The Eurasian Politician
main

The Eurasian Politician - Issue 1 (May 21st, 2000)

The World Report by ‘The Eurasian Politician’ gives you the general overview of world politics in every three-month period. It offers the ‘red clues’ of what’s going on in the world of the new millennium by paying attention on the relevant lines, the connections of seemingly independent events, and by suggesting ongoing tendencies and phenomena. Thereby ‘The Eurasian Politician’, with the help of our best expert advisors, offers a wider understanding of the world politics, which the scattered and alienated news of the great news agencies, spreading almost uniformly throughout the world, often lack. The purpose of The Eurasian Politician’s World Report is not to go into details, discussed on various levels in our articles, essays and reports, but to give a general image of the settings of the game.

Rise of Vladimir Putin into the supreme leadership in Russia, the continuing holocaust in Chechnya, destabilisation of Indonesia, political scandals connected with Austria’s case and the German CDU, situations in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, and between Pakistan and India, political development in Taiwan and in Korea, and Iran’s ‘perestroika’ are some of the main features of the first period of 2000 in Eurasia. Outside Eurasia, the rising heat of the US president game, starvation in Ethiopia, and land quarrel in Zimbabwe are main current issues.

The Eurasian Politician’s World Report

1st period of 2000 (from January to April)

EURASIA:

WESTERN EUROPE (Britain, Benelux countries, France)

In the post-cold-war situation a gap between two Wests has reappeared. Someone could see this gap, culminating in certain schismatic differences between Anglo-Saxon and French views on the integration of the West, as a Huntingtonian ‘centre state’ rivalry between Protestant and Catholic West. In our opinion, the crucial distinction might rather lie in the difference of preferences where it comes to the ‘culture of governance’. The centralist, statist and bureaucratic approach of the French tradition confronts the classical liberal approach of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, but it also confronts the present German and Scandinavian policy of openness and ‘thorough democratisation’.

Both these confrontations can be found crucial in the present challenges that the European Union is facing. They may also underlie the new ‘European Schism’ concerning the eastwards enlargement of the EU: Protestant countries seem much more willing to enlarge the Union (which also calls for radical reformation and liberalisation of bureaucracy and especially agricultural administration, traditional taboos for the Frenchmen), while France would seem to prefer a more centralised, closed, conglomerate of Europe. The two sides in the schism could be called the “Paneuropean lobby“ and the “Frankish lobby“. While several Protestant countries and especially Germany have advocated the Paneuropean approach on the EU’s future vision, along with federalism and subsidiarity, the Frankish lobby has tendencies towards emphasising administration and centralism. Here the Frankish lobby also confronts the Scandinavian emphasis on openness and transparency, as the recent quarrel between Romano Prodi, the Italian President of the European Commission, and Jacob Söderman, the Finnish ombudsman.

Considering this, it may seem odd that it is exactly France and Belgium that have headed the inquisition of fourteen EU governments against Austria because of the entry of the FPÖ, the populist Carinthian politician Jörg Haider’s party, to the Austrian government. Even odder it may seem as we remember that the head inquisitor Jacques Chirac has been in close co-operation with the French fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former communist and officer responsible of torture in the Algerian War who now heads the “Front National“, a French extremist party with a lot more explicitly fascist agenda and activities than those of Haider’s. However, perhaps this peculiarity is the very reason of Mr. Chirac so eagerly seizing the Haider case. Besides Austria, also the tiny neighbour Liechtenstein has got to France’s fire-line – accused of money-laundering and asylum-providing for organised crime and terrorism. France had better look at its own corners instead of attacking stable Central European countries with no human rights violations whatsoever.

Also the Echelon affair has highlighted the lack of trust between Western governments. The hysteria of the French, along with many other Europeans, of the fact that the USA and Britain might spy on their Western allies to gain various kinds of information, appears relatively paradoxical after the numerous reveals of French leaking of strategic information to Russia and Yugoslavia.

This seems to suggest that the classical American emphasis on Germany’s possible new rise to seek hegemony within Europe, and thus Germany’s being the main intra-Western opposition to the Anglo-Saxon direction is probably less relevant in the present situation than France’s rising skepticism at Western unity. Germany is presently a primary motor of European integration – and not even close to suggesting it should take place on German terms.

