The rise of Eurasia: Geopolitical advantages and historic pitfalls
By James M. Dorsey
Asian players are proving to be conceptually and
bureaucratically better positioned in the 21st century’s Great Game that
involves tectonic geopolitical shifts with the emergence of what former
Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Macaes terms the
fusion of Europe and Asia into a “supercontinent.”
Yet, in contrast to the United States, Asian players despite
approaching Europe and Asia as one political, albeit polarized and disorganized
entity populated by widely differing and competing visions, may find that their
historic legacies work against them.
Writing in The National
Interest, US Naval College national security scholar Nikolas K. Gvosdev argued that the United
States, for example, was blinded to the shifts by the State Department’s
classification of Russia as part of Europe, its lumping of Central Asia
together with Pakistan and India and the Pentagon’s association of the region
with the Arab world and Iran.
“The (State Department’s) continued inclusion of Russia
within the diplomatic confines of a larger European bureau has intellectually
limited assessments about Russia’s position in the world by framing Russian
action primarily through a European lens. Not only does this undercount
Russia’s ability to be a major player in the Middle East, South Asia and East
Asia, it has also, in my view, tended to overweight the importance of the
Baltic littoral to Russian policy,” Mr. Gvosdev said.
He warned that the US government’s geographical
classification of Central Asia, Eurasia’s heartland has “relegated it to
second-tier status in terms of U.S. attention and priorities.”
US failure to get ahead of the tectonic shifts in global
geopolitics contrasts starkly with the understanding of Central Asian nations
that they increasingly exist in an integrated, interconnected region that
cannot isolate itself from changes enveloping it.
That understanding is reflected in a report by the Astana
Club that brings together prominent political figures, diplomats, and experts
from the Great Game’s various players under the auspices of Kazakh president
Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Entitled, ‘Toward
a Greater Eurasia: How to Build a Common Future?,’ the report warns that the Eurasian
supercontinent needs to anticipate the Great Game’s risks that
include mounting tensions between the United States and China; global trade
wars; arms races; escalating conflict in the greater Middle East; deteriorating
relations between Russia and the West; a heating up of contained European
conflicts such as former Yugoslavia; rising chances of separatism and ethnic/religious
conflict; and environmental degradation as well as technological advances.
The report suggested that the risks were enhanced by the
fragility of the global system with the weakening of multilateral institutions
such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and NATO.
Messrs. Nazarbayev, Russian president Vladimir Putin and
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be better positioned to understand
the shifts given that they govern territories at the heart of the emerging
Eurasian supercontinent and see it as an integral development rooted in their
countries’ histories.
Then Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu made as much
clear in 2013. “The last century was only a parenthesis for us. We will close
that parenthesis. We will do so without going to war, or calling anyone an
enemy, without being disrespectful to any border; we will again tie Sarajevo to
Damascus, Benghazi to Erzurum to Batumi. This is the core of our power. These
may look like different countries to you, but Yemen and Skopje were part of the
same country a hundred and ten years ago as were Erzurum and Benghazi,” Mr. Davutoglu said drawing
a picture of a modern day revival of the Ottoman empire. Mr. Erdogan
has taken that ambition a step further by increasingly expanding it to the
Turkic and Muslim world.
At its core, Erdogan’s vision, according to Eurasia scholar
Igor Torbakov, is built on the
notion that the world is divided into distinct civilizations. And
upon that foundation rise three pillars: 1) a just world order can only be a
multipolar one; 2) no civilization has the right to claim a hegemonic position
in the international system; and 3) non-Western civilizations (including those
in Turkey and Russia) are in the ascendant. In addition, anti-Western sentiment
and self-assertiveness are crucial elements of this outlook.
Expressing that sentiment, Turkish bestselling author and
Erdogan supporter Alev Alati quipped: “We are the ones who have adopted Islam
as an identity but have
become so competent in playing chess with Westerners that we can beat them.
We made this country that lacked oil, gold and gas what it is now. It was not
easy, and we won’t give it up so quickly.”
The Achilles Heel, however, of Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan’s
Eurasianism is the fact that its geographies are populated by former empires
like the Ottomans and Russia whose post-imperial notions of national identity
remain contested and drive its leaders to define national unity as state unity,
control the flow of information, and repress alternative views expressions of
dissent.
Turkey and Russia still “see themselves as empires, and, as
a general rule, an empire’s political philosophy is one of universalism and
exceptionalism. In other words, empires
don’t have friends – they have either enemies or dependencies,” said
Mr. Torbakov, the Eurasia scholar, or exist in what Russian strategists term “imperial
or geopolitical solitude.”
Mr. Erdogan’s vision of a modern-day Ottoman empire encompasses
the Turkic and Muslim world. Different groups of Russian strategists promote concepts
of Russia as a state that has to continuously act as an empire or as a unique
“state civilization” devoid of expansionist ambition despite its
premise of a Russian World that embraces the primacy of Russian culture as well
as tolerance for non-Russian cultures. Both notions highlight the pitfalls of
their nations’ history and Eurasianism.
Both Mr. Erdogan and Russia’s vision remain controversial.
In Mr. Erdogan’s case it is the Muslim more than the Turkic world that is
unwilling to accept Turkish leadership unchallenged with Saudi Arabia leading
the charge and Turkish-Iranian relations defined by immediate common interests
rather than shared strategic thinking.
Similarly, post-Soviet states take issue with Russia’s
notion of the primacy of its culture. Beyond the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
over the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s support for Russian-speaking rebels
in the east of the country, Ukraine emphasized its rejection of Russian
cultural primacy with this
month’s creation of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of its Russian
counterpart.
Earlier, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law in September 2017
establishing
Ukrainian rather than Russian as the language of instruction in
schools and colleges. The law stipulated that educational institutions could
teach courses in a second language, provided it was an official language of the
European Union. National minorities were guaranteed the right to study in Ukrainian
as well as their minority language.
Similarly, Kazakhstan, the Eurasian nation par excellence, shifted
from Cyrillic to Latin script.
“Russia’s influence (in Central Asia) has been largely
mythologized, and its role in both national and regional security has not been
properly and honestly discussed. Different fears and phobias
still influence the decision-making process, including those over Russia’s
aggression in Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea, the concept of the ‘Russian
World’ as a pillar of its national identity, and its soft power,”
said Kazakh Central Asia scholar Anna Gussarova.
Ukraine may put a dent in the Russian World’s attractivity,
but it does not amount to a body blow.
Ms. Gussarova cautioned that while Central Asian elites may
recognize the risks involved in embracing Russian primacy, the region’s public
remains far more aligned with Russian culture, at least linguistically.
“Whereas the expert community, which is supposed to shape
public opinion, uses the English-language platforms Facebook and Twitter, the
general public relies on Russian-language social media. This dichotomy underscores
the limitations of any effort by the government and affiliated experts to shape
public perceptions. At the same time, this gap shows greater public support for
Russia and its activities, which makes nation building and language issues
difficult and sensitive,” Ms. Gussarova said.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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