Dandelion and Ash Consulting

Last week saw the Trump Administration soften its public stance on China. After months of an openly hostile approach, President Trump changed his stance and acquiesced to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s request to honour the prevailing One China Policy that has ruled Sino-American diplomatic relations for the past 40 years.

Both the White House and Xinhua reported that the call was “lengthy” and an “extremely cordial chat” where Presidents Xi and Trump agreed that they would work on strengthening the “mutually beneficial cooperation in trade and economy, investment as well as international affairs”.

Trump Administration Anti-China?

The sudden rapprochement in the previously frosty relations has caught many by surprise. After the demise of the TPP trade deal, political analysts had been focusing on the possibility of a pacific war between the two nations. Primarily this was due to President Trump’s public comments on China prior to his inauguration and the appointment of Steve Bannon as the White House Chief Strategist and Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Both of these men have made comments citing the need to militarily engage China, such as the following made by Tillerson at his confirmation hearing.

“We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed … They are taking territory or control or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China’s.”

However, all may not be as it seems. According to Paul Haenle, a veteran US diplomat and director of the Carnegie–Tsinghua Centre in Beijing, the Trump administration’s tough talk on China was all part of a hardball strategy Trump’s team implemented to get China to soften up to Trump’s trade demands.

“Trump had been toying with the notion of trying to use it (One China Policy) to get leverage with the Chinese but was convinced that it was in the US interests to abide by it … Trump was convinced, and rightly so, that the ‘One China’ policy is not something we do because it is good for Beijing. It is in America’s interests.”

Haenle went onto to argue,

“This will open the door now for the US and China to begin to develop the relationship that will allow them to tackle some of the more difficult and contentious issues…… that really need work such as trade, North Korea and the South China Sea.”

Supporting this argument are the statements made by Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, on February 7th in Australia. Wang pointed out that ‘the China-US relationship has defied all kinds of difficulties and has been moving forward continuously,” he continued on to state that any ‘sober-minded politician’ would ‘clearly recognise that there cannot be conflict between China and the United States because both will lose, and both sides cannot afford that.’

Keeping Face or China in Real Trouble

Certainly the quick resolution of these tensions on China’s part is surprising. In recent months the Beijing-run media, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, have been highly critical of the new administration.

They have lambasted President Trump for his twitter diplomacy and stated that the U.S. would need to “wage war” to stop the Chinese from accessing their currently disputed South China Sea Island Initiative.

Thus it is questionable as to what caused this sudden change of heart. Although this may have been just a case of keeping face, the pressing domestic problems currently besieging China may point to a different reason.

Political Turmoil

Behind the scenes the Communist Party is far from stable. The current anti-corruption campaign led by President Xi is ripping apart the elite segments of the ruling party as Xi seeks to eliminate former leader Jiang Zemin’s coterie who had tried to oust him.

Investigating over a million party faithful, the Anti-Corruption Agency has purged over 200 elite members from government bodies, the military, and state-owned enterprises. Very powerful elites, such as the former security czar Zhou Yongkang, and the retired military vice chairs Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, were probed, prosecuted, and imprisoned for life.

The fallout of this purge has left the Chinese Communist Party in a state of flux. To avoid further destabilisation President Xi currently needs to focus on keeping his and his supporters position secure. A situation that may prove difficult given the current economic outlook for China.

Economic Collapse on the Horizon

Domestically, the Chinese economy is at a crossroads according to John Minnich from Market Watch. Thanks to the governments monetary and fiscal stimulus measures the country’s debt has swelled to almost 250% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Likewise, corporate debt, the largest portion of China’s total debt, has surged by more than 60% to make up 165% of the GDP. This has created the perfect conditions for a nationwide debt crisis as businesses default and bankruptcies increase along with falling industrial profits and the declining returns on investment.

When combined with the 188 billion dollars of capital that has left the country in the past year, this signals that there is a significant economic readjustment on the horizon.

To offset this potentially devastating downturn, China needs capital investment, in particular America’s trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, to continue. This investment is now in doubt thanks to the cancellation of the TPP and the Trump administrations’ promise to impose tariffs on all Chinese goods coming into America.