NORTHERN EUROPE (Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltics)

Leftist Hegemony in Finnish Foreign Policy

Finland had presidential election where the Social Democrat candidate Tarja Halonen, the foreign minister, was elected in the second round, where she was challenged by the Centre Party’s candidate Esko Aho, a former prime minister. The election, resulting the first female president of Finland, has been largely judged as a personal election where the traditional party boundaries of politics lost some of their importance. It could be, however, asked if this really was the case. Both the ‘bour­geois’ candidates – Parliament Chairwoman Riitta Uosukainen of the Finnish Conservative Party (Kokoomus) and former Defence Minister Elisabeth Rehn of Finland’s Swedish-speakers’ own party – were left far behind Ms. Halonen and Mr. Aho in the first round. The confusion and division of the right wing were largely responsible of the total failure of rightist desires for presidency – resulting that the candidate of the agrarian and ‘redneck’ profiled Centre Party (yet along with the SDP and the Kokoomus the biggest party of the country, and surely traditionally the most powerful one everywhere outside of the major cities) finally collected right-wing votes. Many younger urban right-wing voters, however, turned to back Ms. Halonen, who was profiled as representing something ‘new’ as a woman and as a representative of many ‘unconventional’ ideas like common-law marriage and tolerance at sexual minorities.

However, the victory of Tarja Halonen produced a peculiar situation that is in Finnish referred to with the poker expression “colour line“ (‘värisuora’). It means that all Finnish foreign politics is now in the hands of one party, the Social Democrats. This is paradoxical in a situation where, according to gallup results and the latest parliament election, majority of the citizens of Finland support right-wing and centre parties. The risk that the situation may inflict Finnish foreign policy is increased by the fact that though the present Social Democrat leaders of the Finnish foreign policy are presently “Euro-socialists“ with Western values, they all share background in the radical socialism of the 60s and 70s: President Tarja Halonen is known of her activities in the radical left as well as in the labour union. Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen used to belong to the notorious ‘taistolais’ block of Finnish socialists; a movement of extremist pro-Soviet and even Stalinist leftism. The new Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, along with the present Finnish EU Commissar Erkki Liikanen, as MPs used to demand that all the remarks in Finnish school history books that were negative at the Soviet Union should be removed in the name of “Friendship, Collaboration and Mutual Help“ between Finland and the USSR. Finally, a Finnish representative in the Council of Europe, a human rights body, Jaakko Laakso (MP of the Leftist Union, a nowadays non-revolutionary communist party) used to hold officer rank in the former KGB, according to a representative of the Finnish Pen Club.

Norway’s Government Changed

In Norway the conservative-led government fell into an environmental argument, and Jens Stoltenberg is the new socialist prime minister. It is new that the environmental issues rise into an as decisive a role as in this case. The socialists have been now accused of anti-environmental policy.

The Trouble with Russia

The Baltic countries have lately been targeted by Russian espionage accusations, where they are claimed to co-operate with Finland, Germany, Sweden and the NATO against Russia. In Russian media, Finland was accused of “training Estonian spies against Russia“ in co-operation with the NATO (where neither Finland nor Estonia is member at the moment). According to Osmo Kolehmainen, the information chief of the Finnish Defence Ministry, there is no intelligence collaboration between Finland and Estonia. The Russian representatives have continuously presented such accusations against almost all Russia’s neighbours, including Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland, the Baltic States and Finland – accompanied with accusations that these countries would assist “terrorism“ (a code usually referring to Chechnya).

There has been no basis for the repeated accusations but they have spread in various media, feeding Russian nationalism and sense of martyrdom at home, and damaging the reputation of Russia’s neighbours abroad. Also recent espionage scandals where Russia has accused the USA or Britain for anti-Russian espionage, have been linked with Estonia and Poland in the Russian accusations. Lithuania has been repeatedly attacked by Russia, accused of “protecting terrorists“, when Lithuania has allowed a Chechen cultural centre to work in Vilnius, and a Catholic orphanage to receive Chechen children. It seems that Russia wants to frame all its neighbours as somewhat suspicious “terrorist“ states, whereas the Kremlin, a traditional global supporter and arms supplier of terrorist organisations and regimes, is a most great crusader against “terrorism“.

