next - main - previous
The Eurasian Politician - Issue 1 (May 21st, 2000)
We have been reminded for some time already that the Middle Ages are back. Politologists are again speaking nostalgically about empires and the penetration of religions, myths, and ”cultures” into the world politics. Basically this means that geopolitics is back, and is quickly filling the vacuum of an imagined cartography of world order that the end of the Cold War left. Although communism did not die with the Soviet Union, as the existence of China, North Korea, Serbia, Cuba, Vietnam, Belarus, and many others proves, the ideological fight of the ”Free World” against the ”Evil Empire” was almost unilaterally declared to be over by the West. As Samuel Huntington, one of the explicators of the new (but very old) geopolitical thinking, says, the use of the expression ”Free World” has disappeared, and no Western leaders use the expression ”Evil Empire” any more in its truly serious meaning. Instead, Huntington and several others have started to talk about ”great civilizations”, ”each one civilized in its own way”. The civilization speak is a code to the suddenly very popular multipolarism as a geopolitical model of understanding Eurasia. Basically multipolarism suggests that Eurasia should be divided into the interest spheres of the hegemons of what Huntington calls the civilizations: the West, Russia, China, India, and perhaps an Islamic civilization.
The problem is that multipolarism is a deeply geopolitical code of thinking, and it is indeed as hollow as the image of geopolitics in the past. ”Era of regional hegemons” can hardly be anything but hard geopolitical game in the Eurasian chessboard, in the inter-zones of East Europe, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, Kashmir and Southeast Asia, and for the Heartland of the Caspian and Central Asian future oil El Dorado. The danger is that multipolarism does not respect legitimacy of the interest sphere constructions that are being made – especially as geopoliticians of Huntington’s type would eagerly ignore other players (especially Muslim countries) while providing others (like Russia and China) with interest spheres full of countries and nations that would do anything to get rid of the hegemony of their ”Evil Empires”. We should also not forget that, like Michael Reynolds recently wrote in his article on the ”Grand Chessplay” of Eurasia: It is not a game, at least not for the people living in the region
What is interesting in the present Eurasian situation is that the Heartland of classical geopolitics seems to have returned. The region that Zbigniew Brzezinski calls ”the Eurasian Balkans”, that is, Central Asia and the Caucasus with their adjacent areas, is becoming a heartland of the Eurasian power game, already due to the oil resources that seem to form an efficient symbol for all the rest of resources in the region. For a long time, the Eurasian geopolitical empires Russia, China, India and Iran agreed to isolate this huge Eurasian central space from world politics. Turkestan and the Caucasus – regions that in the Medieval times were the crucial stage of Marco Polo’s great Silk Road – were reduced in the cartography of politics into a periphery, and still in the 1990s the ideas associated with these areas in the minds of most Westerners are negative and often false, distorted by massive disinformation and misinformation. But the vast resources will not stay covered under the camouflage of destabilisation for ever: They will return to a crucial position in the revived grand chessplay and in a process of decolonization of Inner Asia. At least when the West’s patience in supporting and financing Russia’s colonial imperialism will reach its limits, and the giant’s clay feet will no more be maintained by IMF billions. The world had better have some strategies to face the revival of the Heartland – unless they are prepared to face ever increasing bloodshed and instability that will definitely not end with Chechnya.
The theoretical basis of the connection between legitimacy and stability is formulated in my larger essay, ”Legitimacy, Liberty, and Stability”. Kalevi J. Holsti’s theory on horizontal legitimacy of states can be employed to cover also the supra-state constructions. Also they can be more or less legitimate depending on how widely they are accepted and understood by the people and nations enclosed by the construction. In other words, while a state can only gain its legitimacy by the consent of its citizens (the classical liberal and democratic definition of legitimacy, which Holsti, too, uses), similarly a supra-state construction, too – a regional, cultural or interest sphere construction – can gain legitimacy only by the consent of its ”citizens”, i.e. states, nations, and at the last hand of individuals. Because legitimacy is so closely related to stability, as Holsti and Robert H. Jackson have pointed out, being even a prerequisite of stability, illegitimate geopolitical constructions may directly cause instability already when explicated, let alone executed in real policy. Considering this, the return of new geopolitical constructions and politics of interest spheres since 1993 (after only two years pause) is in a striking contradiction against the often-explicated Western world-political doctrine that emphasises ”stability” as the primary goal of post-Cold-War international politics.
In reality, the prevalent world-political doctrine that speaks a lot about ”stability”, but supplies Jacksonian quasi-states with ”positive sovereignty” [1], and multipolarism that supports the role of ”regional hegemons”, even granting them a ”right to be hegemons”, as well as the primordialist construction of ”natural interest spheres” around these regional hegemons [2] are direct causes of instability, not cures for it. In a changing world, the stability discourse that emphasises the absolute sanctity and equilibrium of status quo, is actually in a direct contradiction against stability, because it prevents the dynamics of polities (states, borders, self-determination and sovereignty patterns, and supra-state constructions). Dynamics would better guarantee that the polities would correspond the current demand from below and thus maintain their legitimacy even during a turbulence. [3] Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that ”two times two makes death”; if movement and constant search was to cease, the result is death. Also in world politics, when the constructions and polities lose their legitimacy, their correspondence to their tasks of fulfilling the demands of their members, they are also doomed to lose stability. A transcendental imperial task that is just a disguise to cover the inherent instability and illegitimacy can never bring about any stability. Lasting stability calls for a dynamic change – a change towards the demand of the people of the Eurasian inter-zone, of the Heartland. In long run, the one among great players and hegemons who can best help the Heartland to achieve this legitimacy, will also gain hegemony in Eurasia.
In the essay ”Legitimacy, Liberty, and Stability”, which was an overview to the situation in Eurasia, I defined many of the conceptions used also in this article. I also reshaped the cartographic image of the research area so that the study did not attempt to divide all Eurasia either between the symmetric sovereign state monoliths that the ”Realist” school of politology favours, or between ”civilizations” of the Huntingtonian geopolitics.[4] Recognising the plurality of polities [5] the study emphasised that in the post-Cold-War Eurasia there is a tense polarity between two prevalent polity forms that are very asymmetric: In the Far Western and Far Eastern ends of Eurasia there are free, legitimate states aiming at voluntary integration of European and Pacific zones of peace and prosperity. In the continental central parts of Eurasia there are geopolitical empires, whose geopolitical cosmology is based on central-peripheral idea and whose coercive power ideas are legitimated by a transcendental quest of conquest. The fight between these two polarities of polity types is being fought in the Eurasian inter-zones: East Europe, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Himalayan District, and Southeast Asia. The fight is about the foundation of state, the most powerful of all polities; whether the foundation lies in legitimacy (like in the legitimate states of the Far West and the Far East) or in coercion (like in empires like Russia and China).
Using Kalevi J. Holsti’s theory of legitimacy and Robert H. Jackson’s findings concerning quasi-states, it seems that real stability can only be achieved through legitimacy, whereas the empires already inherently destroy legitimacy, because in the gradually barbarised cosmos of the empires, the horizontal legitimacy always breaks at the edges, and besides, the empires sow around themselves quasi-states, in which the vertical legitimacy deficit keeps their regimes as vassals of the empires. Both the horizontal legitimacy deficit of empires, like Russia, and the vertical legitimacy deficit of quasi-states, like many former Soviet republics where the power has been returned into the hands of the nomenclature, are apparently harmful for general stability in Eurasia. Horizontal legitimacy deficit typically leads to endless violent separatism and its even more violent crushing, wile vertical legitimacy deficit typically leads to endless internal quarrels, coups d’état, oppression of political opposition, and constant fear for national security. It is easy to observe that all these symptoms can be seen in the present Eurasian situation. The odder it appears that the Western policy is still supporting imperial hegemony and construction of horizontally illegitimate interest spheres by Russia, and authoritarian, vertically illegitimate regimes of Central Asia – even in the name of stability, which seems very Orwellian use of the word ‘stability’.