Play Nice

President Xi Jinping needs the Sino-American bilateral relations to return to a stable working platform as soon as possible. Without America, Xi could be faced with a destabilised China, on the brink of economic and political collapse. A situation that the Soviet Union demonstrated so clearly in the 1990s is clearly the death knell of authoritarian centralised states.

Essentially the foundation of Sino-American diplomatic relations the One China Policy was created in 1979 when the U.S. severed its official diplomatic relationship with the Republic of China also known as Taiwan in favour of recognising the People Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party as the government of the territory encompassing Taiwan and China. While the Chinese Communist Party insists it is the legitimate government, nations like the United States avoid supporting this declaration by simply acknowledging the CCP’s position.

The past year has seen the return of Russia to a prime position on the global stage. Gone are the days when Putin was content with maintaining Russia’s dominion over its near abroad in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Baltics. Putin is now openly pursuing a much larger foreign policy platform.

From its intercession in the Syrian conflict, to the recent renewal of its military might in the Pacific and the Baltic, Russia has restored its superpower status with a vengeance. Most interesting is the new and innovative playbook Russia is using for its foreign policy agenda.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia’s foreign policy has relied heavily upon its military might or hard power to ensure its national security and protect its interests internationally. But over the past 24 months, Russia has been engaged in creating a new and unique soft power policy to redefine its hard and soft mechanisms for foreign policy.

Cold War Revisited

Soft Power or the expansion of a nations influence through persuasion and attraction rather than military or economic pressure is not a new idea. During the Cold War, America and the Soviet Union utilised soft power to promote their ideologies, norms and values in order to win over the hearts and minds of the international community.

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, many western nations continued to utilise soft power initiatives to consolidate the spread of western liberal ideas and culture. Aiding this endeavour was a combination of the globalisation of the western media companies, the American entertainment industry, the accessibility of the internet and western nation’s foreign policy initiatives.

Soft Warfare

For Russia, this extensive dispersal of western liberal influence was viewed as a potential threat. Citing events like Colour Revolutions, the Maiden Protest in the Ukraine and the uprisings now known colloquially as the Arab Spring, Russia believed America was using soft power as a weapon in a new form of hybrid warfare.

In an article for the Moscow newspaper Moskovskie novosti prior to his re-election in 2012, Putin strongly criticised United States involvement in the Arab Spring arguing that,

‘Soft power’ is a complex of tools and methods to achieve foreign policy goals without the use of force, through information and other means of influence. Unfortunately, these methods are often used to encourage and provoke extremism, separatism, nationalism, manipulation of public sentiment, and outright interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states”

The concept that this is a new type of hybrid warfare is incongruous. During the Cold War the Soviet Union utilised soft power as a weapon just as well as the west, promoting ideologically based Communist revolutions in countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan to name a few.

Nevertheless, in March 2016 Valery Gerasimov, Russian Chief of General Staff at the Academy of Military Science, spoke about how the Colour Revolutions of the early 2000’s forced Russia to reconsider its Foreign Affairs Policy. Arguing that these people powered revolutions were a form of hybrid warfare, Gerasimov stated that “responding to them using conventional troops is impossible: they can only be counteracted with the same hybrid methods”.

Old Dog with New Tricks

For Russia this means responding in kind, which is currently in line with Russia’s pragmatic understanding of soft power and its applications. As a result, on the surface Russia is presenting itself as magnanimous and practical world power via its media mouthpieces Russia Today and Sputnik. Russia has been supporting Russian culture around the globe through cultural organisations like Russkiy Mir and the government agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which currently has an operating budget of 95.5 million dollars.

However, covertly, through state sponsored cyber operations Russia’s has pursued new foreign policy initiatives designed to destabilised its enemies and support its goals in the international community. Since 2014 Russia has been accused of striking numerous countries such as the Ukraine, Germany, France and the United States with cyber-attacks. But of course these skills have taken years to hone, and Russia usage of these tactics domestically and in combat zones like Georgia have refined and polished them.

Most recently of course Russia is believed to have delved into political cyber operations through the state-sponsored cyber hacking group APT28 who attacked not just the White House but also orchestrated the Clinton-DNC attack and Wikileaks release of 20, 000 emails days before the Democratic National Congress and more recently the German Parlaiment.

