Russia and the Central Asian Republics

Post-Soviet Engagements

Sreemati Ganguli

• Publisher: KW Publishers
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9789386147288
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

For the world, the disintegration of the Soviet Union means the end of the Cold War rivalries between two rival power-blocs, led by the US and the Soviet Union. For Russia, it means, the loss of its earlier superpower status and the beginning of the process of adjusting itself with a new world order. But, most important, Russia became one of the fourteen member-states of the organization, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a new entity that was born in place of the USSR. The post-Cold War era signifies, for Russia, a journey to adjust itself to new realities- a new international strategic scenario, the rise of new powers, and its own diminished strength. At the same time, the journey marks Russia's search for a new status in the international order of powers. To attain that goal, Russia felt it absolutely necessary to stay relevant in its immediate neighbourhood and the focus of attention became the Central Asian region, with which Russia shared a common history for nearly two hundred years and still now, they are interdependent and interlinked by their common security concerns in various ways. This book attempts to study the development of Russia's relations with the newly independent, sovereign states of Central Asia in the post-Soviet, post-Cold War context. It argues that unlike during the Tsarist past, in the post-Soviet era, Russia tries to engage the Central Asian Republics in multifarious ways and the development of three such bondings between Russia and these Republics in the spheres of security, energy and migration is analyzed in this study. This book also focuses on the post-Cold war context, as a number of global and regional powers are involved in the Central Asian region as the region is rich in energy resources and can act as a viable trade and transport corridor between Asia and Europe. So, Russia now does not enjoy the advantage of being the only power as the countries of the region have the option of choosing partners, according to their own choices and necessities. This changed context of competition adds a significant dimension to the development of Russia's engagements with these states.

1.	THE PERSPECTIVE: RUSSIA’S SEARCH FOR A NEW STATUS

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The post-Soviet era for Russia has been, primarily, a time for assessing its own identity, its own place in the global arena. The disintegration of the USSR, the loss of superpower status, the shrinkage of its client space in Eastern Europe, and the diminished status of being one of the other fourteen states that together established the CIS—all these factors helped create a crisis of identity for Russia in the post-Cold War scenario. The role of the “state continuator” of the USSR, as recognised by the international community, has provided Russia with tokens of inheritance—the permanent seat of the UN Security Council and memberships of other international fora, the nuclear arsenal as well as responsibilities of all the agreements and commitments of the USSR—but not that sense of security that is essential to build up a new identity for itself.

For the Russian national sentiment, the end of the Cold War came with a tremendous price—the USSR lost its sphere of influence in East Europe, and the disintegration brought with it the decrease in Russia’s military might as Russia inherited only 37 percent of MiG-29 fighters, 23 percent of SU-27s, and 43 percent of IL-76s.The integrated air-defence system was also destroyed, with most of the strategic bombers, radio-technical, stationary anti-aircraft assets, airfields, early-warning facilities for missile attacks, and command posts were situated outside Russia. And the suddenness of the disintegration along with the collapse of the concept of the invulnerability of the Soviet Union engendered a pervasive sense of national dislocation, as all this meant an end to Russia’s global status as a derzhava or superpower. A number of terms were used to describe the Russian sentiment—“national humiliation complex”, “besieged fortress mentality” etc. This last factor apparently undermined Russia’s capacity to face the strategic challenges of the so-called “new world order”. And it seemed quite natural, not “paradoxical” (as some analysts like Bobo Lo commented) that this complex “stimulated rather than constrained the elite’s ‘great power’ mentality”.¹ The state of affairs in post-Soviet Russia was described by Yevgeny Primakov, the Russian Foreign Minister and later, the Prime Minister, as he told Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, that Russia was in the process of “recovering from the loss of nearly half its land, the evaporation of its alliances, the precipitous decline of its military budget, the looming obsolescence of its strategic forces, and on top of all that, an upsurge in terrorism and secessionism on its territory.” The mute emotions of what it was like to feel vulnerable was also vented by Primakov as Talbott recalled “Americans, he’d told me many times, couldn’t fathom what it was like to be a citizen, not to mention a leader of a proud but wounded country…”²

There are perceptions among Russia’s ruling elite that moves and decisions by the West like NATO expansion, the War in Yugoslavia, and the wave of Colour Revolutions in the post-Soviet states are attempts to undermine Russia’s interests. The efficacy of the move for NATO expansion was questioned by John Lewis Gaddis, one of the most prominent historians of American diplomatic history as well as by George Kennan, the sender of the famous “X” telegram that had been instrumental to initiate the Cold War. While Gaddis wrote that the US policy to expand the NATO was “ill-conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world”, Kennan expressed similar views under the title “A Fateful Error”. French President Jaques Chirac expressed his reservations that the US was not taking full account of Russian sensitivities”, especially the “traditional fear of encirclement as well as fear of humiliation in the Russian psyche”. President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Munich Security Conference was an expression of a confident reaction to the Western perception of Russia in the post-Cold War era.

