Will Kazakh Crisis Prove To Be a Harbinger of a Wider War?

The question about the resignation of Kazakhstan’s government this morning after demonstrators clashed with police is whether it is the harbinger of a larger geopolitical shift in Europe’s east.The events erupted amid anger at rising fuel prices. They quickly escalated into anti-government protests. Despite the announcement of a two-week state of emergency, at the time of writing the protests persist unabated.The immediate question concerns Moscow. Might the turmoil in Kazakhstan be a pretext for Russian military action? And, if so, then where? This is doubly urgent given that Russian forces are already in place for a move against Ukraine.The mobilization in Ukraine is ostensibly for an invasion at some point before the end of this month. For President Putin, Ukraine is hugely symbolic — representative of a historic “spiritual unity” between nations. Mr. Putin has previously said he would pursue a military option in Ukraine only if externally “provoked.”Kazakhstan is not quite the same, and the Kremlin’s response to the protests has so far not implicated any undue interference, calling instead for a “peaceful solution to all problems within the framework of the constitutional and legal field and dialogue.”Yet, one Russian daily, Komsomolskaya Pravda, has already dubbed the protests a “color revolution” that has evolved with “suspicious speed … just a few days before Moscow’s most important negotiations with the United States.”Russia’s news agency, Life, has similarly referred to the unrest as “gas maidan” — a sly nod to the Euromaidan protests that swept Ukraine in 2014. It was on the heels of Euromaidan that Mr. Putin invaded Crimea.Is the use of this kind of language the Russian press’s way of suggesting the kind of external goading that would prompt action against Kyiv — or, indeed, Nur-Sultan? It’s the kind of possibility to which it pays to be alert.Kazakhstan is a key ally for Moscow. Russian firms are strongly invested in the Kazakh economy, and Kazakhstan’s Baikonur region is essential for all Russian spaceflights. Most of the population in Kazakhstan’s northern region is ethnically Russian.Moscow unsuccessfully tried to annex northern Kazakhstan in 1992, soon after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union. It has questioned Kazakh statehood ever since — which is the context for today’s demarche of the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.Mr. Tokayev appealed to Mr. Putin and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization for military assistance. Russia’s troops are ostensibly now better suited for the task than would otherwise be the case.That’s because since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, they and their Collective Security partners have conducted multiple joint military exercises, including in Central Asia.It is then likely that Mr. Putin will decide to capitalize on Kazakhstan’s political crisis to again attempt to annex its northern region.Yet could he move simultaneously on Kazakhstan and Ukraine? That would be a dangerous — if not foolish — gamble. Yet Mr. Putin does have the troop capacity for it. The chutzpah may be another matter.________Image: Kazakh law enforcement officers block a street during a protest in Almaty, Kazakhstan, January 5, 2022. Reuters/Pavel Mikheyev

Will Kazakh Crisis Prove To Be a Harbinger of a Wider War?

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