Risk To Western Democracies?

The risks of Russia’s new covert foreign policy are manifold. Russia has already demonstrated its willingness to interfere in a western nations democratic processes with the United States election and their success in this endeavour could be viewed as a mandate to interfere in future elections run in Western nations it deems a threat.

A point was agreed on by security firm Crowdstrike’s Chief Technical Officer, Dmitry Alperovitch, who noted that he had met with senior government officials across Europe who were afraid that the Kremlin’s success will herald similar attacks aimed at upcoming elections in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.

“They’re concerned that the precedent that’s been set is that you can do this against the US, and if so, that they’ll be walked all over by Russia.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is up for re-election in 2017 has also stated, “We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,”.

It is through these campaigns of misinformation that the Kremlin is completing its overarching goal of policy paralysis throughout the west. Desinformatsiya or Russian disinformation is now regarded as an important aspect of Russian military strategy, and it is being used to target political processes in western nations with a proficiency not previously witnessed. In Sweden, for example, the recent debate over the country’s membership in NATO was hijacked by misleading stories on social media and the mainstream media indicating that; NATO would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; would attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could attack Swedish women etc. This surge of false information confused the public perceptions of the issue and as a result many people ‘got scared, asking what can be believed, what should be believed?’ said Marinette Nyh Radebo, spokeswoman for the Swedish Defence Minister Mr. Hultqvist’s spokeswoman.

Not content with disrupting governments and foreign societies Russia has also turned its cyber army on any voices of opposition. According to a recent Chatham House Research Paper by Keir Giles entitled Russia’s New Tools For Confronting the West, Russia has already found out that they can silence the voices of opposition to their narrative globally on social media by utilising an online ‘troll army’.

For example in January this year the use of mass bots posting automated complaints led to the banning of pro-Ukrainian accounts on twitter, thereby silencing an open and free medium that challenged Russian disinformation.

The West is Trumped

Worryingly, many believe that thanks to the success of these new tactics, and the more domestic focus of the incoming Trump administration, Russia will only become emboldened in its new hybrid warfare causing chaos across the globe. Pundits argue that Russia was kept somewhat in check by the outgoing Obama Administration through its sanctions, such as those announced this week to eject Russian operatives and sanction Russia over it role in the cyber-attacks on the DNC and the White House.

President–Elect Trump’s administration, on the other hand, is seeking redress with Russia. While this will take time to establish, President-elect Trump and Putin are regarded by the Russians as being on the same page. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on Russia’s Channel One that ‘They (Putin and Trump) set out the same main foreign policy principles and that is incredible’, he continued ‘It is phenomenal how close they are to one another when it comes to their conceptual approach to foreign policy. And that is probably a good basis for our moderate optimism that they will at least be able to start a dialogue to start to clear out the Augean stables in our bilateral relations.’

Russia’s good relations will come at a price, and for now that seems to be the removal of sanctions. According to a recent survey taken by Bloomberg, 55% of analysts questioned believed Trump would remove sanctions, and this can only be benefit Russia.

The year ahead for Russia looks bright economically

Economically the removal of sanctions is estimated to deliver a boost equivalent to 0.2% growth in Russia’s GDP in 2017 and by 2018 it should deliver 0.5% which will move the Russian economy out of its slow decline. Russia will also get a huge boost economically from the changes to OPEC production limits.

Fundamentally, the decision to cut oil production resulting in a price rise to $50 dollars a barrel benefits Russia as it will prop up international prices and support the Rouble given the central place crude oil occupies in Russia’s export economy. However, thanks to Russia’s undeniable rise in its production to a new post-soviet record of 11.231 million barrels per day (bpd), Russia could see a change in its fortunes. Thanks to its increased output, Russia is in a prime position to gain a larger market share in the energy industry while countries like Saudi Arabia, who were pumping 10.6 million bpd in November but have now to cut 486,000 bpd, will see their revenue decrease.

Risks for Russia

Russia’s recent wins with soft power do not guarantee it will have continued success in the international community. Soft Power as a foreign policy tool is highly contingent on domestic economic strength and technological capacity.

Currently Russia is languishing economically with massive currency inflation, declining foreign investment and weak economic growth. This will undoubtedly affect its ability to finance many of these soft policy initiatives and the lack of economic funding will bring its own set of risks.

