The dramatic revision of China's GDP (Dec 20) by the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing reveals that the dragon's economic vitality is far more robust than earlier estimated.

Many of the anxieties about China bucking macro-econometric tenets and structural fiscal prudence seem to be misplaced and the current quip is that it is not the patient who is ill but the tools used for the diagnosis of the Chinese economy!
Estimates about any quantitative indicator pertaining to China have been famously skewed for decades and this ranges from the claims made in the early decades during the Great Leap Forward about food and steel production to famine deaths and defence expenditure and evidently Beijing is now keen to restore credibility in its official statistics.

The Chinese GDP for 2004 has been revised to $1.97 trillion and this takes it to the fourth position in the global hierarchy - just behind the US, Japan and Germany. The GDP growth rate for 2005 is estimated to be 9.4 % and may slow down fractionally in 2006 but will still be above the enticing 9% mark.

If this scorching pace is sustained, one may infer that China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy around 2035 - that is 30 years from now - telescoping the earlier estimate by about a decade.

The GDP for the last year was estimated to be $12.6 trillion and clearly there is lots of catching up to do in the next three decades but the Chinese determination to attain this perch is not in doubt and the dragon is on a canter.

It is precisely for this reason that the Asian strategic matrix is in a state of slow turbulence and the ripples were discernible at the first East-Asia Summit (EAS) held in Kuala Lumpur in mid-December. But it is not China alone that is the focus of global strategic attention and India - despite its relatively more modest showing at the hustings - is also on the radarscope.

The current buzz is that 2005 will be remembered as the year when gold, China and India were on the rise and while this is heady company, the long-term implications of the current shift in the Eurasian politico-economic tectonic plates merit careful scrutiny to identify the opportunities and challenges for the elephant.

India's GDP in 2004 was closer to $700 billion, a little over a third of China and the GDP growth rate is estimated to be about 7%, creditable given the many disparities that characterise the two political, economic and socio-cultural domains.

Due to their inherent demographic advantages and relative position in the macro-economic 'catch-up' curve, it is estimated that all indicators being equal - the world will become tripolar by about 2050-55 with China, the US and India at the high table.

In other words, China and India that once contributed to half the global wealth will return to this position after a quarter of a millennium and the global strategic centre of gravity will be back in Asia.

However, there are many caveats to this scenario and much of this was on display at the EAS where the simmering historical animosity between China and Japan on one hand and the anxiety of the smaller Asean states and South Korea on the other were on display.

The fact that the US was excluded from the summit while Russia was invited as a guest added to the chess game and the many complementarities within Eurasia including the energy potential of Moscow and a relatively fragile Central Asia were highlighted.

The most abiding fault-line is that between China and Japan and it is instructive that within a day of the Chinese GDP revision, Tokyo voiced its concern about China's defence expenditure and the military build-up. Beijing on the other hand was keen to assure its interlocutors that China's rise was "peaceful" and that a benign dragon was not an oxymoron!

This entire spectrum of strategic animation and Delhi's own politico-economic trajectory in the last decade (including the nuclear tests of May 1998) have made India a 'swing state' of critical import and this is borne out by some seminal developments of 2005 that reverberated at the EAS.

The single most important development is the re-casting of the US-India relationship by the Bush administration that was formalised in the July 18 agreement and the impact this has had on the Eurasian strategic systemic.

One may cautiously aver that if the letter and spirit of the Bush-Manmohan agreement is taken to its maximum potential, the strategic architecture of the 21st century which is poised to be one of a knowledge-based economy, committed to normative, plural democratic values will be radically different from that of the last century.

However, India would have to read the current turbulence and the tea leaves very astutely and evolve a range of pro-active measures across the board.

The primary goal is to ensure that the national discourse moves from the mind-set of an inflexible and arid interpretation of non-alignment and prickly insularity bordering on xenophobia to a more self-assured posture based on credible empirical indicators such as a vibrant democracy, rule of law, equitable economic vitality and a conviction that the Elephant is on the move.

By current projections, India will cross the $1 trillion GDP mark by 2009 and this is happy augury. The year 2005 has been an encouraging one for India from the strategic perspective and evolving meaningful partnerships with the nodes of relevance has been the leit-motif of Dr Manmohan Singh's macro- policy initiatives.

