Eurasia, Lecture 12b: R. James Ferguson © 2004 INTR13-304 & INTR71/72-304,

The Department of International Relations, FHSS, Bond University, Queensland, Australia

When people make meaningful statements about the future, this can be based on a wide range of factors. In general, such statements, when they are not merely guessing, tend to be based on one or more of the following: -

This means that the way we look at and predict the future has already had a large impact on the options open to us. In a sense, we have already begun to colonise the future by the way we look at it and think about our options (Giddens 1991). This means that different theories or world-order models will radically affect contingency planning, the allocation of resources, as well as national policies.

As we have seen, although there is some kind of Eurasia process (Dawisha & Parrott 1994) underway, beginning to link this vast area stretching from Eastern Europe through to North-east Asia. However, Eurasia is not yet an integrated region institutionally, nor even a super-region which is fully integrated into the global economy. This means, likewise, that any notion of a 'fourth region', linking the previously unstable areas of Eurasia and the Middle East is also very unlikely, in spite of the possible benefits of the creation of a such cooperation during the next century (see Hanna 1993).

Rather, Eurasia has begun to emerge as an ongoing security complex, whereby problems in one country to sub-region readily spill across national boundaries into adjacent regions (Buzan 1983). Buzan argues that 'a security complex is defined as a group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from one another . . . Security complexes emphasise the interdependence of rivalry as well as that of shared interests' (Buzan in Ayoob 1999). This means that transboundary effects, e.g. refugees, legal and illegal migration, organised crime networks, smuggling of drugs and arms, money laundering, international terrorism, transnational ethnic and political affiliations, and regional environmental problems tend to be shared problems that no one country can effectively deal with. On this basis, these problems in the end might only be effectively dealt with by the emergence of a strong sense of regional cooperation, and in the long term perhaps by the emergence of a genuine 'regional society' (for this terminology, see Ayoob 1999). At present, none of the regional groupings, whether the CIS, the ECO, the Eurasian Economic Union or the SCO can act as the effective basis, or even the leading agency, for such regional cooperation.

On this basis, 'hot spots' of conflict have had much wider implications at the regional. Tajikistan's civil war through the mid-1990s was a fearful example for all of Central Asia, Muslim militants in Uzbekistan (the IMU) were able to threaten nearby states, while ongoing problems in Afghanistan have serious implications for Central Asia, Russia, and South Asia (see lectures 4 and 10). Through 2003-2004, turbulence in Iraq and Afghanistan has serious implications for Jordan, Iran, Turkey, Russia and for the future of the UN Security Council and US-European relations. Turkey, for example, has begun to cooperate to a greater degree with the U.S. coalitions in Afghanistan, but it has also sought through mid-2003 to enter into dialogue with Iran about the future of the region and the impact of the Kurdish role in the war against Iraq. At the same time, North Korea's effort to force another round of direct negotiations with the US has increased tensions in Northeast Asia as a whole, and may force Japan to rethink its security agenda (for earlier moves towards a more engaged foreign affairs and security policy for Japan, see Furuoka 2002; Singh 2002; see lecture 6). On this basis, Eurasia as a whole looks far from stable. These issues have an impact on all adjacent regions, and on global politics itself.

These immediate problems may rest on deeper economic, social, and development gaps, based on an incomplete and troubled interaction with the global system. Problems with this incomplete globalisation include: -

1. It leaves a large segment of the world in relative poverty, which might correlate with the growth of radical political or religious movements, with civil wars, drug and other forms of smuggling, and for local conflicts which could spill-over into adjacent regions. It now seems, for example, that about 55% of Armenians can be considered poor or impoverished (Khachatrian 2001), indicating worsening conditions in some areas, not improvements, since independence. There may well be a nexus between this relative poverty and a search towards alternative solutions politically, e.g. the recent trend for militant organisations to try to become a region-wide movements: -

As the armies of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan brace for a third summer of fighting against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), there are indications that the insurgency is broadening its appeal. Pressed by declining economic conditions and political repression, young men from across Central Asia are joining the ranks of the IMU. This trend suggests that the IMU is gradually developing into a pan-Central Asian movement. (Rashid 2001)

Although there may be not direct connection between poverty and political violence, combinations of poverty and political exclusion can create environments in which criminal organisation and extremists groups flourish.

