Middle Asia under influence of Great Power (Russia) in 19th century (The Great Game)

Middle Asia under influence of Great Power (Russia) in 19th century
(The Great Game)

The Great Game was a term for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. The metaphor of Ў°the Great GameЎ± describes the power competition between Russia and Great Britain in the 19th century over the future of Central Asia.It describes a period of Russian expansion and the moves made by Britain to counter what they thought was Russian aggression in the region. Indeed, the Great Game had a stake that was much greater than Central Asia.From the British perspective, the Russian Empire's expansion into Central Asia threatened to destroy the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, India. The British feared that the Tsar's troops would subdue the Central.Asian khanates (Khiva, Bokhara, Khokand) one after another. The Emirate of Afghanistan might then become a staging post for a Russian invasion of India.The stake was India. There was a perception that RussiaЎЇs ambition would not limited to incorporating Central Asia. Central Asia was the gateway into Afghanistan, and Afghanistan was the gateway into India.It was with these thoughts in mind that in 1838 the British launched the First Anglo-Afghan War and attempted to impose a puppet regime on Afghanistan under Shuja Shah. The regime was short lived and proved unsustainable without British military support. By 1842, mobs were attacking the British on the streets of Kabul and the British garrison was forced to abandon the city due to constant civilian attacks.The British curbed their ambitions in Afghanistan following this humiliating retreat from Kabul.The retreating British army consisted of approximately 4,500 troops (of which only 690 were European) and 12,000 camp followers. During a series of attacks by Afghan warriors, William Brydon, were killed on the march back to India; a few Indian soldiers survived also and crossed into India later. After the Indian rebellion of 1857, successive British governments saw Afghanistan as a buffer state. The Russians, led by Konstantin Kaufman, Mikhail Skobelev, and Mikhail Chernyayev, continued to advance steadily southward through Central Asia towards Afghanistan, and by 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed.Samarkand became part of the Russian Empire in 1868, and the independence of Bukhara was virtually stripped away in a peace treaty the same year.

By the 1890s, the Central Asian khanates of Khiva Bukhara and Kokand had fallen, becoming Russian vassals. With Central Asia in the Tsar's grip, the Great Game now shifted eastward to China, Mongolia and Tibet.There are a number of reasons why the Russians wanted to move southward into Central Asia. First, there was an economic reason, that is, to create markets for Russian goods. This motive became even more acute in 1860s as a result of the U.S. Civil War, when the south was isolated and cotton was in short supply. Cotton was a prime motive not only in initiating expansion, but also to consolidating the territory of the Russian political and economic system as rapidly as possible.The Russians also saw the expansion into the east and the south as their civilizing mission, their version of Ў°Manifest Destiny,Ў± in order to bring the savages of the Central Asian people under control.There is also an issue of slavery. Certain Khanates had regularly raided in the Russian area around the Caspian Sea. They brought back Russians and sold them as slaves. This was the public motive to justify the expansion in Central Asia. This is something that the British had caught on to and actually vigorously lobbied for the release of the Russians.The Russian administration of Turkestan at the time was actually quite similar to the strategies employed by the European powers. One similarity is the military was in charge of the territory and politically organized them. But this created tension between authorities in Moscow and regional commanders who always wanted military solutions and expansion.. It is unclear how much tension there was in India between the two. The over-zealous aggressive military (by local commanders) was an excellent excuse for politicians in St. Petersburg to apologize to the world when they conquered new territory. It must be remembered that communication in that period was poor. Military governors could do all they wanted to do in their communities.In the British side of the equation, the British were split between the Hawks who favored forward strategies in the region as a mean to preempting any Russian maneuvers; and there were defensive positional is who believed these strategies might do more harm. The basic concern here is the Russian had gained a foothold in Central Asia, and hence they had gained a foothold into Afghanistan, the critical buffer state. Cities like Herat, Kandahar, and Kabul were considered to be key cities. In the two Afghan Wars (1840s and 1870s), the British attempted to dethrone the then Afghan regime and installing a compliant puppet that would ally with them rather than the Russians. However, the British were forced out.

Cold War: After the success of the temporary Second World War alliance among the Allied forces, which included the United States of America, the British Commonwealth and the Soviet Union (USSR); a new era of geopolitical realignment began which left the US and the USSR as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. During this post-Second World War, post-colonial period the legacy of the Great Game would sow the seeds of a new sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies; and the Communist world, led by the Soviet Union together with its satellite states and allies. This era, coined the "Cold War", or "Great Game II" by some scholars; was so named because it never featured any direct military action as both sides possessed nuclear weapons and their use would have probably guaranteed their mutual assured destruction.

Historians trace the start of Cold War era to 1947. This was the year that decolonisation of the British Empire started which has been described as one of the focal points of Cold War evolution. Britain's withdrawal changed the dynamics of inter-Asian geopolitics, especially in Central Asia and the Middle East; leading to several conflicts including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the 1953 Iranian coup d'Ё¦tat and the 1958 Iraqi Revolution. The USSR discovered the same bitter truth within its 1979 misadventure in Afghanistan as the British had found in the 19th Century, and withdrew its last troops from the so-called "graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan. in 1988. The Cold War culminated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The relevance of the Great Game in the Cold War context is evident in the final years of Mohammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed president of Afghanistan. During his 1992-96 refuge in the UN compound in Kabul, while waiting for the UN to negotiate his safe passage to India, he engaged himself by translating Peter Hopkirk's book The Great Game into his mother tongue Pashto.A few months before his execution by the Taliban, he quoted, "Afghans keep making the same mistake," reflecting upon his translation to a visitor.

End of the Cold War to 2001: In the 1990s, the use of the expression "The New Great Game" in reference to classical "Great Game" appeared; to describe the competition between various Western powers, Russia, and China for political influence and access to raw materials in Central Eurasia—"influence, power, hegemony and profits in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus".

Many authors and analysts viewed this new "game" as centring around regional petroleum politics in Central Asian republics. Noopolitik plays a more central role than ever in the balance of power of the New Great Game; and instead of competing for actual control over a geographic area - "pipelines, tanker routes, petroleum consortiums, and contracts" - are the prizes of the new Great Game.

2001 to present: In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan in order to aid Afghan rebels of the Northern Alliance in removing the Taliban regime which had allowed al-Qaeda to operate training camps within Afghanistan. By the end of 2001 the Taliban regime had lost control of most of the territory it had held and its leadership had crossed the border into Pakistan's tribal areas. United States forces and their NATO allies have remained in Afghanistan supporting the current regime of President Hamid Karzai. This has led to new geopolitical efforts for control and influence in the region. Many commentators have either compared these political machinations to the Great Game as played out by the Russians and British in the nineteenth century, or described them as part of a continuing Great Game,and has become prevalent in literature about the region; appearing in book titles, academic journals, news articles, and government reports. While energy resources and military bases are mentioned as part of the Great Game, so is the continuing jostling for strategic advantage between Great powers and between the regional powers in mountainous border regions in the Himalayas. In the 21st century, the great game continues.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04