Thus, India may be seen to be moving from the inheritance of non-alignment, which had its validity in the earlier systemic of bi-polarity and the state-regulated command economy, to a more flexible and pragmatic posture of being meaningfully 'unaligned' vis-à-vis the major powers.

This was the refrain at the summit meetings with the US, China, Russia, EU and Japan at the political level and in the interactions with the global business community.

However this potential for meaningful Asian vibrancy that maximises India's interests can be realised only if Delhi deals with its complex domestic and regional challenges both expeditiously and prudently. Strategic acumen in synergising state capability with the aspirations of civil society is imperative.

One of the major objectives of the United States in entering into the Indo-US nuclear co-operation agreement is to bring about an early freezing of the Indian weapon-usable nuclear materials stock at the minimum possible level. India, in turn, obviously wants to retain all the accumulated inventory of such materials, as well as the facilities to produce the additional material we consider essential for a minimum deterrence, out of IAEA safeguards. Obviously, each country wants to manoeuvre the separation plan to suit its specific objective.

Despite the façade that the deal is progressing well, it is clear that most of the originally perceived differences between the two sides are very much present even now. It appears that the US side feels that certain facilities, especially reactors, which India has proposed to retain in the strategic group really belong in the civilian list. In addition, it is clear that the US considers India's time schedule for bringing these facilities in phases into the civilian list is too stretched out, and that we should indeed place them under safeguards at a more rapid pace.

Dhruva and CIRUS are the two weapons-grade plutonium producing reactors which are crucial to the Indian strategic programme. It is now known that Canada has formally asked India & the US that CIRUS, which was built with Canadian assistance under an agreement that it will be used only for peaceful uses, should now be placed in the civilian list. The US side must have raised this issue with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran during his recent visit to Washington, and he perhaps had no option but to reject this demand.

India is using the limited uranium enrichment capacity available at the Rare Materials Plant (RMP) near Mysore for producing the medium enrichment uranium fuel for our nuclear submarine reactors. Since this plant can be upgraded to produce high-enrichment weapons-grade uranium as well, the US could be asking us to place this facility and the submarine reactor(s) under the civilian list. This, of course, will not be acceptable to India. Similarly , the US may be wanting us to put the laser enrichment programme at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (CAT), the De-tritiation Plants in BARC and IGCAR where we separate out tritium from irradiated heavy water, the Beryllium Production Facility at Vashi which supports the weapon-core making, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkatta where the proton-beam bombardment of Lithium-6 could be done for tritium production, etc. under safeguards. But, India should insist on keeping all the facilities under the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) within our military list and away from safeguards, since they are all either R&D facilities or meant clearly for the use of the weapons programme.

Of the 15 operating nuclear power reactors of India, 4 are already under IAEA safeguards. The remaining 11 are pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) which are currently not under safeguards. Of the total 8 power reactors under construction, the two Russian units at Koodankulam are already earmarked under safeguards, leaving 5 PHWRs and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) which are currently out of safeguards. When and if the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is built, we need to keep it outside the civilian list, because of its developmental nature.

There is a lack of clarity in the public mind about our indigenous natural uranium resources. It is true that we may not have enough processed natural uranium to fuel the five (5) PHWRs currently under construction, when they are ready for initial fuelling in 2006-2008. But, the highest officials of the AEC now reconfirm the view that we have enough natural uranium ores in the country to fuel 10,000 MWe worth of PHWRs, for their life span of about 40 years. The mismatch between production and consumption of uranium has happened because the government approvals for the PHWRs and their construction have speeded up in the last ten years, while the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) still continued to lag behind in their minerals exploration and uranium mining tasks. While waiting for these activities to pick up momentum in the coming five years, the DAE should go ahead and place under IAEA safeguards the 5 PHWRs now in construction, from their dates of initial fuelling with imported natural uranium, so that there need not be any delay in electricity generation. From the time we enter into this Indo-US nuclear deal, our limited indigenous natural uranium will have to be used judiciously for fuelling the Dhruva & CIRUS reactors to the extent we need additional weapons-grade plutonium, and in the first AHWR developmental unit, while the remaining should be used in the un-safeguarded PHWRs for producing as much reactor-grade plutonium as we can to sustain the operation of the first PFBR(s). The phased placement of the PHWRs under safeguards can be determined only on the basis of this logic, leaving sufficient room for uncertainties in fresh uranium supplies from our mines. In short, if a PHWR of ours can be run with Indian uranium, there is no hurry in placing it in the civil list, because it is then producing plutonium which will serve as feed material for our un-safeguarded breeder reactor(s).

