Russia frets over Eurasian domino
theory By Yong Kwon
Post-Soviet Russia has been consistently
perceived as anti-American. Despite several shifts
in Moscow's foreign policy during the past two
decades, the Kremlin's opposition to North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in
former Yugoslav republics, its war with Georgia
and the recent protest against military action in
Libya have all been attributed to Russia's designs
to leverage its influence against the West.
However, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's
and President Dmitry Medvedev's defense of state
sovereignty has political and economic rationale
that transcends a simple desire to demote American
interests abroad. Russia's standing concerns
regarding security in Central Asia and the global
energy market all reveal a sophisticated foreign
policy doctrine that attempts to hedge
Moscow's irreducible interests
in a complex global system.
Russia has
historically occupied an extremely awkward
geographical position that made its foreign policy
orientation with other great powers awkward. This
is especially true in Moscow's relationship with
Washington. The only way for Russia to have a
completely compatible relationship void of
disagreements with the United States is if their
interests align in not only Europe, but also in
the Caucasus, the Arctic Circle, Middle East,
Central Asia and Northeast Asia.
As Moscow
has an obligation to pursue policies that best
serve its own interests, friction with Washington
becomes a near inevitability. This is not the
least because Washington often fails to empathize
with the fact that a crisis in one area of
Russia's periphery inevitably yields unintended
consequences elsewhere along Russia's vast
frontier.
Since the early 2000s, Moscow
has been singularly concerned with the influx of
drugs flooding across the porous borders of
Central Asia into Russia. The consumption of these
drugs by the Russian people contributes to
Russia's rapidly declining population and strains
its already exhausted healthcare system.
Widespread use of intravenous drugs
combined with other strains on the welfare of the
Russian people could reduce the Russian
population, which stood at 150 million in 1991, to
a figure as low as 100 or 80 million by 2050. [1]
While political scientists continue to dispute
over whether demographic decline affects the
overall status of a state a great power, Russia's
rapidly declining population stands as a serious
liability for the country's ability to develop
socially and economically.
The best way to
decrease the trans-Eurasian drug trade is to
bolster the economic stability and security of the
Central Asian states. However, development of this
economic periphery remains predicated on several
factors; primarily, the ability of Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan to protect their investments and
secondly, Russia's capacity to ensure stability in
the global energy market. Both tasks require a
degree of cooperation from other great powers,
specifically the United States.
Facilitating Russia's key objectives,
Central Asia is slowly emerging from the economic
periphery and moving towards greater integration
with the global market. In addition to
pre-existing Russian energy corporations and the
rapidly expanding Chinese natural resource
extraction projects, foreign investments are
slowly trickling into the region to bolster
development. South Korean corporations have shown
great interest in limestone and shell deposits in
Kyrgyzstan while Australia considers investments
in Kazakh copper mines.
Last week, Osh
province in Kyrgyzstan received commitments for
foreign investment worth $24 million during an
investment forum. [2] Kyrgyzstan also plans to
attract investments for the construction of
hydroelectric plants that will place the second
poorest Central Asian state at the forefront of
the region's energy export market.
Kazakhstan can also expect greater capital
investment as it has reaffirmed its commitment to
enter the expanding Islamic bond market and by
July 1 is preparing to remove all customs borders
between itself, Russia and Belarus. On top of
this, Kazakhstan is looking forward to developing
the Kashgan super-oil field, raising its status
among oil exporting states. These are remarkable
developments considering last year's ethnic and
political upheaval in Kyrgyzstan and the global
economic downturn.
However, the stability
of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan remains on thin ice.
The presence of Islamic fundamentalism, a massive
drug trade and instability in the global energy
market all threaten to shatter the initial
successes of these economies.
While the
Osh investment forum was taking place, Bishkek
announced that it will deploy more troops to the
Kyrgyz-Tajik border south of Osh province to guard
against incursion by fundamentalist militants and
narco-traffickers. On the same day, Astana
announced the deployment of an unspecified number
of its troops as peacekeepers to Afghanistan.
