Prospects for Eurasia: Avenues Out of Crisis

INTR13-304 & INTR71/72-304, The Department of International Relations, SHSS, Bond University, Queensland, Australia

Lecture 12:

Prospects for Eurasia -

Avenues Out of Crisis: Global Imperatives for a Stable Eurasia
Topics: -
1. Making Sensible Statements About the Future

2. International Problems Caused by a Failure in Eurasian Globalisation

3. Leverage on the Eurasian Future

4. Key Problems for the Eurasian Process

5. Bibliography in Further Reading

1. Making Sensible Statements About the Future

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: -

A. A knowledge of the history of a nation, region or culture, and long term trends, which might impact upon change. These factors are important where culture and identity come into play. For example, any analysis of Russian efforts to be a 'great European nation' since the 17th century will suggest that it will not abandon such a status readily in the 21^st century (see lectures 1-3). Although history never repeats itself exactly, the analysis of certain events in the past does allow us to learn about some of the sociological factors which correlate with certain events. Thus a good knowledge of the course of the industrial revolution in Europe will signal us to look for certain trends that might accompany much later industrial and information revolutions in parts of Asia. As the base of the wealth of a country moves from agriculture to industrial production you can expect things like greater urbanisation, migration into cities, fast and often uncontrolled urban growth, ecological impacts on city regions, greater vulnerability to trade and international markets, and demographic shifts ultimately leading to smaller nuclear families, trends which have begun to impact on China today, as well as parts of Central Asia. Likewise, increased industrialisation leads to greater needs for energy resources, which can radically change external dependencies. Thus China, though having large oil reserves, has begun to import oil in 1996-1999, though by late 1998 tried to reduce this external dependence. This was done in part by extensive development in its Xinjiang region and by heavy investment in Kazakhstan designed in the future to access Central Asian oil fields. This 'oil-diplomacy' includes the Chinese signing of a $4.4 billion memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan 'to build pipelines to China and Iran in exchange for oil and gas concessions and a 51% stake in Kazakhstan's state-controlled oil-production company' (Jaffe & Manning 1998, p124). Along with the demand for oil and gas from other nations, this increases the strategic significance of the reserves in Central Asia. In general, this approach can be summarised as drawing the bow, i.e. the further back you draw the bow and know more about the past, the longer the type of trends of transformation you might be able to pick up, e.g. climatic and civilisation trends. For example, some would see the shift of economic power back to East Asia simply as a return to the status quo which was disturbed by unusual European technological, industrial and military growth during the 18th-19th centuries. It is this recognition that partly explains strong European engagement in the ASEM process, i.e. the recognition that regardless of short-term crises, East Asian economies will continue to expand. Likewise, the creation of a 'New Silk Road' linking all of Central Asia to East Asia could greatly improve the economic viability of the entire region and create a new shift of power if combined with European or East Asian initiatives. The key here is engagement, even with potential competitors to ensure that both political influence and a certain sharing of economic growth occurs.

B. A detailed knowledge of current trends, economic and resource factors, political leadership and its ideology, which gives you a sense of the conditions affecting a country or region, and the type of decisions that might affect it in the near future. This is the approach used by most political, international relations, and economic policy analysis. Here a wide range of indicators, including economic and institutional factors, can often be combined with some sort of general model to predict likely behaviour in the near future. For example, the trends within the Chinese Communist Party over the last decade has been for a certain inertia to carry over from the death (or stepping down) of one party leader to the next leadership. Here political continuity and stability are emphasised, largely in fear of the kind of convulsions which civil war, warlordism and the cultural revolution have imposed on China in the 20th Century. On this basis, one might predict that since the death of Deng Xiaoping, the current leadership (Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji) will seek a peaceful transition to a new leadership. However, it is difficult to predict how 'collective' this leadership will be, whether a new strong leader will emerge with a 'core' of power, or more sweeping reforms will be possible. This approach uses a knowledge of current trends and the political culture of nation, combined with a knowledge of the stated intent of political actors, i.e. the stated and covert aims of nations, governments, leaders, elites, and other groups. Through 1997-2001, Jiang Zemin seems to have established his leadership claims quite well, but whether this can be sustained through a new leadership cycle is uncertain (Cavey 1997; Hong 1997). The management of continued economic growth, and the handling of the Taiwan issue, could make or break his leadership. It is clear, however, that the trend towards Chinese integration is being strongly maintained by the PRC leadership. Engagement of Russia and Central Asia remains a crucial part of China's targets for economic growth and stabilised western frontiers. The PRC hopes this can be translated into more balanced development for several Western provinces and regions. Likewise, the political culture of Russia might make us suspect the President Putin will attempt to further centralise power, while at the same time apparently meeting some of the demands from the international community for more open governance. Recent trends (Russia Today 2001) in the foisting of a new management on one of the few truly independent television stations in Russia, NTV, suggests that the media may remain manipulated by both government and business interests. Likewise, through 2001-2002, President Putin has sought to balance cooperation with the U.S. and EU with a trend towards maintaining an assertive role in Central Asia. Whether this balancing act can be done effectively will in large measure determine the future recovery of Russia as a regional and global power.