Thus, the right stand to take at this stage is to keep the Indian fast breeder programme outside the IAEA safeguards, by including it in the strategic facilities group. We may revisit this decision after we have commissioned and operated the first PFBR at full power and also stabilized its associated technology programmes connected with fast reactor fuel fabrication, reprocessing of spent-fuel to extract U-233, and the system improvements we may make on the basis of initial operational experience. This decision, however, has its consequent repercussions. The initial PFBR(s) in that case will have to rely on the already accumulated reactor-grade plutonium, and the future continued production of similar material from the un-safeguarded PHWRs, for the initial fuel loading and subsequent annual re-fuelling. This would require us to negotiate and keep all the presently available un-safeguarded reactor-grade plutonium in the PHWR spent-fuel out of IAEA safeguards, even while we may agree to put most of these PHWRs under safeguards, in phases, over a stretched period of time. As and when we wish to put a PHWR into the civilian list and IAEA safeguards, we must first discharge all the Indian spent-fuel in it for storage in our strategic group, and re-fuel the reactor entirely with fresh imported fuel. This way we ensure that our limited indigenous uranium resources are not burned up in a safeguarded reactor nor are we giving away part-of the earlier un-safeguarded spent-fuel. In the long run, whether India can operate enough number of un-safeguarded first-stage breeders based on depleted uranium-plutonium fuel, thereby breeding enough U-233 in their blanket regions to transition into the ultimate self-sustaining stage of thorium-U-233 breeders, is entirely dependent on how much more indigenous uranium we can find from an aggressive prospecting for minerals.

Indian uranium, thorium and rare metal mining operations, mined ores, and their processing plants have to be outside IAEA safeguards. Thus, all facilities of the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) and the Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL) should go into the strategic group. Also, we have to ensure that the required minimum number of production plants for heavy water and reprocessing facilities to extract plutonium or U-233 from the spent-fuel are kept outside the civilian list, to match the requirements of the number of research & power reactors we are keeping in the strategic list at any point in time. This may not be too difficult because we have nine heavy water plants and four operational spent-fuel reprocessing plants, and some of these could be put under safeguards, while others are kept in the strategic list. When it comes to the fuel fabrication facilities, there are different processes and plants involved. Most of these are in the Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) at Hyderabad. At NFC, however, a few of the critical plants are not duplicated, and today they serve both the civilian & strategic requirements. Here, India will have no other option but to keep one-of-a-kind facilities at NFC, Hyderabad outside safeguards, until such time that duplicate facilities are planned and constructed.

A. Gopalakrishnan is former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of the Government of India.

The feud between the two Asian giants is getting shriller. No sooner China had announced its 'peaceful development' policy through a White Paper than the Japanese foreign minister voiced his concern about the 'considerable threat' that Beijing posed. The latest spat in the running battle of charges and counter-charges is the controversial suicide by a consular staff in Japan's embassy at Beijing. The frosty relationship between the two countries is bound to cast a big shadow over the entire East Asian region in the coming years.

If one were to evaluate major developments in the Asia Pacific in 2005, three stand out: the first-ever East Asia Summit (EAS); India's increased entrenchment in Asia Pacific regional affairs; and further deterioration of relations between Japan and China. Among these, the worsening row between Japan and China will perhaps have a far greater impact on regional security and economic architecture. Obviously, no East Asian community or economic integration can ever fructify so long as these two giants remain at loggerheads. The Chinese (and South Korean) refusal to meet Prime Minister Koizumi on the sidelines of ASEAN Plus Three summit for an informal trilateral meeting, as has been the normal practice, is an indication of how deep the gulf has become. But what really ails the relationship?

Many attribute the recent downslide to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's insistence on visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine where an estimated 2.5 million war dead (and a thousand or so non-Japanese) who fought for Japan since the Meiji Restoration, including 14 Class A criminals implicated for their role in World War II, are enshrined. China's outrage is a result of what it perceives to be Japan's failure to fully atone for the sins it committed during the occupation of many Asian countries before and during the War. Japan interprets Chinese outbursts as pressure tactics to compel it not to assume a larger political role so that Beijing emerges as the leader of East Asia. While it is true that China and South Korea in particular bore the brunt of Japanese atrocities, there is no way really to measure how genuinely remorseful Japanese leaders have been for their past actions despite nearly 19 official 'apologies' so far.