Latvia’s Passport Problem

Latvia’s big ethnic Russian minority that, due to the Russification, deportation of Latvians and importing of Russians during the Soviet era, constitutes as much as 33 per cent of Latvia’s population, has granted a fruitful basis for Russian accusations of bad treatment of ethnic Russians in Latvia. Although Latvia has recently reformed its formerly unnecessarily strict language regulations and conditions for Latvian citizenship for the favour of ethnic Russians, all the problems with the Russians are still not solved. Recently, the last deadline for changing the red Soviet passport for a Latvian, or a foreigner passport, expired, having been postponed several times already. Still some tens of thousands of Russian-speakers did not want to get a valid passport, resulting that now there are people who have no right to travel anywhere except perhaps to Russia. The motives of their refusal to get proper Latvian passports have been estimated to be poverty or social problems in some cases, and pro-Soviet nostalgia (suppositions that the Soviet occupation would return) in others.

An Arrest in Starovoitova’s Murder

In mid-January, an arrest on Galina Starovoitova’s murder took place in Latvia. Mrs. Starovoitova was an eminent liberal politician and well-known for her fight against the corruption and organised crime of the Russian regime. She was murdered in St. Petersburg in November 1998, in a shooting incident where her Caucasian assistant was seriously wounded. The Russian suspect arrested in Latvia was found to be a former man of the OMON, Russian special troops under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Latvian Premier Quit

In April, the Latvian government fell after Prime Minister Andris Škele had confronted the Fatherland Party. Mr. Škele quit the premier post before an obvious vote for mistrust that would have followed in the parliament. The Latvian political arena has also been shaken by scandals connected with claimed paedophile activities of several eminent figures of Latvian political life. Also Prime Minister Škele’s name has been connected with the scandal.

WEST CENTRAL EUROPE (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)

The Haider Hysteria

The Haider affair has shadowed all the European co-operation and states serious questions of the meaning of democracy on the other hand, and sovereignty on the other hand. Fourteen European Union member states have started a boycott and blockade against all Austria because of the victory of a populist party, branded as neo-fascist, in democratic election, and later acceptance of the FPÖ, Haider’s party, into the Austrian government, yet after continuous failures in building government without the FPÖ. The hysteria and exaggerated reaction before Haider or his party has done or even suggested anything that would really give reason to instant actions by other states seems very strange in a situation where the EU governments practically accept Russia’s harsh crimes against all basic human rights in Chechnya. It also seems odd in a situation where there are directly anti-democratic left-wing parties enjoying fair share of power in several European countries, and on the other hand there are right-wing extremists, like France’s Le Pen, who appear to be more dangerous in their political ideas and in their methods of driving their activities than Haider, who is characterised in Austria at his worst as an opportunist.

Even if Mr. Haider may not be a model citizen, and he is surely not a model politician, the fact remains that his party won a democratic election, and he has not committed a single crime of the type he is feared of – anti-Semitism or violations against minorities. The European governments would do better by keeping an eye on the FPÖ and its policies, than by undermining the basics of democracy and sovereignty – which can only serve the purposes of the very same anti-democratic powers that Haider’s opponents supposedly fear. Meanwhile, the European governments should pay more attention on the human rights violations and holocaust that are taking place right now, in real world. That would be wiser anticipation for Europe’s security than the present double-morality, even though it may be easier to criticise a peaceful, calm, democratic Central European nation with no oppression of minorities whatsoever, than a cruel superpower loaded with nuclear arsenal.

The CDU Mess

Also another scandalous affair has shaken the reputation of the post-WW2 West Central Europe as a home of stability and legality. The German Christian Democratic Party CDU’s financial affairs – along with simultaneous mess on the Social Democrat side – have shocked many Germans’ trust in the fair German system of politics. Claims that the French socialists would have financed German conservatives exceed the German suppositions of justice. Besides the reputation of the old dinosaur of German and European integration, Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl, the CDU scandal has damaged all the old regime within the party. The CDU needed a transition rite after dishwashing to be able to start from a clean table. Considering this, the CDU’s overwhelming support for Angela Merkel to replace Wolfgang Schäuble in the CDU’s leadership was a very clever move, and a most expectable one, although some might be highly surprised of the rise of a female Protestant liberal Ossi (former East German) to the leadership of the CDU. However, once the SPD (Social Democrat) leader and Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder made rid of the hard-line socialist Oskar Lafontaine, and since the SPD’s economic policy has been hardly any more socialist than the late CDU’s, it was expectable that the CDU would need another kind of profile-backing in opposition to Schröder’s “boring, traditional“, but on the other side quite apolitical figure. On the other side, Mrs. Merkel is not too powerful or dominant to cause too much division and heated-up sentiments among the Catholics, conservatives and especially within the Bavarian sister-party of the CDU.

