Coping With Post Cold War Great Power Politics: China In Kyrgyzstan

In this paper I discuss the current situation of Kyrgyzstan and the role of China as a normative power. In order to better understand the benefits of such normative approach I try to examine the policies of three major powers Russia, United States and China toward Kyrgyzstan since its independence.Through the overview of the bilateral relations of Kyrgyzstan with three major powers as it has been shown above, despite the boosting of economic cooperation and increasing the financial aid by the Great powers, especially Russia and USA, Kyrgyzstan is still considered as one of the poorest states of the region. The cooperation with the Great powers, which are more developed than Kyrgyzstan didn't bring any good outcome for it. On the contrary it became the main point of the competition for influence through demonstrating of the military capabilities among the Great powers, which are more concerned by their own interests and concerns in the region than the challenges that Kyrgyzstan faced. And Kyrgyzstan's Multivector policy has become one of the causes of Great power politics in the region, especially in Kyrgyzstan. In this sense, the alternative behavior of China and its reluctance to participate in Great Game seems to be unusual. Namely the growing cooperation of China with this region- the strengthening and deepening relations with the regional countries despite its relatively passive efforts for gaining influence. For explaining such outcome, which is seemed paradoxical from the perspective of power politics, I turned to the role of norms and normative policy in international relations. Norms and normative behavior through regularizing and channeling the behavior of the states lead to the more predictability and clarity in the relations among states, hence, lead to the reduction of the misperceptions among countries. Norms matter as a structure of the institutions, institutions matter through affecting the decision-making through norms and such arrangements facilitate the cooperation among states due to the norms and rules, which will serve certainly for the common interests and goals. Thus, through the normative intentions of China and the preliminary outcomes of such normative approach enduring economic prosperity and stability can be achieved.By comparing the outcomes of normative behavior and not normative behavior (in this case China's normative behavior and not normative behavior of Russia and United States) it became clear that China's normative approach, mainly through SCO and its stress on norm-based behavior, plays great role on the facilitating the mutual beneficial cooperation among regional states and increasing the political trust, hence, it lead to the reduction of the unpredictable behaviors of the states. Thus, the preliminary outcomes of the norm-based relations make these normative trends worthwhile and crucial both for China and its regional neighbors in coping with the power politics in the Central Asian region.