The conceptions, the theoretical setting, and the hypotheses have been stated in the main essay, which also refines the theoretical problematique of legitimacy, sovereignty, regimes and some other key notions. An overview to geopolitics can also be found in an earlier essay of mine, ”Politics on Map – Civilizations, Frontier Zones, and Cartography of Identities in Eurasia”, which was written for the University of Lund, Sweden, in 1998. For those interested in the issue of classical geopolitics, I can also recommend the Introduction chapter by Ola Tunander in ”Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe”, edited by Ola Tunander, Pavel Baev, and Victoria Einagel.[6] A larger overview is offered in Finnish by Osmo Tuomi in his book ”Uusi geopolitiikka”(New Geopolitics). [7] Unfortunately I can neither explain the history and background of the situation in Caucasian and Central Asian countries any more profoundly that what my references to current events hint. Good literature on the region is still scarce due to widely distributed, almost canonised, misinterpretations. Along with the basic Anglo-Saxon books on the issue, I would recommend Antero Leitzinger’s ”Caucasus and an Unholy Alliance” and Mehmet Tütüncü’s ”Caucasus: War and Peace” to widen the general view on the area with their several Caucasian contributors.
As examples of the geopolitical thinking and political cartography of the 1990s I have used primarily Samuel P. Huntington’s and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s works. Besides them, the already mentioned books edited by Tunander, Baev and Einagel, and Tuomi, have offered very useful overview to the geopolitical thinking of our times – for instance in the first mentioned book Pavel Baev’s contribution also gives useful overview of the shift in Russian geopolitical policy towards neoimperialism since 1993. In the second part of this essay where I study the particular present geopolitical constructions considering the Caucasus and Central Asia in the West, Russia, Turkey, Iran and among the Caucasians themselves, these books as well as certain internet newsletters such as Turkistan News and Johnson’s Russia List have been very useful. Unfortunately it is still hard to find material concerning for example Turkish and Iranian geopolitical thinking that would be based on authentic sources, as the references to the geopolitical thinking and aspirations of Turkey and Iran by Western and especially Russian scholars are apparently still based more on common images and journalism than on Turkish or Iranian sources. This is the case even in academic literature.
The purpose of old geopolitics was to describe the geographical connection of politics as well as of the aspirations, behaviour and possibilities of states. The connection with geography was understood in both physical and cultural terms. The geopolitical classics such as Friedrich List, Rudolf Kjellén, Karl Haushofer, Alfred Mahan, Harold Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman influenced strongly in the practical policies of states in their times.[8] Partly for the very reason that the theories of geopoliticians have inspired regimes to expansionist policies, Lebensraum thinking, and arm races, geopolitics itself got a bad stigma, and outside the circles of strategic studies it has been for a long time fashionable to avoid geopolitics. Political thinkers and writers have wished to deny the connection of geographical, natural and climatic facts to politics, and instead emphasise the free will of man, and his possibility to influence his circumstances. In geopolitics this led to the French school of ”possibilists”, represented e.g. by Lucien Febvre and Vidal de la Blanche. [9]
The school of ”anthropogeography”, founded by Friedrich Ratzel, expressed states as ”aggregate organisms” that were driven by ”moral and spiritual aspirations”, very much like a soul[10], while the Swede Rudolf Kjellén (who was also the first to introduce the word geopolitics) and the German Karl Haushofer adopted direct cultural Darwinism, in which thought state was understood as an organism. Therefore it is not a wonder that geopolitical theories suited very well to spice rhetorics of totalitarian ideologues – even though, as Tuomi states, the geopoliticians themselves would have been ”innocent” to the use of their theories, for example the way the Nazis used Haushofer’s theories to legitimate the policy of Lebensraum.[11] Robert Strausz-Hupé, who warned of the expansionism of Nazi Germany, however considered that geopolitics can equally well be used to harness and control positively the forces that led to expansionism. [12] Anglo-American geopolitics has traditionally performed itself and its motives as advocating the good of the humankind, and defending democracy and market economy.[13] The heritage of Mackinder and Spykman in the Anglo-Saxon tradition has been continued by the so-called ”Realist” school. [14]
In the world-political speak there is a clearly observable need to understand the world in cartographic terms, through regional and otherwise geopolitically understood simplified constructions. The purpose of this has been to figure out a general image of international politics and the playground. [15] It has to be noticed, however, that these images begin to live their own life and influence the goals, strategies, and behaviour of political actors. If the constructions describe the reality correctly, foreign policy based on them may prove successful, but if a suggested geopolitical model is not valid in the reality, the result is fallacious foreign policy.[16] This means that in the construction of geopolitical images, interest spheres and generalisations there is a great responsibility that these constructions imply the reality, and besides, that the constructions are legitimate. Otherwise policy based on such constructions does not achieve the expressed goals, like, let us say, stability in Eurasia.
Thus, considering the achieving of ”good” results of geopolitical foreign policy, it is of crucial importance that the constructed geopolitical region, community, or reference group is legitimate; that is, that it really enjoys some consent and acceptance. As Tuomi remarks that economic and political power centres have practically observable and ”commonly” accepted interest and influence spheres [17], there is a need to ask, whether this ”common acceptance” is merely Western or generally outside states’ toleration of a hegemon’s imperial politics, which does not enjoy acceptance of the states and nations placed in the interest sphere. If the legitimacy is missing, such international politics, based on interest sphere constructions, is bound to cause instability and to increase the risk of conflict. Unstable and risky situation prevails if Georgia and Azerbaijan are ”recognised” as parts of the Russian interest sphere, although both the countries seek to increase their independence on Russia. In Armenia’s case the legitimacy deficit of such an interest sphere construction is much lower, because general acceptance of Russian hegemony is relatively high in Armenia.
It has to be remembered, too, that if a state categorised in an interest sphere is a quasi-state by its nature, and the regime leading the state is vertically illegitimate, gaining its power from the hegemon that dominates the interest sphere, the situation is still illegitimate, unstable and risky. The interest sphere construction has low legitimacy. This increases instability. This is the case with the constructed Russian interest spheres in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, where the regimes have typically reached their power by a Russian-backed coup or state of emergency, but do not enjoy vertical legitimacy. The coup regimes of Georgia and Azerbaijan, led by the KGB generals Eduard Shevardnadze and Haidar Aliyev, fulfil in many senses the characteristics of quasi-states, as defined by Robert Jackson. The annexation of these countries to the CIS by Russian pressure and coup d’état has brought about drastic illegitimacy to the CIS as a geopolitical arrangement of interest sphere, and the illegitimate nature of the CIS thus continues to increase tension and instability in the Caucasus. Moreover, it has to be remarked that after both Shevardnadze and Aliyev had had established their power, and when Russia’s grip had started to be released due to economic difficulties and the Chechen wars, both Shevardnadze and Aliyev have again sought distance to the Kremlin, although they were the very men who eroded vertical legitimacy in Georgia and Azerbaijan by their Russian-backed coups, and thereby made them more quasi-states in the first place.
Geopolitical constructions are often deterministic in their nature, and they state to politics such ”truths” that are meant to appear undeniable. Besides geographical facts, a state’s location, natural resources and so on, the same determinism characterises geopolitical constructions also when they base their arguments on cultural and religious (earlier also racial) divisions, or on the vicinity of a certain powerful state. Here lies a significant danger, because as Tuomi remarks: ”Social and political descriptions used of the different parts of the globe, contain already per se geopolitical statements. Geopolitical ideas, arguments and terms appear as one influential factor in the foreign-political decision making and diplomacy of all countries and communities bound to regions.”18] On the other hand, geopolitical constructions can be used to ”convict” some countries and nations to such regional entities or reference groups, to which they do not necessarily want to belong at all. On the other hand constructions of interest spheres already per se give certain hegemons ”right” to practise imperialistic policies. And not only do they give such a right; they downright encourage empires, like Russia and China, to act like that.