Still, if we want to see hazards in the mainly cleared-up situation with the CDU affair, there is an underlying risk that the scandals, along with the apolitical approaching of the two dominant parties of Germany, which are beginning to resemble each other more and more, may cause similar frustration at the traditional political field in Germany as in Austria, where same kind of similarity of the power parties brought about the sudden popularity for Haider’s FPÖ. Still, a rise of a populist party in Germany would be more expectable after a long ostensible stability and stagnation of a high consensus than in the present situation where both the dominant parties are turning towards more opportunism.

EAST CENTRAL EUROPE (Visegrad countries, Slovenia, Romania, Moldova)

The Endangered Prospects of United Europe

Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia, which have been, along with Estonia, accepted to the “quick track“ of the European Union membership negotiations, are increasingly fearing that their integration to the West is jammed by the EU’s internal inertia and quarrels. The Haider affair does not appear positive in this light, although Haider himself gained a great deal of his support with his anti-European and especially anti-East enlargement rhetorics. On the other hand, the NATO membership of Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic last year has decreased the security deficit of these countries considerably and thereby increased stability in East Central Europe. Also the European Union’s decision in December 1999 in Helsinki to accept also Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Turkey to begin their negotiations for membership relaxes some of the tense fear of these countries of being left out from the Western security and stability. The fall of Slovakia’s Vladimir Meciar in summer 1999, and the death of Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman in December 1999 have “cleaned up“ the accounts of these two countries and removed some of the last authoritarian post-communist regimes in the Western parts of former East Europe, leaving Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belarus, Russia and several CIS countries the last remaining European states that do not yet meet the European standards of democracy and liberty.

However, even though the former East Europe would make considerable advance in recovering from the half decade of communist rule, their prospects might not be as bright as it was thought in the early 1990s. In the East, Russia has turned into more imperialist, more aggressive, and more unscrupulous, making very little, if any, success in its claimed democratisation and economic reform. In the West, enthusiasm for eastwards enlargement of both the EU and the NATO seems to have stuck in inertia and hesitation, yet of course some advance has taken place. While the Visegrad countries and Slovenia are feeling more confident, even beginning to hesitate in their willingness for EU integration that does not appear to fulfil as urgent needs as the NATO, the countries repeatedly left into a more Eastern group, like Romania, Latvia and Lithuania, let alone Moldova, feel increasingly insecure. This is the case especially with Romania, which is on the other hand politically democratic, Western-oriented and European, but on the other hand economically still in bad shape. Perhaps a more urgent NATO integration would compensate the delayed EU membership for this country, which is situated between the Russian and Serbian troops and in a strategic geopolitical guardpost position concerning both East Central Europe and the Balkans, as well as the Black Sea.

The Minority Questions

The East Central Europe has made it quite well in many important minority questions since the regimes of Ion Iliescu (in 1996) and Vladimir Meciar (1999) were removed from power. Considering the historical hostilities against the Hungarians in several of Hungary’s neighbour countries, the constructive relationship between Hungary and Romania has been a crucial advantage for the stability of the whole region. Maintaining the fatal axis of Hungary and Romania is so important for East Central Europe’s future stability that it can be even compared with the fatal Franco-German axis of West Central Europe. Destabilisation of Transylvania, or Romania in general, would be a much more serious disaster than any other remaining ethnic tension in East Central Europe.

However, one large minority has obviously not been paid enough attention: the Gypsies. In almost every former East European country, efforts in improving the position of the Gypsies have proved insufficient. The situation is worst in the areas of former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but also in East Central Europe the Gypsy populations have still faced discrimination.

Poisons and Floods

Also the environmental issues are raising alarm in East Central Europe. Three serious poison accidents took place in Romania, poisoning the Danube and the Tisza rivers in Romania and Hungary. By advancing spring, also the floods of Hungary and Romania are once again constituting a serious problem.

MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Cyprus)

The ETA Is Back

In January and February it seemed that the communist terrorist organisation of the Basques, the ETA, was re-activated in Spain, after a long silence. However justified some of the basic demands of the Basques to increase self-determination of the Basque areas of Spain and France may be, the ETA does not enjoy popular support, not even among the Basque population, and as a basically left-wing extremist organisation it can be compared with the Kurdish communist terrorist organisation PKK rather than with genuine liberation struggles, enjoying overwhelming popular support, like those of the Chechens, the Kosovars or the Kashmiris.

Aznar Gets Confidence in Spain...

Meanwhile, however, the general political tendency of Spain has been clearly positive, pro-European and steady direction towards greater stability and economic prosperity. This development seemed to get a clear support in the recent election that brought victory to José Maria Aznar’s centre-right People’s Party. The victory, and majority in the parliament, means that Aznar is no longer dependent on the support of the Catalans, but it does not mean that there would necessarily be any friction in the co-operation with the main Catalan party.

...While Simitis Continues in Greece

In the Greek parliament election the liberal Nea Dimokratia, led by Costas Karamanlis, expectedly increased its support, but this was not enough to end the hegemony of the socialist party Pasok. The present Prime Minister Costas Simitis’s socialist party Pasok won, but with a very narrow marginal. Greece’s foreign policy has recently considerably developed into a more healthy direction, since the relationship with Turkey has been improved after the earthquakes that shook both the countries last year. The relationship between Greece and Turkey is crucial for the future development of the relations of Europe with the East, towards the Caucasus and Central Asia, which will become increasingly important arenas of the Eurasian politics of the new era.

Keep an Eye on Cyprus

At the same time, when stakes are high, there will be powers that seek to damage the peaceful relations between Turkey and its Balkan neighbours, and on the other hand, destroy the co-operation between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia in order to construct the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Thus, one spot where attempts to destabilise the situation in near future is most expected, is Cyprus. Especially the Cyprus situation can be used to damage Turkey’s entry to the European integration.

Italian Premier Changes

The Italian prime minister, former communist Massimo d’Alema, quitted after losing the local elections. The new centre-left government is led by Giuliano Amato, who was appointed by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in April.

THE BALKANS (Former Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria)

It’s Time for a Solution for Kosova...

The Balkans is still far from being calmed down. Although the NATO operation to stop a catastrophe in Kosova brought about peace and some new hope for the future of the region, the job was not finished. Slobodan Milosevic is still in power in Serbia, and the idea of Kosovar independence has been repeatedly rejected by the West, although there would be many good arguments for Kosova’s independence that was de facto declared already in 1992, before the similar declarations of Bosnia-Herze­govina and Republic of Macedonia, two countries that were much less united than the over 90 per cent Albanian Kosova.

The peace in Kosova has been repeatedly challenged by tensions in the divided city of Mitrovica and also elsewhere, where there have been clashes between the Kosovar Albanians and the remaining Serbs. The fact that Albanian homes were destroyed en masse by the Serbian occupation troops, while the Serbs of Kosova took over Albanian homes in many cases, has caused a lot of tension, along with the accusation by Albanians that Russian and French peacekeepers would partially favour and assist the Serbs, that the Serbs have prepared for new armed terrorism against the Albanians, and that the NATO will not allow peaceful independence process to take place in Kosova. Meanwhile, Serbia and Russia have accused the Western troops of tolerating Albanian acts against Serbs, and called the NATO peacekeeping action “colo­nialism“ and preparations for Kosova’s independence.

...As well as for Serbia

The Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic has been dependent on conflicts from the very beginning of his career, and he is responsible of every single one of the 1990s and 2000s Balkan wars. It is highly probable that he will not change, and he will not give up tyranny voluntarily. On the other hand, Kosovar independence would probably finish his career in Serbia, as the Serbian opposition is still seeking ways to break his power and to start developing a new Serbia, democratic and European. Such Serbia would probably be more interesting in incorporating the Bosnian Serb Republic with its mother state, than violently occupying the non-Serbian Kosova. Myths about ancient historical homelands have been feeding nationalism on all sides, but they should be removed for more thinking about the future. A major political rearrangement in the Balkans is probably needed before lasting stability can be achieved. This is exactly what Milosevic fears, and because of that, along with the fact that he has repeatedly searched for legitimisation for his policies from conflicts, the West should be prepared and alert for a new conflict.