C. Another approach involves a wide range of techniques developed in the social sciences and strategic think tanks to try to give a more precise model of the future outcomes, and a rational for making new policies. These theories developed alongside the notion of rational actors choosing outcomes to gain maximum benefits in a competitive international environment. During the Cold War period, thinkers such as Herman Kahn developed this into a sophisticated, but at times overused, notion of Game Theory. Other techniques have been used to 'sample' the future. These included the Delphi technique, where a wide range of options are conceived of for the future, with experts giving probably ratings to each option. Another technique is called cross-impact analysis, where the influence of one discovery or event is assessed against other trends (these techniques are addressed in detail in the Prospects course). This approach is often used informally in international relations, e.g. questions such as: 'What is the likely impact of NATO expansion to be on Russian military doctrine?' or 'What is the impact of NATO expansion on Russia-Ukraine relations?' Other mathematical techniques include extrapolation from current trends, i.e. forecasting, or explicit model building to simulate behaviour (see Wagar 1991), both used in the economic area with varying success. But both these last methods depend on a hidden assumption - that is the assumption of everything else being equal. In other words, the models can only relate to the variables coded into them, and everything else is assumed as having roughly equal negative and positive effects on the outcome. Let us take China once again as an example. At present, it would be possible for socio-economic experts to extrapolate the rough economic growth for China over the next year, given certain policies, inflation rates, and trade figures etc. However, figure would be highly susceptible to low-probability but high-impact political trends, i.e. the political issue of how Taiwan-PRC relations continue will directly affect international trends as well. Only if we assume that these tensions are managed, then we might be able to extrapolate from 1997-2001 trends. In fact the Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets tend to be rather sensitive to political rumours. Even minor statements by political and financial leaders can cause large short term swings in such markets. Such contingencies are hard to predict and assess. Likewise, the unexpected terrorist attacks on the U.S. had an immediate and long term effect on the global economy. Although the idea of attempted attacks was easy to predict, the level of damage actually inflicted and subsequent damage to confidence could not (such a scenario would have seem rather unlikely in the year 2000). To date, these proto-scientific methods tends to be heuristic: i.e. a sophisticated form of extrapolation on limited information that works better on statistical average or in assessing general trends rather than exact prediction of individual cases. Here one has to be careful of technobable, i.e. the belief that the more number crunching you have and the bigger computers you have, the more you can predict the future. It is wise to be cautious of futurehype, i.e. the tendency to accept authoritative prophecy as a fact, and therefore make it self-fulfilling (see Dublin 1989). For any complex or interesting behaviour, this has not yet been either practically or theoretically demonstrated. Chaos theory (see Guastello 1995), in particular, suggests that such complex interactions may be inherently impossible to predict in individual cases.

D. The system of belief and expectations is an important aspect of understanding change. In fact certain ideas about the future, even if held with no valid justification, can be very important in shaping the future. This is particularly true if an idea takes hold in the mind of a leader, in the values of an elite, or the expectations of an ethnic group or a people. For example, during the early period of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, minority Serbian groups in Croatia were led to expect that the Croatians, with the negative past history of World War II extremism, would use the break the independence of the state of Croatia as an excuse to kill off or push out the Serbs. This was probably not a valid expectation at that time, but the idea was sufficient to create fear, for local Serb police forces to begin arming and cutting of their villages, and also provided a pretext for the entry of Serbian armed forced. Ironically, at this stage, the Croatian forces then had a good pretext to insulate or remove Serbians along their border territories. Here a false idea became a reality because of the way the idea was manipulated into an expectation. Likewise, a certain notion of fate or destiny can effect the way nations form: America had a certain view of its fate or 'manifest destiny' to take over the West and form the current U.S.A. Russian political leaders, likewise, may have a certain sense of destiny for the future of Russia as a great power. The extreme right-wing Russian nationalist Zhirinovsky, for example argues that it will be Russia's destiny to rule Eurasia and extend her sphere of influence down through disintegrating states in Afghanistan and the Middle East to gain an exit into the Indian Ocean. Such a vision is extreme, but it forced former President Yeltsin and other more moderate Russian leaders to retain a certain degree of nationalism in their public policies and national platforms. Thus in late 1995 Yeltsin was almost obligated to criticise the NATO bombing of Serb army positions in Bosnia, while in the March 1997 Summit between Russia and America, Yeltsin has had to remain publicly in disagreement with NATO expansion, though the Russian position in fact has softened somewhat. Tensions re-emerged through 1998-1999 with Russia concerns over NATO's intervention in Kosovo (Antonenko 2000). President Putin can be seen to following this path of using nationalism and the image of a strong Russia to optimise his electoral support. Beliefs, and even wild ideas (like the thousand year Reich of Hitler or the dream of a world proletarian revolution, held by Lenin for a time), can shape the entire way nations plan for the future, develop resources, and force others to react in turn. Likewise, general attitudes, such as being a pessimist, or an optimist, a humanitarian or political realist, or a 'new-age person' or 'counter-culturalist' (see Wagar 1991), or one who fears instability and war in the future, can have a strong impact on how world affairs are interpreted. If Russia continues to stress its Eurasian 'future' this will continue to enhance its engagement of the region, even if this turn more towards an economic penetration of Eurasia as distinct from a military-interventionist role (Eurasia Insight 2001).