According to Australian cybersecurity researcher Daniel Clark from the University of New South Wales one of the risks to Russia stems from training a group of people in cyber warfare. According to Clark there can be significant long-term management problems if these individuals choose to utilise their skills outside of their designated work.

From launching cyberattacks on their domestic market to attacking overseas targets, cyber units have the ability to cause massive social unrest and destabilisation in Russia itself if they turn their skills on their own country.

Internationally, Russia also runs the risk of opening itself up to revenge attacks from other international cyber warfare units, who are seeking redress for the previous incursions onto high level targets like the Whitehouse or the German Parliament.

The end result would be the gradual development of a hostile cyber environment that has the potential to spread globally, generating an unsecure global cyber environment.

As Syrian forces move into East Aleppo today, the world is waiting to see the death toll from the final assault on the formerly rebel held district. The city of Aleppo has been roughly divided between the government held forces in the west and the rebel militias in the East since 2012. After weeks of incessant fighting and Russian air raids, forces loyal to Assad are now in reach of ending the siege of East Aleppo, leaving many civilians unable to flee and fearing for their lives.

Despite an initial breakdown of the first ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, only hours after it was implemented on Wednesday, the announcement today of another ceasefire and the beginning of evacuations by the Red Cross has brought some relief to the volatile situation.

Thin Green Line

According to the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which is overseeing the evacuation with the Syrian Arm of the Red Crescent, the full evacuation of East Aleppo may take several days. The United Nations has previously stated that there was an estimated 250,000 civilians in East Aleppo with roughly 100,000 being children. However, many are believed to have fled to the government controlled western side of the city and this is hindering calculation of exact evacuee numbers.

Thursday’s evacuations have managed to rescue some 3000 plus civilians but the evacuations will be ongoing throughout the night and following days according to the ICRC. A fleet of 13 ambulances and a fleet of 20 green buses will move those in danger 21 kilometres into the Adlib province which is currently controlled by rebel forces.

The head of the Russian military’s General Staff, Gen Valery Gerasimov, told a news briefing:

“A humanitarian corridor has been created for the evacuation of militants. This corridor is 21 kilometers long. Six kilometres lie across Aleppo’s territories controlled by government troops and another 15 kilometers through territories in the hands of illegal armed groups.”

United Nations humanitarian advisor for Syria, Jan Egeland, said the evacuation will move an estimated 30,000 civilians and will involve the evacuation of the sick and wounded, vulnerable civilians, and fighters. “Thousands of people are in need of evacuation, but the first and most urgent thing is wounded, sick and children, including orphans,” he said.

Turkey a fellow organiser of the evacuation is preparing to receive some of the most vulnerable civilians, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. In a televised address, he stated that Turkey would receive “children, elders, those who are really in difficult conditions”.

Constant Threat

Concerns have been raised over the success of the evacuation due to its proximity to the ongoing conflict. The Turkish Red Crescent has told Reuters that it is preparing a refugee camp in the Idlib province which will host some 80,000 people. The Idlib province is controlled by a powerful rebel alliance that includes the terrorist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura warned that moving those evacuated to Idlib might not prove much safer. “If there is no political agreement and a ceasefire, Idlib will become the next Aleppo,” he told reporters in Paris.

Backing up this claim is Syrian President Assad who has stated publically in October that a victory in Aleppo would be a springboard for the end of the civil war. In his interview he singled out Idlib province, west of Aleppo, which is almost entirely controlled by an alliance of Islamist rebel factions and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

And again today when President Assad stated that,

“We are not speaking about a ceasefire. During the talks combat activities are going on since we do not trust terrorists, who in many cases say one thing and do another. For instance, we have demanded to declare a ceasefire in order to regain their strength and get support with weapons and ammunition. Aleppo’s liberation will not end up with the terrorists retaking the city under control, he said.”

Certainly the Idlib province is an important stronghold for the rebel alliance. It has several border crossings used by rebels to receive supplies from Turkey, a key backer. However as it also borders the coastal province of Latakia, the heartland of Mr Assad’s minority Alawite sect, it will be considered even more of a threat.

