There was a story last week in The New York Times about U.S. policy in Central Asia that framed it in terms of a “Great Game” with China, explicitly likening it to the previous imperialist rivalry between Britain and Russia from before WWI:

Leaders of the five Central Asian nations that became independent republics after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan — are used to walking a regional tightrope. The area was contested during the so-called Great Game of the 19th century, when the British and Russian empires competed to establish influence and control.

Now a new game is underway. And officials in Central Asia, like many of their counterparts around the world, are hedging their bets when it comes to aligning with Washington or Beijing.

It is telling that U.S. relations with these countries are so frequently cast in terms of great power rivalry. Our government’s thinking about this part of the world seems to be stuck in a time warp as the same phrases and tropes of an earlier imperial era are repurposed to describe the present. Americans have been talking about Central Asia in terms of a new “Great Game” for the better part of the last thirty years since the end of the USSR. The Times itself published an editorial using that exact language 24 years ago. Like other euphemisms in foreign policy, describing a rivalry between great powers as a game is meant to obscure the ugly reality behind it. If the U.S. were seriously trying to compete with China for influence in Central Asia, we would be at a huge and probably insurmountable disadvantage.

For one thing, look at a map. China is next door to several of these countries, and it has become their largest trading partner. Beijing has made a point of cultivating closer relations with these states while the U.S. couldn’t be bothered. U.S. trade and investment in these countries is negligible. Trade with Uzbekistan amounts to a few hundred million dollars’ worth of goods. China and Uzbekistan have a trade relationship measured in the billions, and China is their largest trading partner. The story is much the same in Kazakhstan. To the extent that U.S. relations with these states have intensified in the last 20 years, it has been because of our interminable war in Afghanistan, and that has meant that the U.S. mainly sees these countries in terms of the military access they can provide. It is no wonder that the largest states in Central Asia want nothing to do with aligning against China at our government’s behest:

Abdulaziz Kamilov, Uzbekistan’s foreign minister, responded diplomatically: “We want to see Central Asia as a region of stable development, prosperity, and cooperation, and we would really not like to feel on ourselves unfavorable political consequences in relation to some competition in our region between large powers.”

A “new game” in Central Asia would be a contest that would be carried out in these Central Asian countries at their expense, and the people in these countries understand that very well. The U.S. cannot ask these countries to forego good relations and economic ties with China, and as long as those remain intact China will always wield far more influence in these countries than the U.S. ever could. One reason why U.S. foreign policy so often fails to achieve its stated goals is that the goals are absurd and unmoored from reality. Pompeo’s recent visit to the region was the first by a U.S. Secretary of State in five years. That lack of attention speaks volumes about how little Washington actually cares about this part of the world. It is not credible that the U.S. is going to outperform China in gaining influence in countries that our government neglects except when we want something from them. The U.S. should recognize that there are parts of the world where the U.S. will have limited influence, and it shouldn’t pursue an unnecessary rivalry that will only cause the countries in this region more problems.