SPEAKING
FREELY Russia and the 'war of
civilizations' By Andrei
Tsygankov
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Russia has
demonstrated a renewed activism in the Middle East
and larger Muslim world. Aside from ambitious
economic projects
and
weapons sales to India, Iran, Syria and Palestine,
the Kremlin has proposed two wide-ranging and
much-debated initiatives.
The first seeks
to address growing suspicions of Iran's intent to
obtain a nuclear bomb and to encourage Tehran to
send its spent nuclear fuel to Russia. The second
initiative is to open political dialogue with
leaders of Hamas, who won the recent Palestinian
elections but continue to refuse to renounce
violence against Israel or recognize its right to
exist as an independent state. Although Russia has
had regular relations with Muslim nations and even
sought to join the Organization of Islamic
Conferences, the Kremlin's initiatives are bold
new developments.
Successfully
implemented, they may put Russia in a position to
influence the future of regional and world
politics strongly. A nuclear Iran is sure to
change the security dynamics of the Middle East,
and Hamas' participation in peace negotiations
with Israel will clearly turn the process into
something very different from the Oslo-shaped one.
Russia has also strongly condemned the
recent publication in Denmark and some other
European nations of cartoons satirizing the
Prophet Mohammed as an "inadmissible" provocation
against Muslims. Several officials shared the
assessment of the situation by Danish Prime
Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a "global
crisis" with a potential to escalate beyond the
control of governments, while laying partial
responsibility for such a development on the
Danish government. Russian President Vladimir
Putin said, "If a state cannot prevent the
publication of things like this, it should at
least apologize for them."
What drives
Russia's new turn to the East has become a subject
of wide-ranging discussions. Many observers
pointed out inconsistencies in Russia's position.
How can it pressure Iran if the two have so many
commercial and geopolitical ties? Is it admissible
to shake hands with Hamas if Russia is a member of
the Quartet (including the United States, the
European Union and the United Nations) and a
signatory to the roadmap for peace? Why is it that
Russia does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist
organization if the Kremlin fights Chechen
terrorists to the bitter end and refuses to enter
negotiations with them? Is Moscow seeking to
challenge the West's global supremacy, and is it
developing Eurasian, rather than European,
strategic orientation?
Finding coherent
answers to these questions is all the more
difficult as the Kremlin has been tight-lipped
about its true motives. Putin offered a mere
couple of paragraphs explaining his decision to
invite Hamas to Moscow, and the Russian Foreign
Ministry is yet to substantiate and elaborate on
the president's vision.
We are witnessing
a foreign policy that has roots in both global and
domestic developments. Globally, the Kremlin has
been re-evaluating its relations with the United
States. Many of Russia's post-September 11, 2001,
expectations have not materialized. Military
cooperation in Central Asia and Afghanistan is now
replaced by rivalry over controlling security
space and energy resources. Instead of rebuilding
Afghanistan, which is quickly becoming a new safe
haven for terrorists, the US launched a war in
Iraq.
It also soon became apparent that
Washington's strategy of changing regimes and
expanding liberty is not limited to the Middle
East. The so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia in
November 2003 replaced the old regime by popular
protest over a rigged parliamentary election and
emboldened Washington to apply the strategy
elsewhere in the former Soviet region. While the
military option was excluded, the emphasis was
still on providing opposition with relevant
training and financial resources for challenging
the old regimes in power.
Moscow has
responded by building stronger ties with China,
condemning the colored revolutions on its
periphery, and taking domestic precautions against
possible encroachments on national sovereignty.
The Kremlin no longer views Russia-US cooperation
in the region as primarily beneficial, and it
thinks US presence there invites terrorism, rather
than eradicating it.
Russia's perception
of the US role in the region as destructive
corresponds with perceptions by many Muslims
across the world, who view the US "war on terror"
as a war on them. What began as a
counter-terrorist operation in Afghanistan with
relatively broad international support is
increasingly turning into a "war of
civilizations", or America's crusade against
Muslims and their style of living. Instead of
engaging moderate Muslims, US policies tend to
isolate them and give the cards to radicals.