The Spoils of War

The reality of the Syrian conflict is complex. There are many actors currently with stakes in the conflict and this often causes difficulties. Take for example the failure of the first ceasefire on Wednesday. Syrian Opposition groups and UN sources are currently claiming that the rapid return to hostilities in Aleppo was due to Iran’s involvement in the ceasefire.

Reports indicate that the Iranian government was insistent that the scheduled humanitarian evacuation of East Aleppo include a simultaneous evacuation of injured people from the villages of Foua and Kefraya that are currently being besieged by rebel forces, complicating the evacuation.

So it is hardly surprising that the involvement of Turkey in this recent ceasefire may not be all that it seems. Turkey has strong economic incentives to install itself in the Idlib province and create an enclave it could monitor.

Currently Turkey and Israel are pursuing an avenue for a gas pipeline between the Israeli oil/gas fields and Turkey for export into Europe. As long gas pipelines can only be built economically in shallow waters hugging coastlines (due to the need for future repairs) a planned Turkey-Israel pipeline may potentially need to go through Syria’s economic zone which extends 370 km off the Syrian coastline. Turkey would economically benefit if it could control a coastal section of the Syrian State through an independent Turkish controlled region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest move in his continuing mission to circle is proverbial wagons and develop Russia’s national security and improve its international military capabilities is causing whispers of unease in the international community. For it appears that Russia is making a significant play for control over the North Pacific.

Earlier in the year Russia announced plans to build a new Pacific naval base in the middle of the disputed Kuril Island chain north of Japan. Utilising the pre-existing Japanese structures from World War II on Matua Island, Russia is set to turn the disputed territories into a significant base for the Russian military, with all reports indicating it will become the Russian Navy’s most eastern outpost.

Currently home to several military installations and 20, 000 inhabitants, the Kuril Islands have in recent years been given an overhaul by Russia with significant investment in the economy to renew the islands. Recently, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that significant upgrades to the pre-existing military structures on the archipelago will be occurring over the next three to four years with an initial investment of 700 units of military equipment and weaponry being supplied in this year alone.

According to a Col. Gen. Sergey Surovkin, Commander of the Russian eastern military district, the Russian Far East, and in particular the Kuril Islands, are now considered vitally important for Russia’s national security and Russia will be now undertaking “unprecedented measures to develop military infrastructure in the area”.

“Over the period to 2016 all major objects – more than 150 of them – on the islands of Iturup and Kunashir will be completed. Those will be modern fully autonomous military settlements with a developed social infrastructure,” said Col. Gen. Sergey Surovikin.

The upgrades also include the reorganization of the 18th Division and supplying it with upgraded weapons systems, assigning a tank battalion on a permanent basis, and installing the Pantsyr, Tor, and Buk missile Air Defense systems. There will also be infrastructure for the S-400 missiles to be deployed there in times of crisis. The air component of the islands’ garrison will include Ka-52K naval attack helicopters originally ordered for the Mistral ships, which will be based on the Kamchatka Peninsula and deploy to the islands on a rotational basis. The garrison will also include batteries of land-based anti-ship missiles, including the Bal and Bastion systems; the latter will be armed with supersonic Oniks missiles.

Surovkin also noted that developing this “eastern outpost of Russia, particularly Sakhalin Island and the Kuril islands provides unconditional guarantees of security and the territorial integrity of our country,” he said.

Contested Territory

The only issue with this plan is that the Kuril Islands are at the heart of one of the Pacific’s longest running territorial disputes. Russia and Japan originally divided the islands between themselves in 1855, with Russia taking the northern islands closest to its mainland territory and Japan the southern islands.

After the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5 the Japanese took over the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and it was not until World War II that the whole chain of the Kuril Islands were annexed by the Soviet Union and in 1947 all Japanese inhabitants of the islands were repatriated to Japan.

Japan has, since this time, disputed Russia’s sovereignty over the four most southern islands in the chain; Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai rocks. Putin stated last month that Russia does “not trade territories”. But he also noted that “concluding a peace treaty with Japan is certainly a key issue and we would like to find a solution to this problem together with our Japanese friends.”

