Indian states siding with Russia. This vitally concerned Persia and Afghanistan, to some extent also Mesopotamia and, much less importantly, Bukhara - which British India more or less recognized as a Russian sphere of influence. Thus the Great Game did not primarily concern Central Asia, it was not an issue of control but a policy of keeping the Russians out and preferably of an empire on the cheap: keeping the British Indian army out too. Nor was it a frontiersmen struggle, but the central policy of the Government of India (and London as well). And it was not `rhetoric' or `legend' but a well-proven line to establish weak buffer-states, the like of which great powers have been pursuing since Roman times. (McKay might profit from reading Edward Luttwak's classic `Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire', which deals inter alia with the `Great Game' between the Sassanids and the Romans fifteen hundred years before). Perhaps all that was `hoary chestnuts' and `rhetorical exercises' to side with Kuleshiv, but in that case states have been playing with hoary chestnuts and engaging in `rhetoric' for at least three thousand years. Well - history is probably all about bunk to vary Henry Ford, but should we admit that loudly? Dr R.J. Barendse is an IIAS Affiliated Fellow, stationed at IIAS Branch Office in Amsterdam, e-mail: r.barendse@worldonline.nl.

   IIAS | IIAS Newsletter Online | No. 18 | Regions |Central Asia