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CIAO DATE: 05/02
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Volume 1, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2000
Yesterday’s Lesson, Tomorrow’s Game
Review by S. Rob Sobhani
*
Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac. Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1999, 688 pp. $35.00.
Why would Western oil companies pay the government of Azerbaijan $100 million for the right to drill a hole in the bed of the Caspian Sea? Because the standard of living to which we are accustomed depends directly upon the price of oil at the pump, and the Caspian Sea region–while not the Persian Gulf–has enormous untapped reserves of oil and gas.
Competition among the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, and other powers for control of the Caspian’s oil and gas deposits has been dubbed the “new Great Game.” Hence the delightful work by Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, in which they describe at the outset the premise of this voluminous and well–researched book: [The Great Game] threatens to happen all over again. Pipelines, tanker routes, petroleum consortiums, and contracts are the prizes of the new Great Game. India and China, each with exponentially growing energy needs, are vying for access, along with Russians, Europeans, and Americans. Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan have their own political, economic, and cultural interests in the former Soviet Republics, where slumbering rivalries have abruptly awakened among Azeris, Armenians, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and other long–subject peoples.” In short, history is about to repeat itself.
The book takes its title, Tournament of Shadows, from a phrase coined by the Czar’s Foreign Minister, Count K.V. Nesselrode, which described the contest for control of the Eurasian heartland. The object of the book is to explain how and why this struggle for mastery of Central Asia began. This historical struggle has enormous implications for the contemporary United States; whereas the “old Great Game” pitted Russia against the British Empire, the “new Great Game” involves the United States as well.
Meyer and Brysac argue that there was no one reason the Great Game started, but a “mixture of impulses” such as pride, claims of national interest, the quest for profit, missionary zeal, ambitious soldiers, and explorers in search of new territories to conquer. However, two phrases frequently used in international affairs come to mind as primary reasons for why the Russian and British empires locked horns over such remote locations as Lhasa or Kashgar: geopolitics and the security dilemma.
India, with its enormous natural resources, was the crown jewel of the British Empire. Controlling access to these riches became Britain’s number one priority. Meanwhile, Czarist Russia woke up from its winter of discontent–at the hands of Mongols who had for centuries turned Muscovy into their vassal state–and expanded eastward and southward in successive waves starting in the 1580s. According to Meyer and Brysac, these waves were so powerful that over the course of 400 years the duchy of Moscovy grew fifty–five square miles per day as it transformed into the mighty Russian Empire. The British viewed this expansion with suspicion and were convinced that St. Petersburg’s ultimate ambition was the domination of the whole of Asia–a goal it was to achieve one country at a time. George Nathaniel Curzon, the Viceroy of India wrote: “If Russia is entitled to these ambitions still more is Britain entitled, nay compelled to defend that which she has won, and to resist the minor encroachments which are only part of a larger plan.” In short, every Russian advance toward India, whether through annexation (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) or conquest (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan), created a security dilemma for London. Curzon, for example, was convinced that the goal of St. Petersburg was the Persian Gulf, and he saw to it that Iran remain within the sphere of British influence, thus blocking Russian access to India via the Persian Gulf.
Another victim of this security dilemma was Tibet. The British invasion of Tibet took place between 1903–1904. When admirers of this ancient and mysterious land accused the British of “unprovoked aggression by a great power against a weak and small country,” the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, shot back: “As the guardian of India, I cannot afford to see Russian influence paramount in Lhasa, and I have intervened to prevent it.” Clearly, the British viewed any foreign meddling in and around Tibet as a direct threat to their prized possession: India.
The bloody transition from Czarist Russia to Soviet Communism did not end this security dilemma. In fact, as the authors point out, “ . . . the most fateful convert to this [Czarist] imperial ethos was Joseph Stalin.” In an attempt to redress the setbacks that followed the Crimean War of 1877–78, Stalin set his sights on Turkey and the Dardanelles. And here, the authors make a remarkable discovery, courtesy of Israeli scholar Gabriel Gorodetsky: Stalin’s handwritten notes with the Russian words for Great Game–Bol’shaia Igra–scrawled by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR. This discovery illustrates that Stalin the dictator was also a strategic thinker, on par with his contemporary, Winston Churchill. It is very clear that the Soviet leader understood the importance of geopolitics and was thinking about a “grand design,” albeit for the sake of expanding the boundaries of Soviet Communism.
A delightful feature of Tournament of Shadows is the role Meyer and Brysac give to those who played the Great Game. These actors were central to how the Russo–British struggle for territory in Central Asia played out. They point out that “the players in the Great Game were men of action, not reflection . . . driven by both ambition and belief in the rightness of their cause.” In other words, for the actors in this great historic drama, the Great Game was, in fact, not a “game.” It was a competition among strong–willed individuals which ended more often than not in death, destruction, and, on a few occasions, historic archeological discoveries.
Take the example of Russian archaeologist Colonel Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov (1863–1935). While he had his eyes fixed on Tibet, the Russians made it clear to him before setting off on his expedition in 1899 that: “The development of our relations with Tibet is a matter of immense importance . . . In that citadel of Central Asia the name of Russia must be upheld . . . .” This comment is significant because while Kozlov’s motive was to explore the wonders of Tibet, his masters in St. Petersburg viewed his expedition in the context of their rivalry with the British Empire.
Another explorer with his sights on Tibet was Sven Hedin (1865–1952), referred to by the authors as the “lone Scandinavian entry in the imperial drama.” As the greatest Central Asian explorer of his time, Hedin’s maps drew the interest of not only the Russians and the British, but also the Germans. St. Petersburg, London, and Berlin saw Tibet as the cork in the bottle of northwest India, and as such, a geopolitical prize to be won. Indeed, the authors refer to Hedin as the “spiritual godfather” of the SS expedition to Tibet, which was led by Heinrich Himmler’s protégé, Ernst Schafer, in 1939.
Beyond the story of the how and why of the Great Game, Tournament of Shadows is also a wake–up call for the United States. Meyer and Brysac argue that there are limits to the Great Game, such as Britain’s earlier and Russia’s later failures in Afghanistan. The occupation of Kabul by the Soviet Army did not give the Kremlin mastery over Iran, Pakistan, or the Persian Gulf. Nehru’s megalomaniac design to carve out more territory for his beloved India from China ended in disaster. And the British Empire eventually collapsed under the weight of its own imperial holdings. The United States must enter the old battlegrounds of the Great Game with caution. For the British and Russian Empires, these territories were easy to swallow, but hard to digest. Thus the key policy question for Washington is how to interact with a region that is rich in natural resources, yet has the potential to extract an enormous amount of human and material sacrifice.
Endnotes
Note *: S. Rob Sobhani is Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown University. Back.