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Eurasia
November 3, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
Kazakhstan’s new military doctrine shifts logic of country’s security agenda
Kanat Shaku in Almaty
A new military doctrine quietly passed in Ka- zakhstan on September 29 has received almost no public attention. Neither Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who signed the decree, nor the Central Asian country’s defence minis- try has commented on it. Last week, the Eurasia Daily Monitor – a publication of the conservative Washington, DC-based Jamestown Foundation – featured an article delving into the details of the doctrine by Anna Gussarova, the director for the Central Asia department at the Institute for Stra- tegic Studies in London.
The document, outlining Kazakhstan’s “key pri- orities in military security”, strays away from the focus on terrorism and extremism emphasised in the ex-Soviet nation’s previous military doctrine, adopted in 2011, according to the article. Instead, it stresses the importance of border security and the mitigation of potential armed conflicts. Gus- sarova also pointed out that the new document
is similar to Belarus’s modified military doctrine from 2016.
“Even though the Kazakhstani document does not precisely identify any major conflicts that could pose a threat, it significantly shifts the rhetoric and logic of the country’s security agenda. The overall tone of Astana’s new military doctrine has a geopolitical background,” Gussarova writes. “The text is full of Cold War – style jargon – name- ly ‘confrontation between global and regional powers for spheres of influence,’ ‘the arms race,’ ‘increased tensions,’ ‘a certain country’s desire to change the existing world order,’ and ‘militariza-
President Nursultan Nazarbayev inspects a Kazakh military parade.
tion of the region’ – that could easily be attributed more to Moscow.”
The doctrine also introduces a concept of “hybrid warfare”, which appears to echo tactics used in Eastern Ukraine, listing “ways of achieving mili- tary-political and military-strategic objectives of an integrated military force (including special op- erations forces, private military security compa- nies on the territory of the opposing side), via non- military means, as well as by using the potential of other states, terrorist and extremist organisa- tions, and separatist movements to destabilize the situation in the territory of the opposing state”.
The document never explicitly refers to Russia as a source of threats and maintains Kazakhstan will enhance cooperation with the Russia-led Col- lective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, of which Russia is a member, among other international organisations. Still, the intentional obscurity of “global powers” that could threaten Kazakhstan specifically on its borders, suggests an attempt by Kazakhstan to potentially stay on the lookout for threats originating from only two neighbours
– Russia or China; and China has not been par- ticularly menacing towards Kazakhstan as of late, certainly not with Kazakhstan fully engaged in China’s massive One Belt One Road initiative to create modern Silk Road-type trade corridors boasting modern infrastructure.
An invisible wedge has been growing between Russia and its Central Asian neighbour since Rus-