Azerbaijan, Baku, August 15 / Trend V. Zhavoronkova /
The USA is not concerned about establishment of the Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan, as its scale is very small, and Washington is interested in the Central Asian region only within operation in Afghanistan.
"I think that now the USA is not concerned about the base because it is planned to be small. But this small Russian base is not dangerous for the USA," the Russian expert on the CIS and Central Asia, Leonid Gusev, said.
The Pentagon's representative, Alexander Vershbow, in an interview with Interfax on Wednesday said that the USA does not intend to have permanent bases in Central Asia.
Commenting Russian intention to place a military base in Kyrgyzstan, U.S Deputy Minister of Defense for International Security said that it is normal that the USA has no special position on this issue.
The decision to establish the base was made after the informal summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, held in Kyrgyzstan in early August.
The memorandum on further development and improvement of bilateral contractual-legal base regulating presence of Russian troops Kyrgyzstan and deployment of additional Russian military contingent in Kyrgyzstan was signed between Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
However, scale of the planned base in Kyrgyzstan is too small to puzzle USA, experts said.
Future Russian base in the Kyrgyz city of Osh, is unlikely to cause concern among U.S people, European expert on Central Asia, Yuri Fedorov, said.
"A battalion of Russian land forces is planned to be deployed there, i.e. a maximum of 1,000 people, and set up a Russian-Kyrgyz Training Center, researcher of the Russian and Eurasian Program of the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House, Fedorov, told Trend via e-mail.
He said that it will not have any serious strategic importance. Its personnel may be suitable to counteract rather small extremist groups entering Kyrgyzstan from Afghanistan through Tajikistan, as well as to quell insignificant disorders, Fedorov said.
Moreover, it is difficult for the USA to compete with Russia in the region.
"The USA has realized that treating Central Asia (and the rest of the former Soviet Union) as a chessboard where it engages in a zero-sum competition with Russia and China is both fruitless and counterproductive," U.S expert on Russia, Jeffrey Mankoff, said.
Associate Director of International Security Studies of Yale University, Mankoff said that it is fruitless because Russia and China are much closer to the region and have more at stake and that if forced to choose between Russia/China and the West, the Central Asian leaders would always opt for Russia and China.
Adjunct Fellow for Russia and Eurasia Studies Council on Foreign Relations, Mankoff said that it is counterproductive, because perpetual sniping over Central Asia was impeding cooperation with Moscow elsewhere.
He said that Washington has, it seems, decided that Russia's military presence in the region, as long as it is done in agreement with the Central Asian governments themselves, is not a major threat to U.S interests.
But anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has great importance for Washington.
Fedorov said that Alexander Vershbow's speech follows that the U.S Ministry of Defense is interested first in the continuation of transit to Afghanistan through the airport of Manas, as well as at the beginning of air transit through Russia.
"Both factors have strategic importance for the USA until there are U.S troops in Afghanistan," Fedorov said.
He said that it can be assumed that the USA has no other big interests in the Central Asia.
Cooperation of the USA and NATO is implemented with Russia in this region, Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies under the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Gusev, said.
"I take into account the agreement on transit of non-military freights via Russia and Central Asian countries to Afghanistan," Gusev said.
In part, I think part of the change can be ascribed to the new administration in the USA, which is more interested in working with the Russians and less intent on using the overseas presence of the U.S military as a force for spreading democracy, Mankoff said.
Gusev said that one can not say about any solid cooperation.
"In this context, Washington may be inclined to not only cooperate with Russia in Central Asia, but let Moscow to solve difficult task of fighting with Islamic extremism and support for local authoritarian regimes," Fedorov said.
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