Strategically Important

There is no doubt that the Kuril Islands are strategically important for Russia. Firstly, from an operational point of view, collectively the chain of islands form a barrier that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Sea of Okhotsk where a large segment of the Russian Pacific Fleet are stationed on the Kamchatka Peninsula at or around Avacha Bay.

Included in this is the Pacific based submarine fleet which are a cornerstone of the Russian Pacific naval operations. Relinquishing control over the archipelago’s southern region to Japan would effectively hinder the manoeuvrability of the fleet and cause bottle necks during operations.

The loss of the islands would also create a significant threat to Russian national security thanks to the recent Japanese militarisation of a whole belt of Islands that stretch 1400 km from the Japanese mainland towards Taiwan. As part of the United States’ ‘Asia Pivot’ strategy, America and Japan are currently in the process of quietly deploying missile defense systems throughout Japan and South Korea which, given the current diplomatic relations between Russia and the Unites States, would pose a considerable threat.

Finally the islands are a platform for Russia to render defensive strikes against imminent threats or assistance to allies like China in territorial disputes with Japan, the US, and Philippines over the status of China’s new South China Sea islands.

China or Russia

A solution to the dispute may not be far off. The recent diplomatic difficulties with China in the Pacific and its growing expansionism has Japan worried. According to Vasily Kashin, senior research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Japan wants to be the counterbalance to Russia’s relationship with China.

“Both Russia and Japan are interested in bilateral cooperation. Russia needs Japan’s help in modernizing its economy and Japan does not want Russia to be too close to China,” he stated noting that Moscow and Tokyo already seem to have started working on a compromise to the Kuril issue.

As Central Asian leaders continue to observe the fallout from the sudden death of Islam Karimov. The premature demise of one of Central Asia’s long standing political players has created a significant power vacuum within the state.

The fallout from this vacuum has the potential to go three ways. Firstly, Uzbekistan could collapse into political turmoil as the three largest regional clans from Samarkand, Tashkent and Ferghana, compete to consolidate and expand their power structures. The resulting infighting will destabilise the Uzbek state and society leading to regional diasporas and potentially the rise of terrorism.

Another path open to Uzbekistan is that its new leader will walk the country out of its current stagnancy and seize the opportunity to economically and politically move beyond the hardships characterised by Karimov’s 25 year rule. However, given that civil strife is an anathema in most Central Asian nations it is likely that Uzbekistan will just get a new hand on the wheel and everything will continue as normal.

Clan Struggle

Nevertheless the power vacuum created by Karimov’s death will create significant ripples in Uzbekistan’s political landscape. Thanks to Islam Karimov’s iron grip on the Presidency, Uzbekistan’s regional clans have often been an obscured part of Uzbekistan’s political landscape. They are a real and imminent danger to the stability of this nation. Currently the country is divided among 7 clans. If you want to check out the geographical locations of the clans follow the link on  Stratfor.

While the seven clans are divide along provincial lines it is the larger three, Samarkand, Ferghana and Tashkent that are most likely to initiate clan conflict. The smaller regional clans of Jizzakh, Khorezm, Karakalpak and Kashkadarya are more subjugated to the larger clans and tend to keep their focus on their own regions. While these alliances are currently holding, it would take little for these pacts to become destabilised.

Islam Karimov, like the Soviets before him, kept the destabilising jostling of the clans at bay by rigidly sticking with a system of balancing the clans’ power throughout his rule. Aided by his own lack of clan, thanks to his orphancy, Karimov was considered an outsider and as such could sit above the disputes due to his lack of regional ties.

However, Karimov was not immune to the clans’ disfavour. In 1999, for example, several car bombs were set off in Tashkent after his removal of one of Taskent clan’s political elites from the Interior Ministry (MVD). Likewise in 2004, the Interior Ministry (MVD) and the National Security Council or SNB (formerly the KGB), which are linked respectively to the Samarkand and Tashkent clans, appeared to have a turf dispute with bombs exploding across Tashkent and Bukhara.

A Time for Stability or Subversion?

So far there has been little turmoil in Uzbekistan since Karimov death. The succession of Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev, the long-time Prime Minister, to the position of Interim President has experienced no issues.

This is despite the fact that legally the Interim President should have been the Senate Chairman Nigmatilla Yuldashev. Presumably this is because Mirziyoyev is a member of the Samarkand clan and is supported by Tashkent heavy weight, Rustum Inoyatov, the head of the SNB.