Especially in the case of the Caucasus, the geopolitical ”conviction” of the region to the zone of ”eternal instability”, and the simultaneous ”right to imperialism” that has been ”granted” to Russia, has brought about disastrous results: It has been possible to overthrow democratically elected legitimate governments, organise bloody coups d’état and civil wars, and rudely violate the sovereignty of countries that have been recognised as independent by both Russia and the Western countries. All this has been possible without any major protest by the West. Closer to the Western interest sphere, in the Balkans, the European Union is about to produce another geopolitical construction that may prove disastrous, the construction of ”Western Balkans”, to which all the former Yugoslavia as well as Albania have been annexed. Slovenia, Croatia and Albania have been frightened of their annexation in the image to the same construction with Serbia – to the ”zone of war and instability”, where the remnant Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina belong to. Slovenes, Croats and Albanians fear that belonging to that kind of construction means isolation and non-access from the Western organisations, and besides it is feared to be a construction of a Serbian interest sphere (that is, Russian interest sphere), which even encourages Serbia to seek hegemony within that constructed region. Professor Mislav Jezic notices that ”bunching any countries together with Serbia or Russia means actually preservation of the conflicts”.[19]
The dangerous effects of geopolitical constructions should therefore be openly discussed in science as well as in politics. According to Tuomi, the confusion in discussion concerning the significance and role of several international organisations (such as OSCE, NATO, the Partnership for Peace Programme, WEU, and UN with its various organs) is resulted by the fact that it has not been explicated clearly enough, on which kind of geopolitical thoughts and geographical images these different structures are based.[20] It is clear that this silence has been purposeful, and a part of the political correctness of the post-Cold-War situation. The originally normative role of the Council of Europe as a human rights and security organisation became quite questionable when Russia was accepted as a member – amidst most striking violations of human rights, and armed aggressions against both states that Russia herself had recognised (Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan) and Chechnya, which Russia had not recognised. Later the OSCE has even given blessing for Russia’s ”right to be a hegemon”. For instance, in the last Istanbul Summit Russia got once more acceptance of the West for continuation of the illegal occupation in the territories of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan against these countries’ consent, even under the term ”peacekeeping”. Also the criticism against Russia’s aggression in Chechnya was lame. [21] Similarly, the original geopolitical role of the NATO – defence of the Western democracy and market economy against the Soviet Union and what the Soviet Union represented – has been eagerly forgotten and covered in the new situation. Russia has been even accepted as a ”partner for peace” for the NATO, which Zbigniew Brzezinski, among others, has criticised, expressing it that in that case the NATO logically either is directed against China and Japan, or becomes just a meaningless empty shell. [22]
However, those constructions that Tuomi does not mention, have revealed their geopolitical goals much more openly. It is not quite hidden a fact that the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States by its truly Orwellian name) is an organisation constructing geopolitically Russian hegemony and aspiration for an interest sphere. The CIS leaves door open for a possible future intention of Russia to re-annex the CIS countries directly to the Kremlin’s power. The European Union has showed some geopolitical models of thinking, too, in her east enlargement policy, which is remarked by also Huntington[23]: The membership applications of Muslim Turkey and divided Cyprus have been postponed repeatedly, and besides, when qualifying the post-communist countries to member candidates, there has been clear favouring of Catholic (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia) and Protestant (Estonia) countries, while Orthodox countries (Romania, Bulgaria) and countries ”closer to Russian sphere of interest” (Latvia, Lithuania) have been discriminated. Yet Huntington ignores the fact that also two Catholic countries, Slovakia and Croatia, were at first discriminated due to their authoritarian regimes, although economically these countries were quite well-off. Of course, in reality the EU had also other reasons to choose only five countries to the ”quick-track” group, a constructed reference group of ”primary” candidates, while Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania could be discriminated by using strictly objective economic indicators. That does not mean that there would have not been some underlying geopolitical ideas influencing the discrimination policy, like Huntington suggests.
After all, in Spring 1994 the Union even made a decision to exclude entirely all former Soviet republics except the Baltic states. The exclusion of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan meant illegitimate ”recognition” for these countries’ belonging to the Russian interest sphere, and even concerning Ukraine and Belarus, such exclusion by public discrimination for the favour of Russia, neglecting the own willingness of several former Soviet republics, especially Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan, does not have positive effect in the stability of the geopolitical situation. Especially Moldova and Georgia would have many reasons to belong to the European Union’s sphere of interest rather than Russia’s, in spite of their Orthodox churches, because the Latin Moldovans and the Caucasian Georgians have never quite felt home in the Slav-dominated Russian sphere of power. For Azerbaijan, Turkey would be the closest ”hegemon” due to the economic, linguistic and cultural connections, although Azerbaijan’s Shi’ite Islam points at Iran rather than at Turkey. Moldova’s inhabitants are Romanians so that it would be natural for Moldova to belong to the same reference group with Romania, especially as the Republic of Moldova is just a third-part of Moldova (Moldavia), namely the part formerly known as Bessarabia, which Stalin annexed from Romania to the Soviet Union. Although Huntington falsely claims Moldova to be ”Slavonic”[24], the Romanians are of course a Romanic, that is, Latin people, who are clearly more oriented to the rest of Europe than to Russia, despite Orthodox religion. Even in the Balkan Orthodox context the Romanians, along with Greeks, cannot see Russia as a natural or justified hegemon of the Orthodox, i.e. Byzantine, civilisation. When Turkey orients herself towards Europe and the West, having little to share with the authoritarian Islamic neighbours like Syria, Iraq and Iran, also Azerbaijan’s belonging to the same reference group with Turkey would be natural.
In the Caucasian reference group Armenia and Ossetia (Alania) are clearly the most Russian-oriented countries, while Azerbaijan and various Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus are Turkish-oriented. Even the Caucasic Muslims, like Chechens, Circassians and others, find Turkey the only friendly hegemon outside the Caucasus. Georgia’s situation is the most lonely in the cartography of identities, because in Georgia’s ethno-linguistic and cultural reference group, the Caucasic, Georgia is alone a predominantly Christian nation. Because of that the European connection has historically been important for Georgians, and they generally consider themselves as more European than their neighbours, the Russians and the Turks. On the other hand, Georgia has also been the main motor of Pan-Caucasian co-operation in the region, as Georgia has been a culturally dominant country in the region. The Pan-Caucasian co-operation and resistance against hostile external conquerors has been manifested in the trans-confessional warm relations between Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya. The fact that Georgia, a predominantly Christian country, has been the closest ally of the Chechens in their fight for liberation, is a striking evidence against Huntington’s simplistic religion-based model of constructing interest spheres in the Caucasus. Executing Huntington’s model would indeed activate a clash of civilisations and foment religious hatred between Muslims and Christians, while the Pan-Caucasian co-operation, upon which Georgian and Chechen geopolitics are based, argument for harmonious coexistence of both Christianity and Islam.
Russia and Iran, in an ”unholy alliance”, have aimed at employing the religious antagonism in the Caucasus for their ”divide et impera” policy. In this light such details of the 1990s tragedy of the Caucasus, that would seem irrational in Huntington’s view, suddenly appear most logical, and thus indicate Huntington’s model to be an invalid geopolitical model. Examples are plenty: Shi’ite Iran, instead of supporting her religious brethren of Azerbaijan, has supported Armenia in the Karabagh conflict, and generally Russian interest in the North Caucasus. The legal regime of Georgia, that was overthrown in the coup d’état by the communist nomenclature, found refuge in Chechnya, and was the first government to recognise Chechnya’s independence[25]; the funeral of the first Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, could not be arranged in Georgia, so that it was arranged in Chechnya, as a joint service by a Georgian bishop and a Chechen mufti, manifesting ultimately the tradition of religious tolerance and coexistence of Christianity and Islam in the tradition of Pan-Caucasian co-operation. Russia’s allies in the Caucasus have not been gathered around Orthodox unity, but consist of Monophysite Armenians, Orthodox Ossetians, traditionally Muslim Abkhazians and Lezghins and anti-Turkish Kurds. Yet it must be remembered that Russia’s allies are, due to the Soviet tradition, often former or still communists and thereby at least post-atheists, and the religious antagonism has been employed just as a part of the camouflage and disinformation, exploiting the new rise of Huntington type religion-based ”cultural” geopolitics. Typically the leaders of those ”separatist” movements (like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia) and ”rebellions” (like the Urus-Martan bandit uprising against the Chechen government) that Russia uses to destabilise regimes on the edges of her empire and interest sphere, are power-greedy players, for whom the vassalship of the Kremlin is often just a means to drive their own career. This is the case with the Abkhaz leader Vladislav Ardzinba, the South Ossetian leader Ludvig Chibirov, and the Chechen ”Quislings” Doku Zavgayev and Bislan Gantamirov – possibly also with the adventurers like the Basayev brothers. Such alliances are highly ”unholy” in their nature, which hardly suits to the Huntingtonian idea of geopolitics.