For instance, the new radical Islamist
regime in Iran is a product of the isolationist
stance adopted toward the nation by the United
States over two decades. US leaders failed to
engage moderate politicians such as former
presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed
Khatami, who were clear in their intentions to put
the 1979 hostage crisis behind them and normalize
the relationship with the United States. With
aggressive foreign policies pursued by Washington,
it was only a matter of time before a large and
culturally independent nation such as Iran would
empower its own hardliners to respond to America's
hardline policies.
The Hamas case is
similar, as both the United States and Europe
pursued isolationist policies and even tried to
pressure Palestinian voters by threatening to cut
financial aid in case of a Hamas victory. Europe
recently added fuel to the fire by refusing to
assume any responsibility for global protests of
Muslims over publication of offensive cartoons of
the Prophet Mohammed. That the United States
condemned their publication could not change its
already-established image of an imperialist power
seeking to offend Muslims. Actions, not words,
shape perceptions, and it is perception that
constitutes reality.
Implications of the
"war of civilizations" for Russia's well-being are
fundamental. For a country with 20 million to 25
million Muslims, an involvement in such a war
would mean inviting fire to its own home. Russia's
domestic intercultural ties are far from balanced.
A growing influence of radical Islamist
ideologies, rising immigration from Muslim
ex-Soviet republics, and poorly conceived actions
of some of Russia's local authorities in failing
to build ties with Muslims create politically an
explosive environment. Although the situation in
Chechnya is much more stable today, Islamic
radicals are succeeding in spreading violence and
extremist ideology across the larger North
Caucasus.
It is in this context that one
should try to make sense of Russia's Eastern
initiatives. They are not anti-Western and do not
signal the Kremlin's return to the rhetoric of
Eurasianist multipolarity and containment of the
West. However, these initiatives do indicate
appreciation that the "war of civilizations"
between Western nations and Islam is intensifying,
as well as understanding that Russia has no
business participating in that war. Just as it was
a tragic mistake to get involved in World War I in
1914, it would be a tragedy to have a fully
hardened Western-Islamic front today and to see
Russia joining it.
Russia's willingness to
engage Iran and Hamas seeks to compensate for
blunders of Western policies in the region, such
as calls to boycott elections in Iran or clumsy
attempts to pressure Palestinian voters, and to
find a way out of a developing
inter-civilizational confrontation. Implicitly,
the new Kremlin initiatives also fully recognize
that the threat of Islamic radicalism in Russia
cannot be successfully confronted without reaching
out to the Muslim world. Whether or not reports of
Hamas' financial support for Chechen radicals are
true, it is overdue for Russia to issue a clear
statement that it has no plans to be a part of a
new world war, but that it is willing to do
everything in its power to negotiate the war's
end.
Those losing sleep over Russia's new
turn to the East should relax. Russia remains a
European nation albeit with strong roots outside
the West. This does not mean, however, that Samuel
Huntington-inspired hopes of Russia joining the
"civilized" West against the Eastern "barbarians"
have any foundations to them (Huntington, a
political scientist, wrote The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order). Russians are more likely to side with
voices advocating a dialogue of civilizations.
Politicians such as Mikhail Gorbachev and
Mohammed Khatami attempted to articulate
humanistic and culturally pluralistic
perspectives, but failed to muster support from
the "only superpower". Today calls for an
"inter-civilizational alliance" and "compromise"
are heard again, as Russia, Turkey and Spain try
to formulate an alternative to an
inter-civilizational war. Until such calls are
heard, strengthening a dialogue across cultures
remains possible.
Andrei P Tsygankov
teaches at San Francisco State University and
is author of Russia's Foreign Policy: Change
and Continuity in National Identity (Rowman
& Littlefield, forthcoming) and Whose
World Order? Russia's Perception of American Ideas
after the Cold War (University of Notre Dame
Press, 2004), among others.
(Copyright
2006 Andrei P Tsygankov.)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