In his address, Putin commented that the “unipolar world” that had been proposed after the Cold War “did not take place”. To him “the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world... What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis, there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation”. He concluded that “Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy. We are not going to change this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic sense of our own opportunities and potential. And of course we would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all”. This was an obvious reference to Russia’s preference for a multipolar world order where Russia would get a status of its choice.³

The context of such a Russian mentality has been aptly analysed by Richard Sakwa.⁴ To him, there have been major failures on part of the West in adjusting policies to the new challenges of the post-Cold War era and he categorised these failures as political, strategic, intellectual and cultural. There are two asymmetry in the global political arena: the first, the Cold War structures like NATO or OSCE are made stronger, in spite of the fact that the similar structures on the other side were dismantled already; and secondly, even after losing its claims of being the champion of an alternative ideological system and politico-military bloc, Russia is not ready to give up its claim of having a distinct civilisational identity or of attaining a global role. The fundamental political failure for the West has been “to find ways to compensate” for this two-fold asymmetry and the resultant mutual suspicion and negativity have given way to a situation where the elements of the old Cold War conflict “have re-emerged in a far more anarchic context”. In the category of strategic failures, he identified five events: First, the advent of a “new nuclear age” with the US plans for the NMD scheme, for the unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty, for the deployment of missile defence systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia and the rejection of the Russian offer of setting up a joint missile defence system in the Gabala radar base of Azerbaijan; the second and third ones are related as these are the events of NATO enlargement and the inclusion of the former Soviet bloc members into the NATO and the EU, that heightened Russia’s fear of encirclement; the fourth is the Russian withdrawal from the CFE Treaty in 2007 as it felt that the CFE conditionalities have been ignored by the other members; and the fifth one is the energy politics around the Caspian resources. The failure to engage Russia and “to create a new community based on common interests and ultimately joint values” is termed as the intellectual failure of the West. And the failed response to feel Russia’s distinct and civilisational and geopolitical concerns and to have a rational understanding that “Russia is neither an automatic foe nor a natural friend of the West” is the cultural failure.

James Sherr⁵ presented the relative futility of Western expectations from a post-Soviet Russia in a precise and philosophical way. To him, “Had the West been willing to learn more lessons from the Soviet collapse and teach fewer of them, it might have been possible to avoid illusions, anticipate (and articulate) differences and diminish resentment. Had the West been less reassured by its good intentions and more conscious of the precedents its actions would create in the minds of others (as over the independence of Kosovo), it still might have acted as it did, but been better prepared for the consequences. Nevertheless, the West did not ‘lose’ Russia, and it is naïve to suppose that it could have ‘won’ it.” And he commented conclusively, on Russia’s efforts of soul-searching in the post-disintegration context, “...it was not surprising that Russia did not find itself ‘at the end of history’, but at the beginning, ‘rediscovering the historical, cultural and geo-political imperatives’ that make Russia Russia”.

The process of de-ideologisation in Russian foreign policy-making meant, for all practical purposes, wiping out of Communism as an overarching state ideology. But simultaneously, Russia witnessed a veritable explosion of ideas and theories in the post-Soviet era. These were tried and tested as well as used as experiments to provide guidelines for an effective foreign policy that would establish and ensure Russia’s proper status in the post-Cold War global scenario. The most significant among these theories were Atlanticism, Eurasianism, and Neo-Eurasianism. There emerged another brand of theories—the religious- or orthodoxy-related geopolitical theories that “took more seriously imaginary proto-boundaries of the pre-Westphalian world” to understand Russia’s “myth of national uniqueness”⁶. These theories, particularly Orthodox Nationalism/Fundamentalism, Geoapocalyptics of the Postmodern, Neo-Panslavism, Statism/Eurounionism, Neo-Eurasianism, New Chronology, and Neo-Orthodox-Communism, are termed as Third Romist geopolitical theories as these found their origins in the major Russian cultural myth of presenting Moscow as the Third Rome, after the end of the Byzantine Empire, the orthodox Second Rome in the mid-fifteenth century. But these Third Romist theories will not be analysed in this study as most of these were not experimented in the foreign policy sphere and theories, like Eurasianism and Neo-Eurasianism, whenever tried in this field, were used without the religious content.

