Eurasia: Volume 1

Dramatic changes in the political economy of the world have occurred during the last twenty-five years. Globalization, technological change, political unrest, and terrorism now dominate the news. Although there has been serious debate over the pros and cons of globalization, it is here to stay. Technological development has helped strengthen the force of globalization. Multinational corporations have assumed a significant role in the extraction and allocation of resources in a globalized and increasingly high-technology world. There have been drastic changes in the political geography and definition of the nation-state after the fall of the Soviet Union. The tragic 9/11 terrorist attack and the subsequent actions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq have begun a new chapter in security and nuclear and bio-terrorism. In the past, conflict was an important topic in scholarly literature, but it has now assumed a critical position.

Rafis Abazov is an adjunct lecturer at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of The Formation of Post-Soviet International Politics in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (1999), the Freedom House Report on Kyrgyzstan (2002 and 2003), the Historical Dictionary of Kyrgyzstan (2004), and Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan, as well as numerous articles on economic and political development in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. He has contributed articles to the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, and the Encyclopedia of National Economies.

In the literature on peace and security, we identify at least two different uses of the term Eurasia. One stakes a rather narrow geographic boundary while the second includes a much broader region. If we adopt the narrower view, Eurasia incorporates the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union and possibly their security zones in Eastern Europe. Choosing to see Eurasia more broadly means defining it as the huge land-mass that comprises the continents of Europe and Asia. We may call the narrower definition Eurasia Minor and the broader one Eurasia Major.

I always start talks about my book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) by focusing on my job as the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times because I have the best job in the world. I get to be a tourist with an attitude. I get to go wherever I want, whenever I want, and write about whatever I want. It is a great job. However, there is one downside to the job; I have to write attitudes twice a week, every Tuesday and every Friday, on the editorial page of The New York Times. The big challenge I had when I started the job in January 1995 was: What attitude?

Economists are a peculiar bunch. They have a high regard for themselves, and the mathematicians among them are the haughtiest of all. They snicker at theories of international relations and grand strategies, unless the strategy is a derivative of game theory. No wonder they are often brushed aside as snobs.

Regional civilizations have existed for more than 5,000 years. Each has evolved from primitive, social and political systems into much more complex ones to meet the challenges of historical ages and successive world civilizations (Yakovets, 2000). In the third millennium, regional civilizations face a new challenge – globalization and post-industrial world civilization.

Arnold Toynbee, the famous British historian and philosopher, argues that modern society should achieve a kind of universal peace in the new millennium. Toynbee asserts strongly that wars and culture clashes destroy the foundation of a civilization. He states: a comparative study of recognized civilizations all over the history shows that social destruction is a disaster whose secret hidden key could be found in the nature of war. In fact, principally, when a war is provoked by a civilization, it is also an independent cause for its destruction.

The Bandung Conference played a constructive role in mobilizing a movement against the bipolar hegemony of the post World War II period. This period, from Yalta (1945) to Malta (1989), can be characterized as an international neo-colonial regime in a post-colonial world. Despite political, economical and cultural differences, the Third World states represented at Bandung called for a counter hegemonic alliance based on the principles of peaceful coexistence (The Pancha Sila).¹ These principles enabled cooperation among the states and peoples of Asia and Africa. The Latin American states later joined this non-aligned movement. The principles of peaceful coexistence, which were first proclaimed by India and China, represented an imaginative reformulation of the modern Western framework of international systems established initially by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This new framework, which based cooperation among the recently independent states on the Western principles of national sovereignty, stressed mutual respect and benefit in place of the Westphalia premise of international anarchy.

I am interested in exploring how peoples can learn to live together, and how they can learn to give each other the opportunity to flourish without disadvantaging someone else. What non-lethal limitations can be framed around those who refuse to do so, or who insist on carrying the torch of their civilization to attack other people? I am not just asking if the attacks can be stopped. I am looking for more than that, for the capacity for living together. Can local, regional and global structures be harmonized to achieve this?