Though tension has been intensifying in the last few years, bilateral relations probably hit their nadir in April 2005 when violent demonstrations broke out in most major cities across China. The ostensible reason for these protests was Japanese approval of a textbook for high school students (one of 27 cleared so far), which was perceived to be rightwing-inspired and which glosses over what Japanese soldiers did during their occupation of China.

A more serious problem is going to be the strong nationalist feelings a series of events in the last few years have fuelled. This can not only badly undermine regional peace and stability but also affect the economic dynamism that is sweeping across the region.

China is perturbed by what it perceives as attempts by Japan to cleverly use the post-9/11 political environment to break free from self-imposed shackles and remilitarise itself. Japan, for its part, maintains that China's inexorable military modernisation with double-digit defence allocations is causing concern especially because of the non-transparent nature of the Chinese system.

It is true that Japanese security policies are undergoing profound changes and it has taken certain decisions that were unthinkable a few years ago. These changes, however, need to be seen in the context of the changing global and regional security matrix. Ideally, Tokyo would prefer cold war arrangements from which it benefited enormously to continue, but circumstances have changed fundamentally. It is no secret that the US, even as it tries to restructure its forward deployments in East Asia, is exerting enormous pressure on Japan to undertake greater security responsibilities and provide corresponding contributions to justify and sustain the security alliance. For instance, after dithering for nearly two decades, Japan decided in May 2003 to join the US-led ballistic missile defense programme (BMD) and has contributed, more symbolic than substantial, to the American war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are other developments as well that have emerged as major security challenges for Japan. The whole debate in South Korea over its 'balancing role' in the future, implying irrelevance of the American troop presence in that country, might tilt the strategic balance against Japan. Further, China's forceful moves on the disputed Senkakus, repeated Chinese naval incursions into the Japanese territorial waters, continued stalemate over the North Korean nuclear issue, and not so subtle Chinese attempts to marginalise Japan from East Asian affairs have unnerved the Japanese. While these have forced Japan to initiate certain measures, they are also seen as opportunities to chart a new course for the country.

There is no doubt that there has been a rightward tilt in the Japanese polity as testified by Koizumi's thumping victory in the September 2005 lower house elections. In fact, though foreign policy issues hardly figured in the pre-election debates, in hindsight it is obvious that China's attitude played a significant role in influencing voters. The impression that Koizumi could stand up to the Chinese, by naming China as a potential threat in the December 2004 New Defence Programme Guidelines (NDPG), by stating Taiwan as a common security concern for Japan and the US in February 2005, and by persisting with visits to the Yasukuni, was instrumental in the ruling LDP's landslide victory. At the same time, what needs underscoring is the maturity with which Japan has reacted to China's hostile actions.

If one were to surmise that Koizumi's Yasukuni sojourns are the root cause of the current rift between Japan and China, it will be like missing the wood for the trees. There are several other fundamental reasons. One, for the first time in the last several centuries Japan has to contend with the rise of a new power centre in its vicinity. Two, if history is any guide, every time there is a rise of a new power it invariably tends to disturb the existing status quo, which means a rising China would tend to be ambitious and would aspire for greater strategic space, political rhetoric about 'peaceful development' notwithstanding. No wonder Japan feels threatened.

Unlike the US-Soviet rivalry, in the case Japan and China there is a strong economic dimension. Bilateral trade has surpassed US $200 billion (including Hong Kong), thus making China Japan's largest trading partner. Japanese have invested nearly $70 billion in China and Tokyo has extended over $33 billion as Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Beijing. Yet, strong economic interdependence has failed to alleviate political differences. On the contrary, recent data suggests that uneasy political relations are beginning to render even economics 'cold.' Japanese exports, which rose by 20 per cent annually since 2001, have slowed to 3.2 per cent in the first eight months of 2005. Further, in the first half of 2005, Japanese direct investments declined by 8.2 per cent over the same period last year. Surely, with the explosion of Chinese trade, today the Chinese market is more important for Japan than the other way round. There could be many reasons for the slow down, but the role of 'cold political relations' cannot be ignored.