According to EurasiaNet.org, Uzbek Journalist Elparid Hadjayev admitted that this transition was not surprising.

“I think that Nigmatilla Yuldashev would have felt very uncomfortable in the position of interim president. He is not a popular figure [and] most people in the country don’t know him. Clearly that is why they picked a person that is in control of the situation in the country,” said Hadjayev.

Furthermore, Mirziyoyev is a logical choice because of his foreign affairs record as Prime Minister and his close ties to Russia.

International Pressure

The importance of international players in Uzbekistan’s presidential contest cannot be understated. Russia and China both see the value in promoting a friendly face into the contest. Russia, for example, has recently wished for more pro-Russian leadership in Tashkent. In the past five years Uzbekistan has been keeping Russia at arm’s length, by holding off from joining with Russia’s plans to establish a Eurasian Union and its 2012 rejection of the Russia led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

China is likewise concerned about the presidential transition but for differing reasons. A Karimov led Uzbekistan was a linchpin in China’s Silk Road Initiative and China has invested heavily in infrastructure in the country. Currently China uses Uzbekistan as a key gateway to the LNG suppliers in the west with three main China-Central Asia Natural Gas Pipelines traversing the entirety of Uzbekistan, and a fourth under construction. Furthermore, Uzbekistan supplies resource hungry China with gas, gold and uranium. So it is hardly surprising that Beijing has sought to upgrade its diplomatic ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership.

Cloudy with a Chance for Revolution
While the transition to an Interim President has been smooth and considerate of the country’s need for economic stability, the next few months have the potential to be very tumultuous.

In Uzbekistan the constitution decrees an election to elect a new president must be held 3 months from now. It is during this period that rivalries will explode as political elites and their clans jockey for the greatest piece of the political and economic pie. The current incarceration in a mental institution of President Karimov’s daughter Gulnara Karimova, the Harvard educated one time billionaire and groomed successor to his presidential throne, by Interim President Mirziyoyev is just the first shot of the Mirziyoyev campaign to secure power.

Then there is Mirziyoyev’s rivalry with Rustam Asimov, the deputy Prime Minister and former close confident of Islam Karimov. Previously a trusted advisor to President Karimov, Asimov has in the past few months been slowly removed from the inner circle of power by Mirziyoyev and SNB Head Inoyatov.

The direction this rivalry will take is not clear. Certainly if Mirziyoyev decides to hold onto power by any means possible the prospect of a colour revolution, like those of the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the 2000’s is not out of the question.

Added into this volatile situation is the involvement of China and Russia who each have a different agenda in Uzbekistan. China, according to several analysts, are desperately unsure about Mirziyoyev and the security of their assets in Uzbekistan. If they refuse to do business with him and the Samarkand clan due to his volatile reputation there is a significant risk that separate clans could utilise this as a means to make their own grab for power.

Russia meanwhile is an old hand at playing one clan of against another to get what they want. During the days of the Soviet Union Russian authorities would regularly make power sharing arrangements with differing Uzbek clans, often supporting Samarkand over Tashkent or vice versa to manipulate their hold over the country. If Russia views China as interfering with its own economic and security plans for Uzbekistan, it will support another clan in their quest for political power.

A rivalry between Russia and China’s differing needs played out in the Uzbek theatre will increase clan rivalries as each group will view the economic and political advantages of garnering international support for their rise to power as paramount. If Mirziyoyev refuses to call the elections and the clans will turn violent, this will destabilise not just Uzbekistan but China and Central Asia politically and economically as well.

A recently released report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation has illustrated the increasing ferocity of the Kazakh government’s cyber campaign against dissent in Kazakhstan. According to the report, the Kazakh government has continued its campaign of intimidation against journalists, opposition members and their families, associates, and lawyers of those who are involved in any litigation with the Kazakh government via malware, cyber-espionage and even kidnapping.

Termed Operation Manal by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Kazakh government hired two independent cyber security firms to supply monitoring malware to surveil and collect data on the Central Asian government’s most outspoken opponents.

Silencing Dissent

Unfortunately this is only the latest chapter in the Kazakh government’s war on dissenters. Since 2011, Kazakhstan has increasingly attempted to establish a Kazakh version of the Great Firewall of China.