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 (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.

2. International Problems Caused by a Failure in Eurasian Globalisation

Today, I will not try to go through all these different models. Instead, we will look at a simple scenario options, as well as looking at some key issues which will affect the future of Eurasia as a whole. As we have seen, although there is some kind of Eurasia process (Dawisha & Parrott 1994) underway, linking this vast area, in fact Eurasia is not yet in any sense an integrated region, nor even a super-region which is fully integrated in 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 benefits of the creation of a next block during the next century (see Hanna 1993).

Problems with this incomplete globalisation include: -

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 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)

A sustained period of poverty could 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 flows out of Afghanistan, even to remote countries such as Indonesia and Australia, a trend deepened through late 2001 and early 2002

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 fear 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 Xinjiang province. Continued instability in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan can also not be ruled out, including the possible shifting of opium growing into suitable areas of these countries.

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. 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 structural and diplomatic needs have not been achieved, e.g. there is no balanced vision of oil pipelines out of Central Asia meeting regional needs, nor even agreement on the legal status and environmental management of the resources of the Caspian Sea (see Raczka 2000)

Eurasia is indeed a heartland. 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, the U.S. etc are all keen to see a stable Russian Federation and a stable Central Asia. Some efforts at stabilisation have begun, e.g. the Shanghai Five embracing China, Russia and three of the Central Asian states (now called the Shanghai Co-operative 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 2001-2002 instability, war and reconstruction has drawn in much of the region in different ways, including all of Central Asia, Pakistan, and even Turkey, who has been ask to provide the new commander of international forces (the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF) in Kabul, as well as a contingent of 1,000 troops (Dymond 2002).

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 (affecting the Sea of Japan, and 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 time-bomb that begins to seriously affect adjacent regions in Europe and Asia, as well as affecting world climate through impact on regional the atmosphere and Arctic region as a whole.

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 retained some stability, there are signs of poor governance in Russia, intensified religious tensions in Central Asia, and a painful path for Iran as it begins slow internal reform.

For all these reasons, the future of Eurasia remains of pressing concern to most of the global major international actors. However, the awareness of many of these regions remains minimal in many news media and in popular imagination. In some ways, major players such as the UN, the US, EU 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, 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 order in Eurasia as a whole. 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.

3. Leverage on the Eurasian Future

What has become clear is that major states in the region are trying to avoid political, economic and social crisis. Russia and Afghanistan, both in their own ways, have to content with serious internal problems. Most of the Central Asian states are trying to promote economic stability to avoid future crises internally. Any scenario must take into account these issues. Key levers can help access the state of play in Eurasia and think rationally 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).

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 further Tolipov 2001).

The borders drawn on the map have now largely been accepted by the main players of the region. 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). 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 image different, new, and perhaps better futures (Applebaum 1994), but such aspirations may clash with the expectations of other groups, or may not end up being 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 proposed EAU, the new EAEU, and the existing ECO.

What kind of leverage do individual states have on the international system, e.g. through fora such as the U.N., G8, the OSCE, or other organisations?

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 recently, a clear Russian-China strategic hegemony of the region was being established (see Arbatov 1999), but is this now effectively counterbalanced by European and U.S. influences?

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 (OSCE, CIS, NATO), or by re-conceptualising the relations among states within Eurasia? In the end, is this security really based on economic development, as well as the emergence of effective political governance?

4. Key Problems for the Eurasian Process

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

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).

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 (no strong EAU or Eurasian Economic Union, EAEU), 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).

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. Part of this incomplete transition also includes the environmental disasters that have been left by the Soviet system, but are now being compounded by a rush for export resources to help bolster the economies of newly independent states.

The changing balance of power in the region, where once Russia was the true hegemon, has now led to a 'failing hegemon' scenario with new forces at play. Fear of hegemonic return has also crippled the CIS as a truly inclusive diplomatic and security organisation. At present, Chinese and Russian engagement are partly balanced by EU and U.S. 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. This is where key institutions embracing the region need to be built to moderate a possible future clash of interests.