2. A sustained period of poverty and political turmoil can lead to refugee and migration flows, as well as greater flows of legal and illegal migrants into the first world. This has already been seen with sustained refugee and labour flows out of Tajikistan, and more recently out of Afghanistan, even to remote countries such as Indonesia and Australia, a trend deepened through late 2001 and early 2002. Though refugees and exiles are began returning into Afghanistan through 2003-2004, totalling a return of 1.8 million (Jalali 2003, p181), these flows indicate one direct transnational cost of conflict and instability.
3. Likewise, if the region is not properly integrated into regional and international political life and organisations, it could lead to local foci of power which are not always positive, e.g. the basis of the fears of undue Pakistani, Turkish, Iranian or Russian influence in the region. This might also correlate with continued border and ethnic disturbances in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the Xinjiang region of China. Continued instability in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan can also not be ruled out, including the possible shifting of opium growing into suitable areas of Central Asia (see lectures 4 and 10).
4. Central Asia and Siberia have large 'planetary reserves' of oil, gas and strategic minerals. In the future 10-50 years these will become even more significant, and in some scenarios could lead to intensified competition or even resource wars of the future (see Klare 2002). Failure to ensure an open political and economic environment could therefore impact on the world economy, as well as exacerbate local conflicts over access to these resources. Here certain basic infrastructure and diplomatic procedures have not yet matured, e.g. there is no balanced vision of resource access oil pipelines out of Central Asia meeting regional needs, and only a slowly emerging agreement on the legal status and environmental management of the resources of the Caspian Sea (see Raczka 2000), in spite of progress on this issue among most parties through 2002-2004.
5. Eurasia is indeed a heartland, as noted by classical geopolitical thinkers (see Mahan 1965; Mackinder 1962). It is adjacent to East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Western & Central Europe. Instability in this heartland, whether in Russia or Central Asia, would be of immediate and deep concern to any adjacent state, and indeed to all the great powers of the world. Thus Japan, China, Germany, France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and the U.S. are all keen to see a stable, cooperative Russian Federation and a stable Central Asia. Some efforts at stabilisation have begun, e.g. via the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO (see Mamadshoyev 2000). Likewise, recent moves have begun to attempts to stabilise Georgia, in part through enhanced cooperation with Europe and NATO. This interconnectedness has been seen most clearly in Afghanistan, where through 2001-2004 instability, war and reconstruction has drawn in much of the region in different ways, including all of Central Asia, Pakistan, and even Turkey, who provided the second command of international forces (the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF) in Kabul, as well as a contingent of 1,000 troops (Dymond 2002). From late 2003, security has been improved by the role of NATO's provincial reconstruction teams, thereby extending its security role into the heart of Eurasia. Nonetheless, much will need to done to guarantee the reconstruction of Afghanistan so that it become a viable democratic state, while the management and reconstruction of Iraq may be even more challenging (both politically and economically). Successful outcomes for both states would have a demonstration effect on the region, while failures might act as possible triggers for continued violence. Some progress has been made in donor's conference in Berlin, March 31-April 1, 2004, with some $8.2 billion over three years pledged for Afghanistan's reconstruction, though interim President Harmid Karzai had asked for three times that much (Entekhabi-Fard 2004).
6. If Eurasian nations remain poor and weak, they will also continue to represent other kinds of low level security threats. Aside from refugees and organised crime issues, these include the inability to pay for environmentally clean industries, to clean up nuclear waste from the past (effecting the Sea of Japan, Russian industrial areas near Norway, as well as large sections of central Russia and Kazakhstan), limits in the ability to ensure the secure storage of nuclear material, the tendency to repair and then run old nuclear power stations, inability to sustain clean waters in the Aral, Caspian and Black Seas, and the inability to control border movement into adjacent regions. In the worst case, the Eurasian heartland could be an environmental and health time-bomb that begins to seriously effect adjacent regions in Europe and Asia. It has also been suggested that northern river and ocean systems in the Arctic and in the polar weather front system are quite fragile, possibly having strong effects on world climate (see Ascribe Higher Education News Service 2003). There would also be flow-on health effects, effects that have already been serious enough for the engagement of World Health Organisation (WHO) programs in the region of the Aral Sea, as well as sustained health care problems in Tajikistan.
7. Extreme political and religious reactions, whether reversion to authoritarian political parties or the spread of militant religious groups, could also result from continued marginalisation and poverty. Even small regional crises, such as the demand for a separate Chechen state, can embroil great powers such as Russia in long, drawn out disputes (see Cornell 1997). Though the region as a whole has developed some stability, there are signs of poor governance in some CIS states, intensified religious tensions in Central Asia, and a difficult path for reform in Iran, subject to both under external western pressures and restrictions on the democratic process through early 2004.