”Consciousness of how the theories, and the generally adopted images that are looser than theories, appear in practice, belongs to the understanding of the nature of geopolitics”, writes Osmo Tuomi.[26] This is the very question of figuring the constructions of interest spheres and reference groups, and in which ways these images affect the henceforth practised policies, or news reporting, or general understanding of the settings of the world politics. Therefore geopolitics is often strongly connected with the prevalent discourse of a certain nation, region or culture, being thereby a kind of ”geopolitical ethos”. The geopolitical ethos is usually strictly connected with the ethnic, national, religious or political identity, and with the friend-and-foe patterns of the discourse. Joanne Sharp has paid attention on the fact that nationalities and states often share a certain hegemonic geopolitical view [27], which is repeated in the political rhetoric, spread to the people by news, and grounded and legitimated by science, which also formulates the view into a ”politically correct” form, and creates terminology for it[28]. Maintaining and recreation of a certain geopolitical ethos (as well as branding any dissidents as ”traitors” of the people) is specially striking in and among states that are strongly nationalistic and xenophobic; in present for instance Russia and Serbia. According to Sharp, who has studied the United States, the geopolitical ethos can be affected for example through ”Reader’s Digest”.[29] It is indeed significant that the ”Reader’s Digest” has been repeatedly worried about the rights of Christian separatists like the East Timorese and the South Sudanese, but has not made a voice about the rights of the Chechens or the Uighurs.
It has to be noticed that a superpower’s geopolitical thinking has always disproportionately big influence in the way that the international stage is presented regionally and cartographically. Using Peter Taylor’s terminology, a superpower’s geopolitical code affects the contents of the codes of other countries. The power of the hegemons is able to create the conditions of the geopolitical cosmos, and the hierarchy of the international stage.[30] The geopolitical codes of the United States have traditionally come to be the codes of several other Western countries as well (although there are significant exceptions like France and Finland), whereas the geopolitical ethos of the Soviet Union and later of Russia has been traditionally adopted in Serbia, in Armenia, and also in the leftist discourses of the West. In the present situation, where the value-load codes of both the United States and Russia are fomenting anti-Muslim sentiments, there is a great danger that this will influence in a distorting way also in the geopolitical thinking in Europe. Alarming geopolitical hatred or explicated mission of conquest naturally raise counter-reactions in their targets and victims. For example in the Caucasus this may lead to the sad result that the myth about ”Islamic extremism”, created by Russian propaganda already for a long time ago, will one day become true. Especially risky this is in the situation where Russia and her allies, while warring against moderate Muslims of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and spreading disinformation to harm secular Muslims of Turkey and the Balkans, are actually supporting the true Islamic extremists and terrorist organisations like the Taliban, the PKK, the Sudanese regime etc., besides allying with several Muslim dictatorships, like Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan.
In Osmo Tuomi’s analysis on new geopolitics it is emphasised that the geopolitical aspirations can be understood to include not only traditional territorial expansion and use of military power, but also the scale of aspirations for economic and political hegemony. The Western regions – the Euro-Atlantic and the North American area, have thereby already shifted to the use of economic and political influence to drive their geopolitical interests, and so has the Far East of Asia, the Asian-Pacific region, or as Tuomi puts it, ”Japan and her allies”. [31] It has to be mentioned, however, that in the more peripheral areas of even the Western hemisphere, there are still observable implications of the old-fashioned geopolitics, as the recent territorial and sea border disputes in Central America show. [32] However, the Eurasian continental empires, especially Russia and China, but to some extent also India and Iran, are still practising the very traditional geopolitics, even connected with the primordialist racial ideas of the 1800s, yet now coded into Huntingtonian rhetorics about ”civilizations” and ”cultures”, and they have also been made world-politically acknowledged by using the anti-Islamic sentiments. Also a Finnish scholar Pekka Korhonen, who now influences in Japan, has paid attention on the fact – readable also between Huntington’s lines – that the ”cultures” in present geopolitical rhetoric are actually just a little more civilized, refined and a bit less deterministic code for ”races”. [33] Otherwise the ”culture” rhetoric seems to recreate the 1800s geopolitical thoughts in all their hollowness.
At all events, a clear qualitative distinction has appeared in the new world order to distinguish two strategies of geopolitical thinking, and this distinction generates a great asymmetry on the Eurasian chessboard. In the Far Western and Far Eastern ends of Eurasia the goal is non-violent legitimate hegemony, based on attraction and voluntariness. In the inner parts of Eurasia the prevalent form is traditional, violent imperial hegemony, based on coercion and transcendental mission of conquest. Sandwiched between these lie the inter-zones: Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, part of Southeast Asia, etc. The inter-zones have now become the main stage of the hegemonic game that in the bipolar world order of the Cold War was played in the ”Third World” – a needed construction for the bipolar geopolitical pattern of the Cold War world order. Thus, the Eurasian inter-zones have become a crucial part of the multipolar Eurasian world order, while Africa and South America have been set aside in the global geopolitical rhetorics (although that does not mean that the game would not be played on, as seen in the events of Rwanda, Zaire and Angola). The existence of an asymmetric distinction seems to strengthen the division of Eurasia’s political actor types that I presented in ”Legitimacy, Liberty, and Stability”. The asymmetry is further emphasised by the distinction in security policy, the fact that in the Far West (and mainly also in the Far East) war between the free and legitimate states of Europe and Pacific Asia has been unthinkable and policy of conquest an impossible means of foreign politics. [34] The same observation has been made by the researchers of liberal democratic or ”pluralist security community” within the Western world.[35] However, even in these Far Western and Far Eastern regions where legitimate free states are the prevalent polity type, the threat of external empires may be very concrete, as the cases of Taiwan, Baltic countries, Slovenia etc. show. This means that already the threat of empires moves these countries to the unstable inter-zone, although they would be totally democratic and stable market economies. In this constant security deficit, pressure and sabotage, even more inter-zone countries fall into quasi-states and instability. For the geopolitical empires of Central Eurasia war and policy of conquest are an everyday part of geopolitical ethos.
Osmo Tuomi mentions several writers who have influenced recent geopolitical thinking; George Modelski, Peter Slowe, Peter Taylor, William Thompson, Paul Kennedy, in Finland Raimo Väyrynen, and many others[36], but among the authors who have influenced the 1990s geopolitics in Eurasia, especially in the area and surroundings of the former Soviet Union, two names are especially significant: Samuel Huntington (”The Clash of Civilizations”)[37] and Zbigniew Brzezinski (”The Grand Chessplay”) [38]. Huntington’s basic thought is that the post-Cold-War world can be divided into six to nine cultural macro-regions, ”civilizations”, whose main distinctive criterion is religion. [39] According to him, stability can best be achieved in a multipolar world, where the boundaries between civilizations are clear and fixed, where each civilization has its own hegemon with ”right to be hegemon” and expected role to keep discipline within a civilization, whereas inter-civilizational conflicts should be prevented. In practice that means that Huntington would divide Eurasia into interest spheres ruled by the great powers United States, Russia, China, and India, because the Islamic civilization, according to Huntington, does not have a valid central hegemon, and thereby no legitimate ”police state”.
Huntington’s highly suspicious and dangerous idea of division of Eurasia is highlighted by his practical acceptance to the idea that besides her own legitimate ”civilization” (the Orthodox world), Russia would also seek to dominate a cordon sanitaire of various Islamic states: ”Overall Russia is creating a bloc with an Orthodox heartland under its leadership and a surrounding buffer of relatively weak Islamic states which it will in varying degrees dominate and from which it will attempt to exclude the influence of other powers. Russia also expects the world to accept and to approve this system.” [40] Huntington does not mention if this buffer zone is consisted of only Islamic republics within the present Russian Federation and ex-Soviet states of Turkestan, or if it includes also Iran and Afghanistan, and possibly Russia’s traditional allies in the South, Syria and Iraq. In any case, Huntington’s model corresponds that of the Greater-Russian Lebensraum politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who suggest that all the Northern civilizations – the USA, Europe, Russia, and China – should expand directly to the South, in which model the Islamic world would be Russia’s zone of expansion, Africa for Europe, Latin America for the USA, and Southeast Asia for China. Actually Zhirinovsky’s ideas, when supported by Western geopoliticians like Huntington, form the real and most concrete danger of the fashionable multipolarist approach of world politics.