As against the Atlanticist views of making friendship with the West and projecting Russia as a European power, a view that was present in foreign policy perceptions of Boris Yeltsin–Andrei Kozyrev duo, the Eurasianist and Neo-Eurasianist concepts tried to propose different models. Basically, these concepts put focus on Russia’s unique civilisational identity as a Eurasian state, oppose American unilateralism in global affairs, and seek regaining of Russia’s great-power status in a multi-polar world. There is a host of other theories like “Russia First”, International Institutionalism, Aggressive and Defensive Realism, and Revolutionary Expansionism that are concerned with foreign policy orientations of Russia and its place in the global arena.

The “Russia First” theory proposes to attempt a Russian attempt to find uniquely Russian solutions to the country’s domestic and foreign policy conundrums and suggests closer relationship of Russia with the post-Soviet space. Whereas the theory of International Institutionalism prefers to see Russia as a Western country and as a great power, though one among many; the theory of Defensive Realism proposes that Russia has a mixture of both East and West in its culture and is a great power, though temporarily is in a crisis situation after the Soviet disintegration, and should have a friendly attitude towards the West. On the other side of the spectrum, there are theories like Aggressive Realism and Revolutionary Expansionism, that consider Russia as a Eurasian, anti-Western country and still the other superpower and prefer the course of hostile and Westernism as preferred foreign policy orientation for Russia.

There has also been a marked tendency to compare between the present realities facing Russia, shorn of its earlier superpower status, with those in post-Crimean War era when Russia had to accept the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856, which proposed the demilitarisation of the Black Sea. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov was relentless in interpreting the policy of Alexander Gorchakov, to provide a sort of a conceptual framework for a new foreign policy paradigm in the post-disintegration scenario. He noticed five important points of the Gorchakovian approach, and he argued that these might act as guiding principles of current Russian foreign policy: To put faith in the strength of Russia to play a leading role in global politics; to pursue an active foreign policy even when in a weakened state of affair; to get active in all areas of foreign policy concerns; to exploit the resentment of smaller powers to expand own influence; and interestingly, unlike Gorchakov, Primakov stressed on developing constructive relationships with all states rather than seeking “permanent coalition”⁷. In a sense, Primakov sought the justification of his emphasis on the need for a multi-vector foreign policy for Russia and on the desirability of a multi-polar world order from Gorchakovian principles. Primakov’s opposition to the US being the single hegemonic power in the post-Cold War world order and his preference for Russia becoming a pole that, together with other poles can balance the US, was explicit in this interpretation. Later, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, also focused on the multi-vector component of Gorchakovian principles “to actively promote relations with states in the West, East and elsewhere.”⁸

In the post-Soviet era, search for a global significance became a priority for the Russian foreign-policy makers as is evident in the revival and re-interpretation of old concepts and doctrines. There has been also a trend to term the policies of the Russian Presidents as bearing the marks of one or other theory—policies of Yeltsin are termed as Westernist or Atlanticist, whereas Vladimir Putin’s policies are termed as a compromise between both the strands, or in another sense, realistic.

This search led Russia to come into another related realisation—the urge to become and stay relevant in the post-Soviet space, the space where it still has crucial advantages and so, can command considerable power and influence. Also, a number of moves by the West, particularly the decision to expand NATO, point to its unilateral stance as well as to Russia’s weakened position and a reminder for Russia to identify its vital stakes in the space. So the process of gaining influence in the post-Soviet space is considered as the essential prerequisite of becoming a power with global influence once again. The crisis of identity has as much been related to whether Russia is a European or a Eurasian power, as to whether Russia is a regional or a global power. This study is concerned about the latter question and endeavours to project this interlinked and interdependent search for status as the perspective, against which Russia’s relationship with the Central Asian region has evolved and developed. The security interests of Russia and these states are vitally interlinked and interdependent to the extent that it may be termed as constituting a security complex. A security complex is defined by Buzan 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”⁹. Buzan talked of five factors, namely, social factors of ethnic linguistic and historic importance; economic f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1. The Perspective: Russia’s Search for a New Status
• 2. The Context and the Process of Russia’s Engagements
• 3. Relationship in the Post-Cold War Era: Development of Bondings
• 4. Foreign Policy Options for the Central Asian States: Challenges for Russia
• 5. Conclusion
• Select Bibliography