To achieve an integrative and coherent approach to conflict prevention and peace building, a framework or infrastructure is needed. This framework should incorporate state and non-state actors and set out a clear division of labor, a precondition for effective action aimed at preventing violent conflict. A parallel infrastructure must also be established in conflict zones. The pillars below describe the infrastructure proposed.

As the tragedy in New York and Washington moves further into memory, more and more politicians, officials and experts in various countries question whether or not the world has changed. Would the shock have been as strong, the international reaction as unanimous or the retaliation as decisive and powerful if the catastrophe had occurred in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, or Moscow? Or, is the issue simply that the September 11th terror was executed in the most powerful nation of the world? Perhaps September 11th is significant only because America had been invulnerable until then and in response it defined the scale of retaliation and prompted the creation of a worldwide coalition to support its quest for vengeance? Regardless, September 11th did signify the beginning of a new era in international security largely because its victim was the most powerful nation in the world.

All religious activists appear to look alike, and indeed are treated by the news media as one in the same. However, many variations exist. On one level, different activists choose different tactics. Terrorism is only the most extreme (and the rarest) form of public action. Other activists utilize media campaigns, public intimidation and democratic choice (by putting forward candidates in elections). On a more basic level, great differences exist in the desired outcome of the struggle itself and in the degree to which religion is central to the conflict.

A nuclear future cannot be outlined in isolation from general trends of world development. After the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the former Soviet Union, there was much optimism and hope in the West. The end of the Cold War decreased radically the risk of nuclear war in Europe and in the other parts of the world. At the time, many believed that the main global, political and ideological confrontation had been eliminated erasing the very raison d’être for nuclear deterrence. The need for nuclear weapons, at least with regard to the most important and dangerous East-West axis of world politics, had been removed. In addition, globalization was engaging nations in an interconnected economy and integrated society, providing the conditions considered necessary for international stability. The prospect of a less conflicted and more peaceful world caused many to believe that the role of nuclear weapons would decrease as tensions relaxed and stability restored.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of Russia in the current world environment, focusing attention on its role in global security. Russia can play a leading role in contributing to global security or it can play a major role in undermining global security. The next section will present an interpretation of the nature of global security, followed by a discussion of recent changes in the global situation. Next, the current position of Russia in the global system and how that position has changed will be considered. Finally, the global security agenda and the contribution that Russia can make to this agenda will be examined. It will be shown that Russia can play a major role in the achievement of global security.

On November 26, 1996, China and India signed the Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. It was a follow-up to the Agreement between India and China on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas, signed on September 7, 1993. Signatories to the 1996 document agreed that neither side would use military capability against the other. No armed forces would be deployed by either side in the border areas along the line of actual control. Further, no military strength would be used by one side to attack the other or to engage in military activities that would threaten the other side or undermine the peace, tranquillity and stability in the India-China border areas. As part of the agreement, each side reconfirmed its determination to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement of the border dispute. Each country also reaffirmed its commitment to respect strictly the line of actual control. Finally, each country reaffirmed that, in mutually agreed to geographical zones, it would reduce or limit military forces to levels compatible with friendly and good neighborly relations, consistent with the principle of mutual and equal security.

These assumptions form a policy framework that assumes it is reasonable for the West to intervene in the affairs of non-Western countries as well as in countries that are close to the West but are not Western in behavior (often defined as non-democratic). Western masters aide these nations by advancing democracy. Let us consider this policy framework.

Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, Russia has found itself in search of a lost national identity. The communist regime has collapsed, country has broken into separate nations and it has suffered a decade of deep social reform. Russian identity inevitably is, and should be, multidimensional. Russian self-perception and self-value vis-à-vis the West is an important component of this identity. The combined (but internally split) essence of Russian civilization is often defined as Eurasian. For years, Russian civilization was a mixture of European and Asian. The School of Eurasianism, which interprets Russia’s relationship with Europe and Asia, has recently been rejuvenated, based on the work of Russian political classical thinkers like N. Danilevskyi, N. Berdyaev, L. Gumilev, L. Karsavin, V. Illyin, P. Savitskyi, and N. Trubetskoy. Classical Eurasianism is aimed at overcoming the seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between the well known Slavophil and Westerner schools. Through this dialogue, debates about Russian policy toward the West have returned (after decades of Soviet ideology), seeking a middle path between the purity of Slavophils and the extremist Westerner views.