The murders of Milosevic’s notorious butcher, Zeljko Raznjatovic, better known as Arkan, in January, Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, a close ally of Milosevic, in February, and Zika Petrovic, an inner circle member of the economic elite, in April, suggest that the internal stability of the Serbian regime is far from stable. The Belgrade regime’s alienation from real world is perhaps best manifested by the repeated accusations against the West for the political murders in Serbia. A decisive strike with right timing and strategy could be lethal for Milosevic’s tyranny, and give the chance for the Serbian opposition. On the other hand the instability of the Belgrade regime means that they are increasingly eager to search for new conflicts to legitimate their power.

There’s still Powder in the Keg

Belgrade still holds in its grip three possible areas of future conflict: Montenegro, Voivodina and Sandzak. Besides, the fates of the divided Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosova, still deprived of internationally recognised independence, are still far from solved. Montenegro, under the leadership of President Milo Djukanovic, has sought increasing independence on Belgrade, and is improbable to give in to any re-take­over, which Milosevic may plan, unless Serbia radically changes. And this would demand removal of Milosevic’s regime, which is probable to lead into the final split-up of the remnant Yugoslavia anyway. However, so far the West – after reacting far too late time after time in the last decade’s Balkan wars – has done very little in order to assure that Montenegro will not become a new Bosnia or a new Kosova. It is even less expectable that the West would be prepared for needed political decisions in case that Serbia would make trouble in the Muslim-inhabited Sandzak or in Voivodina, which has a large Hungarian minority.

The Balkans still Lack a Political Solution

Perhaps it would be time for a reshaping process of the most troublesome part of the Balkans, now consisting of Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Besides, any possible spread of Slav-Albanian antagonism to the Ilirida region of Republic of Macedonia should be prevented. Such development becomes increasingly probable by all the time that the Kosova’s political status is not clear. It could destroy the presently positive development of Macedonia, where the new government got its decisive support from the over 30 per cent Albanian minority of the country.

The NATO has already committed itself to guaranteeing humanitarian security in Kosova, and the UN in Bosnia and Macedonia. Now it is time to look at the future of Kosova, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia. Does a communist dictatorship have prospects in future Europe? Is it a realist plan to try to reintegrate divided Bosnia, let alone to plan for re-annexation of Kosova to Serbia, which the lack of international recognition for Kosova implicitly suggests? The present political blind alley only continues to isolate the Serbs from European community, and postpones, with probable disastrous results, the hopefully unavoidable collapse of Milosevic’s system. When doors are left open, it should be remembered that in such a situation the doors remain open for a new conflict, too.

The Gap in Bosnia

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the arrest of a Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik has newly increased the nationalist sentiments of the Serbs, while Muslim Bosniaks have increasingly voted for moderate powers. The West should ensure in Bosnia that the positive development of the Muslim part of the country will not be destroyed by increasing frustration by Serbs and Croats in the continuation of an unsolved political question of the character of statehood.

The Long Expected Change in Croatia

In December 1999, the authoritarian president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, died, and this year, the social liberal Stipe Mesic was elected to new president. Tudjman’s death has very important implications in the politics of the North of Balkans. It can be said that Tudjman largely took the Croats’ sins to his grave, which means that the long-time troubling political pariah status of Croatia can be quickly forgotten, and Croatia – economically the most development of the post-communist Balkan states after Slovenia – will be increasingly accepted to the Central European reference group where the Catholic Croatia undoubtedly wants to be seen to belong to. It is probable that Croatia will soon follow Slovakia by joining the European Union applicants, turning its back to the authoritarian past. The only solution that may damage the new prospects of Croatia is the question of Herzegovina Croats, who may continue to trouble the country with the “old“ tensions that still tie Croatia, unlike Slovenia, to the group of former Yugoslav states.