Huntington’s ”civilizations” are the following:
In many senses Huntington’s thinking seems to rehabilitate the old Hegelian idea of the primordial and inherent nature of identities. Also in Huntingtonian geopolitics, inherent cultural differences are seen more or less decisive. For instance, people and states from Orthodox or Islamic cultures cannot, in Huntington’s thinking, become Western in any means, however hard they would try. Thereby, attempts to Westernise Russia and Turkey, or even Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, are, according to Huntington, doomed to fail, and so he sees for example the secularism of Kemal Atatürk and Westernisation of Turkey to be harmful for Turkey, and he even recommends rejection of Atatürk’s legacy [43], and wishes a victory of Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist Welfare Party in Turkey![44] According to Huntington, ”Islamic culture explains the failure of democracy in most of the Islamic world”. [45] A highlight of Huntington’s anti-Islamism might be his cynical note of how the external characteristics of the Western global culture do not change the obviously inherent tendencies of ”cultures” (a 1800s geopolitician would have probably said ”races”): ”Somewhere in the Middle East a half-dozen young men could well be dressed in jeans, drinking Coke, listening to rap, and, between their bows to Mecca, putting together a bomb to blow up an American airliner.” [46]
Put shortly, although Huntington might be right in some of his basic assumptions – that it is possible to recognise large cultural entities in the world, and they may be, perhaps, called civilizations, and that nations feeling cultural unity share a tendency to favour each other and despise those who are different – many of his generalisations are still empirically easy to discredit as false. For example: Religion is not only and not even the primary basis of political identification. The conflicts in the Balkans and in the Caucasus are not primarily about religion. Other things save religion can be in a dominant position in the identification of a reference group (Romania’s linguistic and cultural relationship to the Mediterranean Europe, the European heritage of the Bosniaks and Albanians, Turkey’s secularism and democracy, etc.). States and peoples can have simultaneously several overlapping identities, which may point at different ”civilizations” (e.g. Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Greece, Turkey, Georgia) without that this would be somehow ”wrong” or a ”failure”, like Huntington states.[47] And so on.
Huntington’s deduction falls already in the first metres, when he – in the classical manner – suggests that the more similar culture and ”values” peoples share, the more they feel like belonging together, and respectively, the bigger the differences become, the more probable becomes a risk of a clash. As Huntington bases his conception of culture upon religion, he forgets that historically the Balkans and the Caucasus have been the very regions, where Christianity and Islam have traditionally coexisted in harmony, and even been mixed with each other. Also otherwise the antagonism of the theologically very closely related monotheistic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, would seem strange in Huntington’s deduction, when there is no special hatred in Europe against the culturally very different Hinduism and Buddhism. If Huntington’s theory would be correct, why has Eurasia not been divided between a Western bloc of monotheistic religions of linear time mode (Christians, Muslims and Jews), and, in opposition, an Eastern bloc of East Asian polytheistic religions with ideas of soul-wandering and reincarnation, and cyclic time mode (Hindus, Buddhists, etc.)? For instance, some Indian friends of mine have pointed out that they understand Christianity and Islam as religions of the same ”Western” reference group, the ”book people” (referring to the use of the Old and New Testament and the Koran as sources of dogmas).
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analysis is remarkably more strategic and there are remarkably fewer exaggerations and factual errors than in Huntington’s ”civilization theory”, but most importantly, Brzezinski’s analyses are not primordialist, like Huntington’s theory. Brzezinski does not attempt to construct a world divided between grand ”civilizations”, distinguished by one supposed criterion (which for Huntington is religion). Instead, Brzezinski pays attention on the plurality of polities and of the players rivalling of hegemony. However, Brzezinski’s model is still classically geopolitical: It obediently follows the teachings of Mackinder and others, considering the Eurasian ”heartland” as the key to the hegemony in Eurasia, which, on its turn, is the key to global hegemony.[48] On the grand chessboard of Eurasia, there are strategic key players (regional hegemons) and strategic pivot countries (to which category Brzezinski counts at least Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan of the surroundings of the Caucasus – among these Turkey and Iran are also strategic players).[49] Brzezinski also notices that the Far Western end of Eurasia (West Europe and the westernmost part of former East Europe) and the Far Eastern end (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore) are in a great asymmetry in relation to the continental geopolitical empires of Central Eurasia (Russia, China). [50] This corresponds the distinction that I have made into ”free states” and ”empires”. Similarly Brzezinski divides the Eurasian playground into four blocs that to some extent resemble Huntington’s ”civilizations”: Western (Europe), Southern (primarily the Islamic area, or the Orient; Turkey, Middle East, Caucasus, Turkestan, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Punjab), Eastern (China, East and Southeast Asia), and the Middle Space (Russia). [51] Considering the Caucasus, it is interesting that the region is situated about in the triangle of three different blocs: Europe, the Orient, and Russia.
Even more relevant for this study is, however, the focus of the grand chessplay that Brzezinski has constructed, and calls ”the Eurasian Balkans”, which is, besides, surrounded by an even larger ”zone of instability”. Brzezinski’s ”Eurasian Balkans” consist of Central Asia, Caucasus, Eastern Turkey and Northern Iran. The zone of instability that surrounds the Heartland, encloses in addition the Idel-Ural region, Southern Russia, Crimea, all Turkey, Cyprus, most of Middle East up to the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, Sudan, and Eritrea, all Iran and Pakistan, Punjab, Kashmir, and of course East Turkestan. This vast heartland of Inner Eurasia that has become a chessboard is spotted by conflicts, but Brzezinski does not explain them as results of primordial religious ”clashes of civilizations” like Huntington, but instead, as results of the ongoing eruption, or turbulence if we use James Rosenau’s term, and as results of the confrontations of the interests of the players seeking to extend their hegemony to the Heartland – Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and possibly the West – with each other and with the local polities. [52]
Especially the empires are using the method of ”divide and rule” to dominate the great inter-zone. Empires – especially Russia, China, India and Iran – are also in a kind of loyal unholy alliance with each other in order to prevent the decolonization of the Heartland, and any aspirations of independence hegemony or liberation rising from the Heartland. The strategic collaboration of these empires, and their often identical propaganda against the liberation movements of the Heartland (the Chechens; the democratic oppositions of Turkestan; Ahmad Shah Masood, leader of the former resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, now leader of the anti-Taliban resistance; independence movements of East Turkestan and Kashmir), and they all even share the same ambivalent relations to the fundamentalist extreme Islamism, represented by the Taliban – organisation that has many links to the former Soviet puppet regime of Afghanistan, and that has warm relations with Russia and Turkmenistan. These features, among others, tell about an unholy alliance.
This setting of the Eurasian chessplay becomes especially interesting by the fact that Turkestan – or more widely understood, all Inner Asia with the addition of Azerbaijan – is the true Heartland of Eurasia already in the terms of classical geopolitics. Natural resources are vast, population growth larger than in the surrounding regions, and besides, this Eurasian Heartland offers the spatial expansion of the image of political space for many Eurasian players. The strategic top significance of this region is emphasised in the near future by the huge oil resources of the Caspian region, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. They have been estimated to be at least as large as the oil resources of the Gulf of Persia.[53] Also the significance of the Caucasus is drastically increased, as the only gateway of the West, of Europe and of Turkey to the Eurasian Heartland, considering oil as well as all the rest of trade as well, goes through the Caucasus.
The Caucasus is the only logical bridgeland, unless Iran radically changes into a much more open and attractive bridgeland – which aspiration can of course be observed in the execution of the Iranian variant of Gorbachev and perestroika (i.e. pseudo-reformism that is effectively marketed to the West through an attractive figurehead, but which does not aim at abolishing the totalitarian system, but at saving it in the eve of collapse – collapse that in the USSR was due to the failure in the economic rivalry, but in Iran due to the failure of the extensive youth policy). Even if Iran really changes, or gets the Western sympathies mobilised for its intentions as efficiently as Russia did, at least the role of Turkey and Azerbaijan will still drastically grow in importance, as the bridge of the West to Iran. The other possible gateway, through Pakistan, seems to stay closed at least as long as Afghanistan is totally possessed by war and religious totalitarianism. However, the Caucasus – yet eagerly ”Afghanised” by Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, who do not want this bridge to be stabilised – has not neglected the observation of this geopolitical key position, albeit historically rather the curse than the advantage of the Caucasus. New geopolitical thinking and the revival of the Heartland and its gateway can be seen in the rise of rhetorics concerning Marco Polo and a ”New Silk Road” especially in Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Russia’s possible gateways of hegemonic efforts towards the Heartland can be the Caucasus, Central Asia, Idel-Ural region (Idel-Ural consists of the Finno-Ugric republics of Mordovia, Mari and Udmurtia, and the Turkic republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Chuvassistan) as well as the region of Tuva, Buryatia and Mongolia, too. On the three first of these regions – Caucasus, Central Asia and Idel-Ural – Russia is already playing with hard stakes, and while the military co-operation deepens with China[54], even the Mongolian borderlands will become increasingly important in geopolitical imperialism, albeit they now seem much more peripheral than the Caucasus and Central Asia. For China, the crucial bridgeland consists of Uighuristan and Mongolia. Especially in Uighuristan, a.k.a. East Turkestan (in Chinese Sinkiang, Xinjiang), China has recently increased its colonisation and assimilation policy against the Turkic and Muslim Uighur population.[55] The same has happened in Inner Mongolia with the Mongol population. Only the balance of horror between Russia and China explains how the present Mongolia (Outer Mongolia for the Chinese) has avoided occupation and colonisation by one of the empires.