What does it all mean to India? Japanese have become more vocal about India as an alternative to China in the sphere of economic interaction. But Chinese aver that India is nowhere near the kind of opportunities that they can offer. It is too simplistic to infer that a loss to China is an automatic gain for India, though soured relations between Japan and China are showing their effect on Japan-India relations, which have qualitatively improved in the recent past especially in the politico-strategic field. India has also caught the attention of Japanese investors, not necessarily because of Tokyo's political problems with Beijing but because of economic opportunities that India offers. The betterment of India's relations with Japan should be seen in the context of the changing East Asian environment and India's potential to contribute to regional stability and development because New Delhi and Tokyo share common interests and concerns and more importantly have no clashing interests. The strategic dimension among Japan, China and India is something that appears to be unavoidable.

The Russia-Uzbekistan Treaty of Alliance Relations signed by President Vladimir Putin and President Islam Karimov at a glittering Kremlin ceremony on November 14, 2005 marked the completion of a full circle in Tashkent's relations with Moscow following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also signified the Central Asian Republic's return to the Russian orbit.

With 26 million people, Uzbekistan is the most populous Central Asian country. Also, a sizeable number of ethnic Uzbeks live in neighbouring states. Located in the very heart of Central Asia and having common borders with all other Central Asian states, it occupies a very important position in the region. Uzbekistan is also richly endowed with natural resources like gold, uranium, gas and oil. It is the fifth largest cotton producer and the second biggest exporter of cotton in the world. Though its oil reserves are not as large as that of its neighbour Kazakhstan, Uzbek oil reserves are still a substantial 297 million barrels (according to the CIA's The World Factbook). With the biggest army in the region, Tashkent has been widely seen as entertaining ambitions of becoming the regional hegemon in the post-Soviet period. Moreover, Uzbekistan - in comparison with other Central Asian states - went the farthest in asserting its independence from Moscow. In March 1999, it withdrew from the Russia-led CIS Collective Security Pact and the Uzbek military began to be trained by the United States. However, on December 11, 1999, Russia and Uzbekistan signed a bilateral military and military-technical cooperation agreement. In June 2001, Uzbekistan joined the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO), which was interpreted as reflecting the Uzbek desire to manoeuvre between Russia and China. The Uzbek elite believes that it is the major bulwark against the spread of political Islam and Islamic militancy in the former Soviet Central Asia.

Unlike Russia and many other former Soviet republics that had opted for economic "shock therapy," Uzbekistan did not suffer any steep decline in its GDP in the initial post-Soviet period largely due to its persistence with the Soviet-era economic structures. President Karimov was often quoted for having emphasized that "one should not destroy the old home till a new home is built". By the middle of the 1990s, however, the Uzbek economic model appeared to have lost steam. Socio-economic distress faced by the bulk of the population is seen as the Achilles' heel of the current system, which may be exploited by religious extremists in the absence of political space allowed to secular political opposition.

Uzbek Policy Zigzags

In the post-September 11 period, Uzbekistan was the first among the Central Asian Republics (CARs) to offer a military base at Karshi Khanabad to the USA for supporting military operations in Afghanistan in the war against terrorism. The US deployed about 1,000 military personnel at Karshi-Khanabad also known as the K-2 base. During President Karimov's visit to the USA in March 2002, USA and Uzbekistan signed the "Declaration on Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework". From the US point of view, strategic partnership with Uzbekistan and the appearance of the US air bases in Uzbekistan and at the Manas airport in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, were major gains in a region which was not so long ago the exclusive preserve of Moscow. What is more, the US military presence in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan was not viewed only in the context of the ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, but was also seen as a counterweight to both the Russian and the Chinese influence in the region. It naturally evoked the ire of the latter.

The US-Uzbek strategic partnership rested on the horns of a dilemma from the beginning, buffeted as it was by vocal criticism in the West over the absence of democracy and the violation of human rights in the republic. In the fiscal year 2004, the USA withheld $10.5 million in aid, including $6.87 million in military aid, because the State Department could not certify that Uzbekistan was moving toward multiparty democracy. The 'colour' revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and in Kyrgyzstan between 2003 and 2005 alarmed the Uzbek authorities about the dangers of a close embrace with the West. They suspected that Western NGOs were seeking to prepare opposition forces as an alternative to the present government and consequently began to place restrictions on the activities of West-aided NGOs.