To begin, citizens of the former Soviet Republics perceive themselves to be failures. Many view the last century as a waste for Russians, an opinion shared not only among intellectuals but also among civilians. Disappointment with communism and communists has been followed by disappointment and mistrust in democracy and democrats. While Russia’s current boundary configuration and ethnic posture are new, it has retained the most painful colonial assets of Czarist Russia, primarily in the Northern Caucasus. Further, the two Chechen wars exacerbate the challenges the nation now faces and serve as a reminder that, although Vladimir Putin’s assent to power has reduced somewhat the centrifugal tendencies in Russia, the new Russian Federation is not immune to challenge.

In its efforts to secure the unipolar New World Order and its continued dominance of the system, the United States considered it paramount to establish control over major oil resources (the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea). In the Persian Gulf, the United States established successfully a substantial military presence. In the Caspian Sea, American oil and gas companies signed so many energy exploration, exploitation and exportation agreements that they gave Washington a seemingly legitimate claim of real interest in that region. By planning to move its Encerlik military base (in Turkey) to Abshuran (in the Azerbaijan Republic), and by adding the Russian Federation to NATO’s central committee, the United States enabled eastward expansion of NATO to the Caspian Sea.

The African-American philosopher W. E. B. Du Bois suggested in the mid-1940s that the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line. It seems that, at beginning of the 21st century, the problem of the color line has become even more exacerbated. A United Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa in August and September of 2001 witnessed the most acrimonious of debates among delegates and the Israeli and American delegations abandoned the conference entirely. Further, the final declaration of the conference remains controversial in its demand to provide financial compensation for the human costs of slavery and colonialism. The UN conference, as well as the more dramatic spiral of violent events that have occurred since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York, seem to confirm that, in the 21st century, human foibles remain embedded in the unresolved religious and cultural conflicts of the global system.

This paper proposes that ethnic identity and identification in the modern nation-state is a process of dialogical interaction between self-perceived notions of identity and sociopolitical contexts, often defined by the state. Each example of ethnic identification has at least two levels of discourse, articulated internally and externally. As suggested by Bakhtin, whose study of Dostoevsky posed fundamental questions of self and society, identity and ideology: The endlessness of the external dialogue emerges here with the same mathematical clarity as does the endlessness of internal dialogue. … In Dostoevsky’s dialogues, collision and quarrelling occurs not between two integral monologic voices, but between two divided voices quarreling (one of those voices, at least, is divided). The open rejoinders of the one answer the hidden rejoinders of the other (Bakhtin, 1981 [1963], pp. 253, 254).

Since the first days of its independence, Kazakhstan has been overwhelmed by security issues involving its neighbors. It also recognized a number of conventional and unconventional security threats that might undermine stability and development in the region, as well as in the republic. One of the first official documents produced by the Kazakhstan government was the Strategy of Establishment and Development of Kazakhstan as a Sovereign State, initiated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev in May 1992.³ Although specific security threats in Kazakhstan were obvious (as the direction post-Soviet security, military arrangements and the CIS had yet to be determined), three sections of this document dealt specifically with security issues, albeit in relatively vague form.⁴ In the document, President Nazarbayev highlighted the fact that the national security of Kazakhstan had a regional dimension, and that relations with CIS members and other states with interests in Central Asia were very important.⁵ He stressed particularly that his country needed a military doctrine to “prevent and defend against (external) military threat.”⁶ It took several years for this concept of national security to be clarified and conceptualized in a comprehensive document, the Law on National Security of the Republic of Kazakhstan.⁷