For the part of India, the geopolitical bridge to the Heartland is formed by Kashmir – also India has recently intensified her aggression against the Kashmiris, most of whom support either full independence from both India and Pakistan, or annexation to Pakistan.[56] Pakistan’s recent military coup can be considered also as an ”opening of game” to the Eurasian geopolitics, because besides the entirely rotten and corrupted ”democracy” of Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf overthrew also the earlier ambivalent double-game of Pakistan in Eurasia – Musharraf’s Pakistan immediately cut out the support for the Taliban, and instead of the Chinese axis of Sharif’s era, Musharraf seeks to develop connections to the West, Turkey, and Iran. Even the anti-Shi’ite murder wave that shook Pakistan in late Sharif’s era stopped immediately to Musharraf’s take-over, and the murders have been suspected to be provocation of Sharif’s secret police. [57]
In addition to these great powers, also Iran has sought to increase her influence in the Heartland by appealing on the linguistic relationship with the Iranic Tajiks – other ex-Soviet Central Asian peoples are Turkic. Also the freedom-fighter of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Masood, is a Tajik; the Tajiks are the second largest ethnic group of Afghanistan after the Pushtuns. Simultaneously Iran has also agreed about strategic co-operation with Pakistan, against the Taliban – while it could be seen that India is taking a place aside Russia and Turkmenistan in favour of the Taliban. The recent hijacking incident that ended in Afghanistan has been suspected to have been an Indian provocation, among other reasons because some of the witnesses had noticed that the hijackers were not Kashmiris or Urdus, but Sikhs.[58] The figure of unholy alliance of the empires surrounding the Heartland – in this case Russia and India in favour of the Taliban that can be generally seen a major destabilising force and thus useful for the interests of the empires in preventing the strengthening of the Heartland, and its opening towards the West – would already testify against Huntington’s presumptions of civilizational image of the playground.
Moreover, Iran’s religious partner, that is, the only predominantly Shi’ite country in the region would be Azerbaijan, but in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran has supported Armenia, and similarly in the North Caucasus, Iran has supported Russia. Basically Iran has very similar reasons to those of Russia, China and India to prevent liberation and decolonization of the Heartland, because all ”South Azerbaijan” is within present Iran, and Iran has a minority of millions of Azeris – besides many other minorities, like Turkmens, Kurds and Beluchis, which makes Iran everything but a nation-state. Iran’s geopolitical cosmology is clearly closer to that of Russia and China – i.e. centriperipheral, imperialist, legitimated by a transcendental mission of conquest rather than by consent of citizens – that it is justified to consider Iran as one of the Eurasian geopolitical empires.
Even the Arabs have sought access to the share of hegemony in the Eurasian Heartland, although they can only reach the region through either the gateway of Turkey and Caucasus, or Iran, or Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the change in Pakistan’s line will probably strongly influence the Arab output in at least Central Asia. The most active of the Arab regimes has been Saudi Arabia, which has – seemingly illogically in many cases – supported all kinds of Islamist movements and sponsored Wahhabite sects. Among the Arab countries Syria and Iraq have been traditionally loyal to Russian interests. Anyway, the unholy alliances among the empires that are amazingly loyal at each other’s interests where it comes to the liberation and independence movements of the Heartland, points at Huntington being wrong, and Brzezinski being closer to reality.
To avoid conceptional confusions, it is necessary to specify some notions concerning different polity types. I have repeatedly stated a contradiction between the ”authentic” or ”free states” in the Far West and Far East of Eurasia, based on relatively high legitimacy, and the centriperipheral geopolitical empires in the inner parts of Eurasia, based on coercion. In the inter-zones that remain between these, various states exist – typically disunited, quarrelsome, oppressed, or possessed by coup regimes and hegemonic endeavours of empires. Quasi-states that Jackson has studied[59], weak states that Holsti has researched[60], states without international recognition, and pariah states are all common in the inter-zones. Countries in the inter-zones are typically possessed by insecurity, which for example created a row of more or less authoritarian states in inter-war Intermediate Europe – from the milder autocracy of Konstantin Päts’s Estonia to Marshal Józef Pilsudski’s Poland and Marshal Ion Antonescu’s Romania. Typically many inter-zone or interest-sphere quasi-states were de facto vassals or satellites of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the present post-Cold-War Europe the situation is not quite different. Russia’s ally regimes like Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus, or the various dictatorships in Central Asia and in the Middle East are typically authoritarian, because their authoritarian regimes gain their power from the imperial centre – the Kremlin.
At first it must be mentioned that ”authentic state” does not refer to nation-state here, yet of course nation-state has often proved very useful type of state, usually having a very high horizontal legitimacy. Still for instance one of the most legitimate states in Europe, namely Switzerland, is a multiethnic confederation. It is not a coincidence that most of the multiethnic or ethnically divided countries that however enjoy high legitimacy, are federations. A state with the state-idea of a centralist nation-state, or of a centralised empire, but which is de facto multiethnic or divided, is a very unsuccessful combination considering horizontal legitimacy. Various levels of problems in Turkey, Iran, Spain, France and especially in the moreover aggressive and nationalistic cases Russia and Serbia show the essence of this dilemma.
Secondly, however, with the term ”empire” this study does not refer to any multiethnic state or formation of states, but specifically a state with centriperipheral, gradually barbarised cosmos, with a mission of conquest of this cosmos, which legitimates the power of the centre, with legitimacy, especially horizontal, breaking on the edges, and usually with expansionistic policy that aims at oppression and hegemony over the surrounding areas. The Mongol Empire, China, and Russia are classical representatives of this Inner Eurasian imperial tradition. They may even be related to an historical succession of an imperial macro-regime, as the Finnish historian Antero Leitzinger suggests in his essay ”Russia and the Kipchak Curse”, which refers to the medieval Kipchak Khanate, once located in the area of present Ukraine and Russia. [61]
Also two Scandinavian scholars who write about historical empires almost with romantic tone, Ole Wæver and Uffe Østergaard theoretisize empires by referring to their characteristic centriperipheral cosmology. Power stretches from the imperial core as direct control to the core areas, which are on their turn surrounded by a sphere of dominions (various autonomous regions), sphere of hegemony (vassal states and interest sphere) and finally the states outside the empire’s reach, which are either truly free or in the influence sphere of another empire.[62] Yet Wæver’s idea of empires is relevantly different from the one used in this study. Wæver considers also the European Union as an empire, with a core somewhere in the Benelux countries. [63] According to him, moreover, the most probable scenario for Europe would be a division into two blocs between the empires of EU and Russia, possibly completed by Turkey’s return into imperialism and rising into a third power.[64] In the borderlands of these three empires (in East Europe, Balkans, Caucasus) instability might prevail. Wæver considers the division into empires to be more probable in future than Europe led by a single powerful centre, or Europe led by independent great powers (Germany, France, Russia...).[65]
Shireen Hunter, who has studied the relations between Europe and Islam, does not believe that Turkey would turn into imperialistic, and she also considers rehabilitation of czarism in Russia to bring about only bad results.[66] Instead, she sees Turkey as the most probable bridge of Europe towards the East, and to the oil resources of the Eurasian Heartland. Construction of the planned Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and to the European market will demand co-operation of Christians and Muslims. Predominantly Georgia is Christian, Turkey Sunnite, and Azerbaijan Shi’ite. Simultaneously the religion-based scenarios are confronted also by the testimony of the ”unholy alliance”, accompanied by its own contrary oil plans, of those countries that have fomented religious antagonism in the Caucasus and Central Asia. This unholy alliance consists of Orthodox Russia, Shi’ite Iran, Monophysite Armenia, and Sunnite Turkmenistan. [67]
The European Union, seeking voluntary integration, and moreover lacking a hegemonic centre that legitimises its power with a transcendental mission of conquest, cannot be considered as an empire in this view, although among others Ole Wæver and Uffe Østergaard equate the EU with the historical Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Russian empires, and with the present Russian empire. [68] However, also Wæver admits that there is no hegemon in Europe, but instead, a plurality of centres prevails in Europe. [69] Germany is by no means a hegemonic centre in Europe, and is improbable to even seek hegemony, although she might have the material and economic qualifications for hegemony.
