American policy makers took advantage of conditions created by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington to shake up the strategic balance in Central Asia. The United States quickly opened military bases in Uzbekistan (Karshi-Khanabad) and Kyrgyzstan (Manas). It increased foreign assistance to all the states in the region, and talked about new kinds of strategic partnerships and alliances.

Six years later, however, a sense of disappointment prevails, and American influence throughout Central Asia is on the decline. Much of the problem relates directly or indirectly to the United States’ shift in focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. Whereas initially there was considerable talk about the need for a regional strategy for Afghan reconstruction, high-level us attention drifted away from this problem in 2003 as the Bush administration searched for justifications and international support for its desired invasion of Iraq. As a result, assistance for Central Asian states has fallen short of what was envisioned in Washington’s early, ambitious plans, not to mention the more inflated expectations of the states themselves.

The biggest complication, though, has been us advocacy of a “freedom agenda,” which was designed in large part to justify the ongoing human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, since it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found there. The timing of this shift in public diplomacy coincided with the end of the political life spans of two communist-era leaders in the region. Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze fell in the Rose Revolution in November 2003. A year later, President Leonid Kuchma’s plans to orchestrate his own succession went awry in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Official Washington’s heralding of these events, in which publicly or privately funded us nongovernmental organizations played much-debated roles, left Central Asian leaders concerned that they too might be targeted for “regime change.”

Events in the region escalated in March 2005 with the ouster of Kyrgyzstan’s President Askar Akayev in the Tulip Revolution—blame for which was again laid on the United States, more inappropriately this time—followed in May 2005 by the violent suppression of demonstrators in Andijan, Uzbekistan, by Uzbek security forces. The reaction of the United States and European Union nations to the loss of life in Andijan, including the killing of scores of unarmed people, magnified the difference in value systems between the West and the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)— China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The West focused on the need for an international investigation to hold accountable those responsible for civilian deaths. The members of the SCO concentrated on a “terrorist” action: an armed prison break that triggered the protests in Andijan. Within weeks, the Americans were asked to withdraw their base from Uzbekistan.

In the meantime, the belief that the United States was behind the “color revolutions” has helped both Russia and China strengthen their positions in the region. Russia used the opening of the US bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, along with newly negotiated bilateral security arrangements between the United States and the other three Central Asian states, to successfully press for improved security relations with all five countries in the region. China’s economic influence in Central Asia, particularly in the thriving energy sector, has continued to grow. And all six member-states of the SCO have shown interest in increasing the range of functions of this relatively ill-defined organization in which Americans do not participate.

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