EUROPEAN ORIENT (Turkey, the Caucasus)

High Stakes in Turkey

Turkey’s prospects for increasing stability and European integration seemed to be better than ever, when Turkey was finally accepted as an applicant state for the EU membership in Helsinki, December 1999. Also relations with Greece have improved considerably, the co-operation with Georgia and Azerbaijan in order to construct the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has reached new steps, and the Kurdish terrorist organisation PKK has finally begun to split into its own internal quarrels, and it has become a bunch of bandits after the arrest of its notorious leader, the Turkish communist Abdullah Öcalan. Still, however, there are mighty powers in Europe, Turkey and in Russia who would love to see all these positive developments ruined. In Europe, socialist and religious activists are lobbying against Turkey. Russia is seeking new ways to destabilise Georgia and Azerbaijan in order to prevent the oil co-operation that would inevitably increase the economic and strategic independence of both the Caucasus and Central Asia on Russia, bring about new liberty and prosperity in the region, and also weaken the position of the Islamic governments loyal to Russia: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. In Turkey, the nationalists and Islamists are skeptical at Turkey’s Western orientation.

Turkey’s Scylla and Charybdis

Thus, it is understandable that Turkey is afraid of any radical changes in the situation. It must be understood in this context, that Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit has made an effort to continue President Süleyman Demirel’s period in power. However, Ecevit failed, and this means that the Turkish president will change. What Turkey fears most, of course, is that popular support for Islamists would again rise, or that military would be once again obliged to intervene politics in order to preserve Turkey’s secular Western orientation. The problem is that both cases would seriously damage Turkey’s effort to become the bridge between Europe and the Orient, the gateway to the emerging ‘Heartland’ of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Whether their would be a shift in favour of the Islamists, or a military intervention in politics, the enemies of Turkey in the West would eagerly seize the opportunity to destroy Turkey’s prospects.

The difficult position of Turkey also explains why the country has been so moderate and reluctant to support the Caucasians – Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Chechens – in their efforts to gain liberty from the Russian colonial yoke. Turkey’s reluctance has even been seen as double morality and lack of courage, and it has raised some bitterness in Turkey’s supposed friends in the Caucasus, like Georgians and Chechens. Turkey is between Scylla and Charybdis: On Scylla’s side, Russia will not tolerate Turkey’s support, even political, to the Caucasians and Central Asians, as Russia’s newly imperialist desires even exceed the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. The West is equally unlikely to support Turkey’s interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia as long as the Western patience at Russian aggression holds. On Charybdis’ side, if Turkey sacrifices its weaker friends in the Caucasus and in Turkestan, it may sacrifice its own future as the important bridgeland between Europe and the Orient – and the prize for which this sacrifice would be paid, European integration and Western security guarantee, is far from promised.

Spring in Chechnya

The second Chechen War is now in April reaching a stage where the advancing spring will turn into the favour of the Chechen freedom fighters. The forests of the Chechen mountain slopes are becoming green, which means that the guerrillas’ mobility will radically increase, and the Russian military upper hand will lose some of its crucial advantages – the Russian war tactics has been based on air bombings and artillery fire, taking over village after village, often only in ruins. Now the Chechen fighters are increasingly difficult to locate, which means that Russian troops will have to face real fighting – something the more poorly armed Chechens have been waiting for. Therefore it is not surprising that Russia has even started to consider negotiations with the moderate Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, although so far the Kremlin has categorically rejected all other but military means in the conflicts, refusing to negotiate with the Chechen government. Also the Chechen leadership seems to be willing to exploit the chance to further a political solution, as Mr. Maskhadov has publicly condemned the Dagestan incursion of 1000 guerrillas (only 300 of whom were Chechens) last summer, and accused the militant leader Shamil Basayev and the former information chief Movladi Udugov to have acted as private persons, without authorisation by the Chechen government.

This means that Maskhadov is once again taking initiative to reach a political solution to the conflict, as so many times before. Will Russia be ready to consider a change in its militarist policy? By a sudden glance it could seem that no; President Vladimir Putin has just reached supreme power by exploiting the aggression against Chechnya and appealing on the Russians’ desire for revenge after the humiliating Russian defeat in the first Chechen War in 1994-1996. On the other hand, the West has done nothing concrete to encourage Russia to give up extreme violence as a means of driving its national interests. Quite the contrary, Russia has even been economically supported by the West in forms of massive IMF loan and forgiving of Russian debts.

Time for Negotiations?