In early February Professor Bessarion Gugushvili, former prime minister of Georgia, remarked to me that actually also Georgia would be a ”little empire”. It is true that Georgia is an ethnic conglomerate, but except two autonomous republics she lacks federal structure. Still in this overview Georgia cannot be considered as an empire in any terms. The case would be different if Georgia would actively advocate annexation of her North Caucasian linguistic relatives, like the Chechen and Circassian peoples, to Georgia, and if Georgia would aim at destabilisation of the ”Meskhetian” region in present Turkey. A characteristic feature of imperialism – interest spheres that have been ”recognised” as the interest sphere of the empire by other external powers, without consulting the nations of the interest sphere – is lacking in Georgia as well as in many other small multiethnic states. Georgia is not an empire.
According to William Pfaff there are very different kinds of empires. In the ”good” empires – Roman and British Empires being usually considered as the main examples of them – majority of the people wanted to become ”civilized” by the empire. In the bad ones, like Russia and the Soviet Empire, only very few non-Russians have wished assimilation and ”Russian civilization”. The ”civilization” of communism was being longed for more in the West European cafés than where the Soviet occupation had revealed the bitter truth.[70] Also Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach note that the most successful and most long-lasting hegemons – the hegemony of Athens, the Roman and British Empires [and to some extent also Habsburg and Ottoman Empires] – achieved and preserved their imperial success by guaranteeing internally freer and more prosperous life for their subjects than their more or less authoritarian challengers. The more aggressive and militaristic empires – for example the empires of Alexander the Great and Kublai Khan, the attempts of Napoleon and Hitler to achieve the mastery of Europe, and Russia and the Soviet Union – have throughout their existence suffered of instability and constant eruptions of violence and resistance, and their collapses have included remarkably more violence than the falls of the ”good” empires.[71] Making exaggerated generalisations and glorifying too much the historical empires should however be avoided, because the ”dividing and ruling” as well as the occurrence of constant instability and mission of expansion on the edges of the empire have been characteristic for all empires, even those who might be considered ”better” and ”more enlightened”.
Wæver theoretizes his wider conception of empires by writing that weak empires with very little legitimacy are using the hard-hand tactics of ”divide and rule” (for example Russia in Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan), or even direct military invasions (Russia in Chechnya, after the attempts to generate civil war had failed before both the invasions of 1994 and 1999), whereas weak empires with high legitimacy, like the European Union, receive a voluntary application for membership from their new members (for example Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995).[72]
As suggested in ”Legitimacy, Liberty, and Stability”, in the light of Kalevi Holsti’s theory on legitimacy, and Robert Jackson’s findings concerning quasi-states, empires and quasi-states generate instability, especially in the inter-zones of Eurasia. In the mentioned study it was also explained how the world-political position and meaning of sovereignty has changed, and, referring to Jackson[73], how ”positive sovereignty”, or a kind of privilege to sovereignty, was born in the situation of the Cold War and decolonization. Besides, this positive sovereignty was even sovereignty plus, including rights besides that states were no longer even allowed to disappear. The birth of sovereignty privilege and the freezing of the political state map – a doctrine that already in advance rejected the idea of any more new states being born to play for their right to exist[74] – was in my opinion connected with the world-political attitudes that were later adopted in relation to the disintegration processes of the Soviet and Yugoslav empires. Empires (Russia, China) were granted a right, a ”positive sovereignty” and ”accepted hegemony” over the interest spheres that they possessed in the status quo. The result was not stability but unforeseen instability, which was due to the fact that the new idea of sovereignty, as well as the acceptance of imperialism connected with it, ignored legitimacy, although legitimacy is the very precondition of stability. The whole static formal world regime, like a quasi-state, distanced from the empirical reality, and from the dynamics that the reality presupposed – from the playability.
The instability of the Eurasian inter-zones is generated by: 1) Quasi-states, possessed by vertical illegitimacy and governed by regimes, whose only means to ”stabilise” themselves and to legitimise their sovereignty is authoritarianism. 2) Empires, characterised by horizontal illegitimacy and centriperipheral cosmos, and governed by centres, whose state-ideas are like demons, spreading out to the surrounding inter-zones the plagues and poltergeists of insecurity, destruction, authoritarian vassals (quasi-states, ostensible separatist and terrorist movements) who are backed in power by the empire, and victims of conquest, struggling for their existence (separatist and resistance movements). Those former Soviet republics who are governed by Russian-backed coup regents and nomenclature members are typical post-communist quasi-states, but also non-state vassals like Abkhazia’s Vladislav Ardzinba, South Ossetia’s Ludvig Chibirov, Chechnya’s Quislings and adventurers like the Basayev brothers, are typical products of the destabilising influence of an empire. Also violence to resist the empire would not exist if the empire would be based on legitimacy and not on coercion.
Empires are sowing instability all around themselves, even though they would be explicitly (ostensibly) democratic or democratising, and even though there would be relatively high vertical legitimacy in their core. Actually the support of the core to the empire’s imperialism is often the very force maintaining the asymmetric cosmos-chaos structure that leads to constant instability on all the edges and drives an empire to harness all efforts and resources to serve imperialism and expansion, often neglecting the needs of many loyal citizens. Moscow’s support for a war against Chechens means poverty and starvation for many Russian people in Siberia, East Karelia, and even in the suburbs surrounding the imperial centre. According to Tuomi, too, an empire’s cosmos is a constant state of instability.[75] The lack of horizontal legitimacy in empires leads finally also to a paradox where it comes to democracy. Osmo Tuomi writes thereby that ”Russia cannot be simultaneously a democracy and an empire”. [76]
Empires have, however, returned to the politological discussion after the Cold War, and they have begun to be discussed even in romantic tones. Especially when criticising the nation-state and supposing that in the postmodern times the nation-state would have come to the end of its road, many scholars have returned to the imperial metaphors and nostalgic rhetoric on empires as ”maintainers of multiethnic stability”, ”unifiers of peoples”, and ”counter-powers against nationalism”. In this context it is not strange that for example Uffe Østergaard downright romantically mystifies the past dynastic empires, like the Habsburg, Ottoman and Romanov Empires, by citing the eminent classic of liberalism Lord Acton and by noticing that ”a nation where the borders of state and people are identical does not develop”, because such a nation would lack the richness brought by diversity.[77]
According to Ole Wæver, the reasons of the new popularity of empires can partly be explained by the ”new Middle Ages”, phenomenon containing, besides the return of imperialism, also the return of religions and religious rhetorics and mystics into politics and politology. The same can be observed in Samuel Huntington’s strongly religious theories, too, and also Edward Mortimer has remarked that the religions are returning to the focus of international politics. [78] Huntington supports a division of the world into civilizations ruled by their core states (hegemons). Also the Swedish scholar Kristian Gerner’s geopolitics is strongly accented by religious attitudes, and for his constructions of Europe the medieval church boundary has a primary significance.[79] At the same time especially Russia is legitimising her imperialism and aggression southwards once again with the old imperialist arguments: a religious great task, and mission of conquest against the heathens. It seems that even the acceptance and support for Russia’s wars and imperialism by the West has been at least partly inspired by the same religious hatred. Is there after all sense in Huntington’s theory in large scale, and in relation to the behaviour of the Christians, or has he just ”managed to formulate some prevalent general images into a scientifically correct form”, like the geopoliticians of Nazi Germany?[80]
Huntington’s own formulation for his solution to decide that Europe ends at the medieval church boundary in East Central Europe, gives a hint: ”Europe ends where Western Christianity ends and Islam and Orthodoxy begin. This is the answer which West Europeans want to hear, which they overwhelmingly support sotto voce, and which various intellectuals and political leaders have explicitly endorsed.”[81] If the situation would be as bad as Huntington lets us understand, with the West European ”overwhelming supporters” for drawing a new Iron Curtain to the medieval church boundary, leaving Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and many other democratic countries to the ”legitimate” interest sphere of Russia, then Europe may well be facing a ”clash of civilizations”. The genocides based on religious hatred that Russia and Serbia have committed in the Caucasus and in the Balkans already give some taste of how a prevalent geopolitical construction can lead to the violent religious exclusion of Muslims from European reality.