For all these reasons, the future of Eurasia remains of pressing concern to many global international actors. However, the awareness of these regions remains minimal except for crisis coverage in many news media, and rather limited in popular imagination and concern. Major players such as the UN, the US, EU, Japan, and groups such as the G8 can only play a strong role in the region as citizen groups, electorates, interest groups become more aware of the region as a whole and its significance. Long term engagement of Britain, Germany, Japan, the EU, and the US in the reconstruction of Afghanistan will in part be based on ongoing public awareness of Afghanistan to the entire region and its future stability. In this, Afghanistan provides a major test case for ability of the international community not just to intervene, but actually help reconstruct a peaceful political in Eurasia as a whole. This is not so much a question of building political systems in the image of the west, but of aiding locally-legitimised government to begin to build a relatively low-violent international order in the core of the Eurasian system. Likewise, though international agencies such as the OSCE, the IMF, the World Bank, UNESCO, and the World Health Organisation have been involved in reducing the severity of particular problems, this is far from a comprehensive program of stabilisation for the region as whole. Neither has a solid model of functional differentiation among organisations, nor subsidiarity (levels of organisation and task management) among stabilisation programs been well established. If not truly anarchic, this system still does not look like an emerging international community at either the regional or global levels.

What has become clear is that major states in the region and adjacent to the region are trying to manage ongoing political, economic and social crisis. Most of the Central Asian states are trying to promote economic stability to avoid future political crises internally. Any future scenario must take into account these issues. Key levers can help access transition process in Eurasia and help rational assessments about possible outcomes: -