President Karimov had started edging towards Moscow in a bid to follow a 'multi-vector' policy and acquiring space for manoeuvre even prior to recent precipitation of relations with the USA. The turnaround in Uzbek relations with Russia came in September 2003 at the time of President Putin's visit to Samarkand on the way from Malaysia to Moscow. Following informal talks between Putin and Karimov, Uzbek officials were told to "make friends with Russia again". By that time, a certain disenchantment with the West had set in Uzbek circles, especially with regard to the scale of Western aid. Karimov was reported to have remarked at the time, "We had hoped that the international community would meet us with open arms". These aspirations had not come true. On June 16, 2004, Uzbekistan and Russia signed the Treaty on Strategic Partnership. In October 2004, Russia was admitted to CACO (Central Asian Treaty Organization), giving it a greater official role in Central Asian geopolitics.

The May 13 violent incidents in Andijan - the Ferghana Valley city of Uzbekistan - brought to fore the great power rivalry for control over Central Asia. The Uzbek authorities were peeved by the Western demand for an independent international enquiry of the killings, and the airlifting of more than 400 Uzbek refugees to Rumania and other countries. On July 5-6, 2005, the SCO summit at Astana - to which India, Iran and Pakistan were invited as observers for the first time - called upon the USA to specify a time-frame for the withdrawal of its bases from Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan subsequently agreed to the continuation of the US air base at the Manas airport, reportedly in lieu for increased aid. However, on July 29, 2005, Uzbekistan served notice on the USA to evacuate the Karshi-Khanabad base within 180 days. Thereafter, Uzbekistan demonstrably moved closer to Russia and China. President Karimov's June 29, 2005 visit to Moscow was followed by the summit meeting of CACO at St. Petersburg on October 6, 2005, where a decision was taken to merge CACO with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Community (EEC). President Putin described the move as "the best birthday gift" to him.

Russia-Uzbekistan Treaty of Alliance Relations

"If an act of aggression is committed against one of the sides by any state or group of states, this will be viewed as an act of aggression against both sides….the other side...will provide necessary assistance, including military assistance, as well as giving aid through other means at its disposal."

Article 3 of the treaty stipulates that:

"In case of emergence of a situation, which, according to the view of one of the sides, may pose a threat to peace, disturb peace or touch upon the interest of its security, as well as emergence of threat against one of the sides of the act of aggression, the sides would immediately would bring into force the mechanism of corresponding consultations for agreeing positions and coordinating practical measures for regulating such a situation"

And Article 4 opens up the possibility of a Russian base in Uzbekistan. It provides for granting "the use of military facilities" on the territories of the signatories to each other "when necessary and on the basis of separate treaties" in order to ensure security and maintain peace and stability. However, in order to avoid hurting US sensitivities, the Russians probably do not wish to immediately establish a base in Uzbekistan close on the heels of the departing US troops.

Blow to Western Strategy

Western analysts have regarded these developments as a major blow to Western strategy in the region. They are seeking to draw comfort by harping on the inherent cleavages between Russian and Chinese interests and ambitions vis-à-vis Central Asia. Beijing was reported to have contacted Kyrgyz officials in early 2005 to explore the possibility of establishing a military base in Kyrgyzstan. Subsequently, after the Uzbek government's decision to close the US base, the Russian military analyst Vladimir Mukhin was cited to have remarked that the Chinese made quiet but definite enquiries about the possibility of gaining access to the base. Beijing's moves reportedly galvanized the Russians to quickly conclude the military alliance with Uzbekistan to foreclose the possibility of the Chinese seeking to fill up the vacuum (Stephen Blank, "China Joins the Great Central Asian Base Race", at Eurasia Insight at www.eurasianet.org, November 16, 2005).

As regards the accepted wisdom in the corridors of power in many of the post-Soviet states dominated by the former Communist elites, it is increasingly becoming oriented towards ensuring 'economic' growth and prosperity first, before conditions are considered ripe for 'political' liberalization or democracy. Amidst all this, the struggle for control and influence over the post-Soviet space is intensifying.

Need for Skillful Indian Diplomacy

In view of the geopolitical tug-of-war among the major powers for control over Central Asia, India may be called upon to conduct an extremely skillful diplomacy. Central Asia, which is regarded as India's extended strategic neighbourhood, presents both challenges and opportunities. India needs to play a discreet but pro-active role to create a niche for itself. It can build on good will and considerable 'soft power' in the region in order to have a friendly, secular and stable Central Asia next to its turbulent north-western periphery.