Bridgelands, like Georgia, Greece, Albania, and Turkey, will inevitably become victims by such fundamentalist thinking, and the Muslim immigrant populations in European countries suddenly become a time-bomb: The ”cultural theorists” who have replaced the former race theorists and who worry about the purity of their ”civilizations” are unintendedly encouraging a ”final solution” and liquidation of these people. In Serbia and in Russia the rhetorics of ”final solution” are no longer even attempted to be covered – one wins elections with them. Vladimir Putin finds elimination of the ”Chechen dogs”, and ”a final solution for the North Caucasus” to be his ”historical duty”. According to him, ”they must be treated like dogs: we have to strike first so that they will never again rise from dust”.[82] Such speaking, that would horrify any Western audience if it would be a Jörg Haider (who however won election in Austria by using anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetorics) speaking about Jews or Gypsies, brings about public support of the bloodthirsty nationalist Russians. And as it happens in Russia and as its victims are – so far – nations that seem to have lesser weight in Western morals (Chechens, Ingush, Georgians, Tatars...), it raises very lame objections, while a hysteria prevails because of a so far harmless right-wing populist winning an election in Austria.
The anti-Islamism prevailing in the West, which is considered by Huntington as an acceptable sign of the ”incompatible differences of values” between different civilizations, influenced also the Western attitudes towards the conflicts of the Balkans and the former Soviet Union area, according to Shireen Hunter.[83] In Huntington’s opinion this was shown, among others, in the Western reluctant attitudes at the conflicts of Bosnia and later Kosova, as ”nobody wanted a new Muslim country in Europe”.[84] Still the West later – though considerably late – helped both Bosniaks and Kosovars against the Serbian terror, which raised very ”Huntingtonian” protests in Serbia and in Russia, demanding that the West should have been partially on the ”Christian side”, in a same holy war with the Serbs and Russians against Muslims. The same rhetoric has been used by Russia with even more weight in relation to Chechnya. It seems that in Bosnia and in Kosova the West finally woke up to notice that the Bosniaks and Kosovars were actually Europeans and similar people as others, in spite of their religion, whereas the aggressor was committing an unjust genocide. However, in the Caucasus such awakening has yet been very tame to help in any ways the victims of Russian genocide – instead, Russia has been even financially and politically supported by the West. It seems the long isolation of the Caucasus from the rest of Europe has made it easier to lead astray the great publics in the West as well as in Russia to believe that Russia is having in the Caucasus a holy war against those terrible Muslim extremists who, according to Huntington, plan bombs to blow up American airliners even if they wear jeans and otherwise look ”normal”.
The liberation of six new Muslim states in Central Asia and Azerbaijan, and the reawakening of many Muslim republics within the present borders of the Russian Federation (in North Caucasus and Idel-Ural region) brought a new element also to the relations between Muslim nations.[85] For Russia and Serbia, but also for those in the West who construct their geopolitical views upon religious ideas, the liberation of large Muslim regions from the yoke of the atheist Soviet empire, however, caused an obvious paranoid illusion, that Muslims would make spatial expansion in Eurasia. In Russia and in Serbia, but also in the West, this thinking has also been purposefully agitated, and many writers and rhetors have wanted to make historical references to the Moors’ conquest of Spain, and to the Turks’ conquest of Balkans – to the historical threat images of Islamic ”other” in Europe. In fact Muslims have not enlarged their territory for centuries in Eurasia (yet it has happened in Africa, along with Christian expansion). At the moment the only Muslim regime directly persecuting Christians is Sudan, which has a civil war against the Christian secessionists of South Sudan. However, ”Christian” regimes of Russia and Serbia have committed even genocide against Muslim peoples in Bosnia, Kosova and in Chechnya. Separatism of Christian East Timor from Indonesia was internationally supported throughout the West, but the very same Western leaders warned Indonesia to allow a referendum for independence in Muslim-populated Aceh.
For comparison it must be noticed that the present situation highly resembles the 1930s situation, where the influence of Haushofer and other race theoretical geopoliticians encouraged the Nazis to create their own expansionist Lebensraum policy. Although we would today find the anti-Semitism of the thirties and before as absurd and terrible – mainly because the United States after the World War II has made it sure that anti-Semitism has not got place as an acceptable and seriously taken policy in the West[86] – the hatred against Jews was largely distributed and accepted by large shares of population in the 1800s and in the early 1900s. Anti-Semitism was connected with various conspiracy theories, among which one of the most famous ones was the ”Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which were originally produced as a falsification by the Russian secret police, but which ever since inspired anti-Semitic sentiments throughout Europe, including the Nazis.[87] In the same way today common anti-Islamic propaganda and disinformation has spread throughout Russia, Europe and the West. Even that much in the same way that the very same ”myth factory” that produced the ”Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is also responsible of the falsifications ”proving” Muslim-related conspiracies.
Although the KGB was in a great responsibility of the red terrorism of the 1970s and the Islamist radicalism of the 1980s, and is still supporting such regimes as Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Taliban, the Russian propaganda generally attempts to blame the moderate Muslims of the Caucasus and the democratic oppositions of Turkestan as ”Islamists”, against which Russia supports the local dictators. Even Turkey, a country of explicit and official secularism, is typically blamed of ”Islamic fundamentalism” in the Russian-originating propaganda that is being spread in various contexts related with the Caucasus and Central Asia – even though the same propaganda totally silences of the deeds of the traditional clients of Russia, Islamist groups and Muslim dictatorships. Osama bin Laden is in the same propaganda being connected with the Chechens, although no such connection has appeared, if we exclude the possible connection between bin Laden and the Chechen leader of the Russian puppet regime, Doku Zavgayev, who happened to be Russian representative in Tanzania in the time of bin Laden’s bombs in American embassies. But besides, even anti-Semitism still flourishes in Russia, stronger than anywhere in Europe. Leading American geopoliticians do not seem to notice this. Could the civilizational theories of Huntington and others have had influence in the flourishing of anti-Muslim propaganda, or has he just, like Haushofer, put some more generally prevalent prejudices and images into an utterly scientific form?
Shireen Hunter does not yet consider the relations between Christians and Muslims to be doomed to a ”clash of civilizations”, but instead, she sees an opportunity for coexistence and partnership of Christianity and Islam in Europe. She points out two possible trends: construction of a Christian Fortress Europe, and Euro-Islamic partnership. Europe that takes a role of a fortress against Islam, closes out Turkey, and ”understands” Serbia’s activities in Bosnia and in Kosova, and Russia’s activities in Chechnya, and next elsewhere in North Caucasus and in the Turkic republics of the Idel-Ural. This kind of Europe is doomed to a dangerous hostile setting everywhere in the borderlands and in regions where Christians and Muslims are living together, like in the Caucasus and in the Balkans. Such Europe also foments racism, which will generate problems in relation to the great Muslim immigrant populations of West European cities.
On the other hand, partnership and peaceful coexistence of Europe and Islam, where religious hatred occurring within both the religions (Russia and Serbia, and on the other hand Islamic states like Sudan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and extremists of Taliban type) would be condemned, could finally bring about a new Renaissance era to the relations between Europe and the Orient. Tolerant and secular ”European” Islam (Turkey, Balkans, Caucasus) could then act as a bridge to the East together with the Oriental Christian states (Georgia, Armenia), and Israel. In Marco Polo’s times the Silk Road opened the Orient and the Central Asian Heartland to the Europeans, and due to this, also the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome could return to Europe. The ancient heritage had lived in exile in the Islamic world for at least two centuries of European religious fundamentalism – Aristotelism preserved by the Arabs, Platonism preserved by the Sufis of Persia and the Caucasus. Back in Europe this heritage got the form of Italian Renaissance. For example the Florentine poet Marsilio Ficino could be considered as a Sufist, judging his poems.[88]
Religious tolerance – in relation to the various forms of Christianity as well as other religions – is the crucial prerequisite of the stability of multiconfessional Europe and especially of her borderlands, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Huntingtonian geopolitical civilization thinking combined with newly fashionable imperialism, practised by Russia and some others, and the completion of this with an idea of religious mission, is frightening, and has surely nothing good to promise for the future of Eurasia. Actually it is the worst that can happen to Eurasian stability. A Western policy that supports multipolarism in such a form, and that encourages regional hegemons to go on imperialism and colonisation of the Eurasian Heartland cannot promote stability. Instead, it can ruin it for a new century ahead.
Sources:
Besides, as lecturers Mislav Jezic in the Annual Assembly Conference of the International Paneuropean Union in Strasbourg, 12th Dec. 1999, and the contributors of the conference ”1st International Congress for Modern World and Human Rights in Republic of Georgia”, held in Batumi, Georgia, 23rd-25th Feb. 2000. Also news material from both paper and internet journals and newspapers has been used.