These actions show how serious both states are in
securing a stable region for continued growth and
development.
Russia is naturally
interested in supporting these efforts because
they are in line with its national interests, but
its capacity to aid is limited due to the sheer
scale of the problem. Russia's Federal Service for
Drug Control reported seizing around 6.9 tons of
hashish in 2008, but remained far from scratching
the surface of the estimated 3,858 tons produced
annually in Afghanistan. [3]
Moscow
genuinely wants a strong American presence in
Central Asia to secure the borders and create a
more stable Afghanistan. Russia's desires for US
engagement in the region can be seen in its
silence over American military presence in Manas
air base in Kyrgyzstan (see Clawing
back credibility in Kyrgyzstan , Asia Times
Online, Sep 3, 2010 ), which is in stark contrast
to Moscow's vociferous opposition to the Pentagon
project to place a land-based SM-3 (Standard
Missile 3) interceptor missile system in Romania.
Russia had proposed to make the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) more focused on combating
international crime. Although shot down by US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the proposed
changes intended to increase the presence of the
United States in Russia's traditional
"near-abroad". All of Russia's recent approaches
to US foreign policy in Central Asia points to
Moscow's doctrine of resolving key regional issues
at a multilateral level.
The Russian
Federation acquired a valuable experience in its
formative years of foreign policy construction
while fighting in the Tajik Civil War (1992–1997).
The final peace agreement between transnational
Islamic fundamentalists and the Tajik government
was not achieved through Russia's overwhelming
military firepower, but rather through active
diplomacy with Iran.
Since the end of the
Boris Yeltsin era in 1999, Russia's new approach
towards its near abroad has been one that has not
focused on direct control over former Soviet
states' security and economy. Moscow's passive
attitude towards China's economic expansion into
Central Asia and the Russian government's
unwillingness to continue subsidizing natural gas
exports to Belarus show these shifts. Putin and
Medvedev's new approach to Central Asia required
each state to pull its own weight.
However, circumstances prevent a region
that had been so dependent on Russian support and
energy exports to suddenly obtain economic
sovereignty. Especially when the global recession
and the recent proliferation of instability in the
Middle East could serious hamper development in
Central Asia by destabilizing the global energy
market. These are not issues nascent economies
such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan can tackle on
their own.
In this context, Russia's
opposition to armed intervention in Libya is
entirely rational; it is not a simple matter of
defending the principle of state sovereignty, but
an intrinsic security dilemma for Russia to allow
the energy market to fluctuate. Moscow definitely
understands the ties between the crisis in the
Arab world and security in Central Asia. The
coming crisis in Syria and Yemen will be another
test to Russian foreign policy makers who watch
the instability moving ever closer to the oil
exporting states of the Persian Gulf.
American foreign policy makers need to be
more involved in Central Asian security and
understand the long-term ramifications of military
action in economically sensitive regions of the
world. It is not as though the United States will
not gain anything from a more cooperative
relationship with Russia. Despite successes in
decreasing opium production, Afghanistan still
produces nearly all of the world's supply of
opiates.
As a major entrepot of narcotics
exports to the world, securing the borders in
Central Asia will bolster political stability in
Afghanistan. Furthermore, Moscow's invitation for
Washington to be more deeply involved in Central
Asia provides an opportunity to hamper the
region's militant transnational fundamentalist and
build political capital in states that will become
major energy suppliers in the near future.
The United States and the Russian
Federation both face an important juncture in
their foreign policies. Both states see their
intervention in Central Asia/Afghanistan-Pakistan
as intrinsic to their national security. There is
no reason why greater cooperation between the two
great powers should not be actualized.
Notes
(Special
thanks to Professor Ludmila Michael of the George
Washington University for discussions regarding
Russia's demographic crisis.)
1. Ambrosio,
Thomas. "The Geopolitics of Demographic Decay:
HIV/AIDS and Russia's Great-Power Status."
Post-Soviet Affairs 22.1 (2006) 1-23.
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