Starting softly by forcing all news and forcing sites with .kz domain names to channel their traffic through local Kazakh servers, the Kazakh government effectively pushed multinational companies like Google and Russian blogger sites out of the Kazakh market and opened the way for domestic monitoring of the Internet. In 2012 the Kazakh government targeted news and media outlets that had been critical of the government’s reaction to the December 2011 Zhanaozen strikes, forcing four outlets offline.

Since 2012 the Kazakh government has utilised a variety of malware and targeted spearphishing operations run by hired overseas actors to forcibly crackdown on what it sees as the core instigators of Kazakh political dissent. Mukhtar Ablyazov, the founder of the opposition party, Democratic Choice for Kazakhstan, was one target of Operation Manul’s malware. According to the EFF report, malware was utilised to identify the location of his wife and six year old daughter in Italy. They were then seized by Italian authorities and taken as apparent political hostages by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2013.

Other main voices of public dissent including the newspaper (and now online journal), Respublika, and the blog, Kazaword, have been targeted by the government through both cyberattacks and through the U.S. court system. The Kazakh government’s representatives are currently attempting to use American law to threaten Respublika’s web host and to extract information on the organization from Facebook‘s logs, all the while monitoring Respublika’s founder Irina Petrushova and her husband through its cyber intrusion programmes.

Recreating China’s Great Firewall

Since January 2016, the Kazakh government has extend its cyber surveillance to the whole of Kazakhstan and intercepted all of the country’s encrypted web and mobile phone traffic. Mandating that all Kazakh citizens install a new “national security certificate” on their computers and smartphones that intercepts requests to and from foreign websites, officials can now read mobile and web traffic between Kazakh users and foreign servers, breaking current privacy protections such as SSL.

Attempting to ease the privacy concerns surrounding the new initiative, Kazakhstan’s largest telecommunications company, Kazakhtelecom JSC released a press statement declaring that telecommunication operators were now “obliged” under law to intercept encrypted web and mobile connections flowing into its borders but that this was a measure to “secure protection of Kazakhstan users” who have access to encrypted content from “foreign Internet resources”.

The reality though, is it is little more than a cost effective version of China’s Great Fire Wall. While these measures will allow Kazakh officials to monitor and block large segments of Kazakhstan’s digital traffic for Internet and mobile users it will also cost Kazakhstan politically and economically.

Breaking Dissent or shrinking Economy?

In a recent article on China’s Internet censorship, Margaux Schreurs illustrated the adverse effect that China’s internet censorship is having on foreign investment. A number of issues were identified as being detrimental to businesses.

Be it unreliable internet access, the lack of privacy or the inability of devices like mobile phones and computers to function correctly, Internet censorship can hinder companies from doing business and lead to delays in communications and poor financial development. These issues make countries with Internet censorship less attractive for foreign investment, a situation that Kazakhstan cannot currently countenance given the significant economic pressure on the Kazakh economy.

Security Risk

The lack of cyber security is also a prominent concern throughout the Central Asian IT market. In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, messenger services like Salem, Pager and Va4ach have struggled due to the perception that they are simply the government’s personal data collection agencies, who will steal their personal and business data.

The real concern for Kazakhs and for foreign companies involved in Kazakhstan, according to Steven M. Bellovin, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, was that Kazakhstan’s system would be a tempting target for hackers or foreign government’s cyber intrusion specialists. “Anyone who hacked these boxes would also be able to monitor traffic”.

This poses a significant risk not just to Kazak business but also to those foreign firms involved in the domestic market. As illustrated by the case of DigiNotar, a publically trusted Dutch certificate authority, who in 2011 were hacked thanks to Iran’s internet monitoring and issued a ream of fake certificates to access the accounts of 30,000 Iranian Gmail users. After the attack became public knowledge major technological companies like Google, Microsoft and Adobe blacklisted DigiNotar which went bankrupt several months later.

If this occurred in Kazakhstan and the Kazakh certificate authority is blacklisted then large sections of the internet will no longer be available to Kazakhs. A beneficial outcome if you are trying to control the net surfing population but of little value when trying attracting overseas investment.