• The type of globalisation processes impacting on Eurasia as a whole. Are parts excluded? Is the process uneven (as in Russia)? Does it create new winners and losers in the international system? For example, though Uzbekistan may have key advantages of nearby states, development within the country has been very uneven, excluding agricultural sectors (see lecture 4). Likewise, excessive international support for Uzbekistan as a main player might also increase its role as a local hegemon, thereby destabilising nearby smaller states (see Luong & Weinthal 2002) and even forcing Kazakhstan into strengthening its military forces (see lecture 3).
• What type of nationalism is developing in Eurasia? Is it narrow and ethnically-based, or does it create an independent tier of civil identity? Is this nationalism a valid step towards genuine democratic participation, or will it support authoritarian state structures? For example, can Kazakhstan construct a 'Kazakhstani' national identity that reaches past being an ethnic Kazakh verses and ethnic Russian living within the country (see lecture 3; see Tolipov 2001). Will Afghanistan find a shared national identity that can undermine the local, clan, ethnic and warlord affiliations that have helped undermined the country for decades (see Nojumi 2002)?
• The borders of the region have stabilised. Thus the China-Russia border has been established after agreements made in 1996. Most of the border disputes with Russia were resolved by 1997, and by 1999 almost the entire log of conflicting claims, stretching over 4,300 kilometres and including 2,444 riverine islands, were resolved (Zhao 1999). The borders of Central Asian states were at least formally accepted in the Alma-Ata agreement, (Shevtsova 1992, p11), but further minor disputes were resolved through 2000-2001 (see Zardykhan 2002, p170). Nonetheless, local identity often slides across these neat border lines, e.g. the complex mixing of Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik and Kyrgyz groups throughout Central Asia, the presence of Uzbek, Tajik and other minorities in Afghanistan, and Russian groups found throughout the region of Central Asia but especially in northern Kazakhstan. Put another way, it may take a long time for these nationalities to stabilise internally, and then be able to accept minorities and others in a more open form of national identity (see Fukuyama 1995). We can draw interesting parallels with parts of East Europe, e.g. in Western sections of Belarus, where Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Jewish, Polesian and other identities have failed to coalesce completely into a clear cut or non-contentious form of national identity (Applebaum 1994). Here, the lack of unequivocal history can sometimes be a benefit, it allows one to imagine different, new, and perhaps better futures (Applebaum 1994), but such aspirations may clash with the expectations of other groups, or may not be coherent and sustainable (Anderson 1991).
• To what degree have regional structures developed in Eurasia? Which states can gain from membership in regional organisations? Do new organisations need to be created? As we have seen, no single organisation embraces the region, and the patchwork of existing and proposed organisations is only very loosely coordinated, e.g. the EAEU, the existing ECO, and the looser frameworks of the CIS and the OSCE.
• What kind of leverage do individual Eurasian states have on the international system, e.g. through fora such as the UN, G8, the OSCE, or other organisations? In relative terms, there is a clear division between superpower and greater powers (the US, EU, Russia and China), and a host of medium and small powers that will need to 'chain' themselves in some way with 'great power agendas', or else risk being isolated or ignored. This leads to a web of soft and hard alliances, with strategic partnerships among some of these players, e.g. Russia and China, Russia and India. This leads to debates about different patterns of international order, e.g. a great-power led multipolarity verses formal regional organisations. Thus, for example, there have been suggestion that the recent terrorist attacks, leading to 47 dead and 50 wounded, on Uzbekistan through 28-31st March 2004 might cause Uzbekistan to tilt back towards stronger engagement with Russia, which has generally been less critical of its human rights record and less concerned with pushing democratisation (Nazarov 2004; Blagov 2004). Russia has indicated that it is willing to help Uzbekistan crack down on the Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Blagov 2004), though it is not clear that this organisation was involved in the recent violence. Indeed, a Hizbt-ut-Tahrir spokesperson in London, Imran Wahid, has denied that his group was involved in the bombings, indicating that he group does not support violence (Nazarov 2004). It is possible that elements from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were involved, though this has not been confirmed (Nazarov 2004).
• Is there a balance among the key powers in the region that can sustain a stable status-quo, or do key changes need to take place to create a stable and just Eurasian region? Until 2001, a clear Russian-China strategic hegemony of the region was being established (see Arbatov 1999), but this was effectively counterbalanced by European and U.S. influences through 2001-2004. It is not yet clear how these changing balances will influence regional engagement strategies in the post-war period. At the broader level, this may involve a rethink of commitments to Afghanistan, could put deployment pressure on the NATO alliance, bring a deeper engagement of EU forces (via support from its Eurocorps, as suggest by France, Xinhua 2004a), and force Russia to rethink its strategic viewpoint. It must be noted that any stable power balance must also be based on stable perceptions of the capabilities, motivations, and viewpoints of each of the major actors within the regional system, i.e. some shared norms and accepted roles for key players.
• If no clear-cut balance of power exists, can institution-building create organisations that help provide security for the entire region, whether by extending existing structures (SCO, OSCE, CIS, NATO), or by re-conceptualising the relations among states within Eurasia? If security cannot be developed in an ongoing rigorous way, is it enough to rely on different coalitions of interest to govern this turbulent region? A constructivist approach would suggest that deeper engagement in regional and international organisations will tend to reduce the likelihood of new ht conflicts, ad reduce international neglect of developmental failures.