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 have begun a new round of engagement in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree Central Asia (through 2001-2002). 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. Likewise, regional stability will not be aided by the current round of war in Middle East, nor by the possibility of a forceful intervention against either Iraq or Iran. To build deep resilience in Eurasia, a concerned effort by the regional players and the international community will need to made over the next two decades.

5. Bibliography in Further Reading

Further Reading

GLEASON, Gregory "Foreign Policy and Domestic Reform in Central Asia", Central Asian Survey, 20 no. 2, 2001, pp167-182 (BU Library)

LUONG, Pauline Jones & WINTHAL, Erika "New Friends, New Fears in Central Asia", Foreign Affairs; 81 no. 2, Mar/Apr 2002, pp61-70 (BU Library)

TOLIPOV, Farkhod "Nationalism as a Geopolitical Phenomenon: the Central Asian Case", Central Asian Survey, 20 no. 2, 2001, pp183-194 (BU Library)

Bibliography

ANDERSON, Benedict Imagined Communities, 2d ed. London: Verso, 1991

ANTONENKO, Oksana "Russia, NATO and European Security After Kosovo", Survival, 41 no. 4, Winter 1999-2000, pp124-144

APPLEBAUM, Anne Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe, Pantheon, N.Y., 1994

ARBATOV, Alexei et al. (eds.) Russia and the West: The 21^st Century Security Environment, M.E. Sharpe, N.Y., 1999

CAVEY, Paul "Building a Power Base: Jiang Zemin and the Post-Deng Succession", Issues & Studies, 33 no. 11, November 1997, pp1-34

CORNELL, Svante "A Chechen State?", Central Asian Survey, 1997, 16 no. 2, pp201-213

DAWISHA, Karen & PARROTT, Bruce Russian and the New States of Eurasia: The Politics of Upheaval, Cambridge, CUP, 1994

DUBLIN, Max Futurehype: The Tyranny of Prophecy, London, Viking, 1989

DYMOND, Jonny "Turkish General Views Afghan Task", BBC News, 3 April 2002 [Internet Access}

Eurasia Insight "Russia Rethinks its Central Asia Strategy", 27 March 2001 [Internet Acess via www.eurasianet.org]

FUKUYAMA, France "The Primacy of Political Culture", Journal of Democracy, 6 no. 1, January 1995, pp7-14

GIDDENS, Anthony Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Oxford, Polity Press, 1991

GUASTELLO, Stephen Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs, Hillsdale, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995

HANNA, Milad "The Fourth Bloc", New Perspectives Quarterly, 10 no. 3, Summer 1993, pp23-25

HONG, Zhaohui "Jiang Zemin's Stressing Politics and Reconstruction of Social Order in China", Asian Profile, 25 no. 2, April 1997, pp89-99

JAFFE, Amy Myers & MANNING, Robert A. "The Myth of the Caspian 'Great Game': The Real Geopolitics of Energy", Survival, 40 no. 4, Winter 1998-1999, pp112-131

KHACHATRIAN, Haroutiun "Study Shows Over Half Armenia's Population in Need of Government Assistance", Eurasia Insight, 12 March 2001 [Internet Access via EurasiaNet.org]

MAMADSHOYEV, Marat "The Shanghai G-5 Becomes the Shanghai Forum", Eurasia Insight, 7 July 2000 [Internet Access via EurasiaNet.org]

MOHANTY, Deba "Power Struggle in China: The Post-Deng Scenario and Jiang Zemin as the 'First Among Equals'", Strategic Analysis, 22 no. 2, May 1998, pp249-262

RACZKA, Witt "A Sea or a Lake? The Caspian's Long Odyssey", Central Asian Survey, 19 no. 2, June 2000, pp189-222

RASHID, Ahmed "IMU Gradually Developing Into Pan-Central Asian Movement", Eurasia Insight, 3 April 2001 [Internet access via EurasiaNet.org]

Russia Today "Thousands Demonstrate for Russia's Independent NTV", 8 April 2001 [Internet Access]

SHEVTSOVA, Lilia "The August Coup and the Soviet Collapse", Survival, 34 no. 1, Spring 1992

TORBAKOV, Igor "Guuam's Potential to Play Role in Anti-Terrorism Alliance Appear Limited", Eurasia Insight, 7 November 2001 [Internet access at http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav110701.shtml]

WAGAR, W. Warren The Next Three Futures: Paradigms of Things to Come, N.Y., Praeger, 1991

ZHAO, "China's Periphery Policy and Its Asian Neighbours", Security Dialogue, 30 no. 3, September 1999, pp339-341

To return to www.international-relations.com select International Relations Portal Homepage, or BACK