At present, it seems that there are several key problems that need to be addressed if the Eurasian process is to have, on balance, positive local and international outcomes. These key issues include: -

• Lack of overlapping and stabilised governance by states, regional groupings, and international agencies. At present, this lack of stable governance is also deepened by either institutional gaps, or competition as new regional grouping are formed and only invested in to a small degree (e.g. ECO and the GUUAM group, comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova, see Torbakov 2001).
• Democratic deficit, with most nations within the region having a democratic process that is undermined by strong Presidential powers, and a tendency to prevent opposition parties from being truly being truly competitive. This tendency has now even being seen in Kyrgyzstan, in part due to real security concerns. Ironically, this lack of true democracy has bolster opposition groups as well as groups willing to use political violence (e.g. in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Future elections will determine whether this is true for Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Russia, the March 2004 re-election of President Putin was widely viewed as distorted by allowing no viable contesting candidate, with claims of media control and coercion being used to ensure that no popular counter-candidate could run. Some opposition groups urged voters to boycott the election rather than vote in sham contest, while OSCE and Council of Europe election observers noted that the process did not meet open democratic standards (UPI 2004a). Putin received 70% of the vote, while 'none of the other four contenders managed to garner even 5 percent of the vote.' (UPI 2004a)
• Incomplete transition, whereby even after a decade of change, many of the countries remain relatively poor, with privatisation and the market economy not yet providing the engines for sustainable development. Countries such as Uzbekistan, for example, have unbalanced development that has allowed pockets of rural poverty to remain, while Kyrgyzstan remains highly dependent on overseas aid and loans. At the same time, though market forces have developed to some degree, several states (e.g. Russia) retain oligarchic interests and have a strong invisible economy partly controlled by organised crime. This incomplete transition also includes the environmental disasters that have been left by the Soviet system, but are now being compounded by the relatively limited resources of states still undergoing economic transition.
• The changing balance of power in the region, where once Russia was the true hegemon, this led to a 'failing hegemon' scenario with new forces at play through the mid-1990s, and some return of Russian diplomatic influence over the last 5 years. At present, Chinese and Russian engagements are partly balanced by EU and US interests, but no stable landscape of power has emerged. Here, there is a need to ensure not only strong engagement strategies, but also smooth, slow disengagement procedures, whereby external dependencies are slowly reduce. This is where key institutions embracing the region need to be built to moderate a possible future clash of interests.
• In the absence of strong regional governance and a transparent balance of power, over the last decade the region has been managed on the interventionist model: humanitarian, political and military intervention is engaged in an ad hoc way to contain or utilise the latest 'hot spot'. This tends to lead to external interests being heavily engaged for short periods of time, but not necessarily in a context of wider regional or international support. In the worst case scenario, there is the risk that proxy conflicts could once again return to Eurasia. It is clear, then, that there needs to be an urgent, cooperative return to nation and region building in Greater Central Asia and Eurasia as a whole.

As we have seen, new moves through the late 1990s have begun to coordinate both Europe-Asia trade and relations (through the ASEM process), and the U.S. and EU did begin a new round of engagement in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree Central Asia (through 2001-2004). The question remains, however, whether this will be part of long-term stabilisation of the Eurasian zone, thereby ensuring greater stability throughout Europe and Asia, as well as promoting higher levels of global prosperity (through access to new resources and deepened markets) and supporting better regional governance. If so, in the long run Eurasia will be a source of civilisational stability and an opportunity for heightened international cooperation. A failure in the Eurasian process however, will set limits on Europe's eastern frontier as a peaceful zone, and undermine East Asian efforts to boost prosperity in a zone stretching from Mongolia down to Tibet and Yunnan. Reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq remain problematic, and warn of the dangers of any future intervention against Iran or North Korea. To build deep resilience in Eurasia, a concerned effort by the regional players and the international community will need to be made over the next two decades. Planning for this has begun to some degree (e.g. in the case of Afghanistan) but need to be entrenched over the next decade.