However, there are factors that could suggest new willingness for the Kremlin to seek a solution instead of a possible forthcoming humiliation, when summer improves the Chechens’ chances for efficient guerrilla tactics: First, Putin has already got all the power – he does no longer need similar popular support as before. He must soon again concentrate in the internal power game in Russia, let alone the ever worsening conditions of Russian civilian life. The war is expensive, and the resources are away from the life of common Russians. Sooner or later Russian people awake from their nationalist war intoxication and start to expect results at home. Second, the Western tolerance of Russia’s human rights crimes and general war policy cannot be endless, when there is no response from the Russian side considering real economic reform, real democratisation, or constructive approach to the questions of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, the Baltics and the Balkans. The Western countries may begin to understand that if Russia is not stopped in Chechnya, it is ever more difficult to stop it in Georgia, Azerbaijan or East Europe, where the West’s stakes can be supposed to be higher than in the North Caucasus. Third, the continuation of the conflict inevitably contributes to the rise of radical Islam, and undermines the prospects of the moderate and more or less secular Islam that still prevails in Turkey and Caucasia.

In other words, this would be the right time for those European and Western governments who wish to see a political solution and peace in Chechnya, to pressure Russia with hard hand. An initiative to mediate between Moscow and the Chechens has been made by the Ingush President Ruslan Aushev. It should be, however, backed by the West.

The Georgian President Election

In Georgia, President Eduard Shevardnadze expectedly won the president election in April. His main challenger was Aslan Abashidze, the president of the Autonomous Republic of Adjaria, who would have collected most of his support from Adjaria and elsewhere in West Georgia except that he removed from candidacy a day before election, after a closed-door meeting with Shevardnadze. The remaining main challenger to Shevardnadze was Dzhumber Patiashvili, whose main support area is East Georgia. Although the Zviadists (supporters of the first legally and democratically elected president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in a coup d’état by Shevardnadze) were backing Abashidze, the latter is known for strong pro-Russian sympathies and outside Adjaria he is not very popular. Also Patiashvili was largely seen as a politician mainly driven by desire for personal revenge. Besides that the election was suspected to be highly unfair, the incompetence of the Georgian opposition in a situation where Gamsakhurdia is dead and no new popular leader has appeared to unite similar Georgian and Pan-Caucasian values, can be expected to have brought also genuine support for Shevardnadze, despite large disconsent. Abashidze’s sudden removal from candidacy can be supposed to have thrown some more cold water to the Zviadists’ necks, if they ever expected any sincere support from Abashidze, but on the other hand, after the election Shevardnadze has unexpectedly released political prisoners (whose existence the Shevardnadze regime has so far categorically denied). Perhaps Shevardnadze’s position now forces him to take the Zviadist demands seriously, as the other option would be direct vassalship of Moscow.

In the “civil war“ of Abkhazia that instantly followed the Georgian coup d’état, Russia occupied all Abkhazia from Georgia, driving the Georgian majority of the autonomous republic into the rest of Georgia as refugees. Russian troops have also occupied Samadzablo (South Ossetia), which is presently not in Tbilisi’s control. The situation in Georgia is highly unstable and many people fear that Russia will further attempt to destabilise the country in order to prevent the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to be constructed through Georgia, which would increase the Western strategic interests in Transcaucasia and improve the prospects of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

Peace Dimly Visible in Karabagh?

The hurry of Russia and Iran to prevent Pan-Caucasian co-operation and oil plans by advocating religious hatred is improved by the fact that a long expected serious peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Karabagh region are finally looming in the horizon. The opportunity of some territorial exchange between the countries has been lately revisited, while hotheads on both the sides, along with Russia, have rushed to condemn any such peace prospects. For Russia, Georgia’s destabilisation would guarantee continuation for the Caucasian instability, which is legitimating Russian hegemony and military presence in the region and blocking Western and Turkish access to Inner Asia.

CENTRAL ASIA (Turkestan, Afghanistan, Mongolia)

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’s Afghan Relations

Two Turkestani states, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have strengthen their dictatorial regimes, backed by Russia. Turkmenistan’s leader Saparmurat Niyazov, who has taken the title of ‘Türkmenbashi’, the ‘Father of Turkmens’, adopted life-time presidency of the country. Turkmenistan is also participating the Russian-dominated oil plan, consisting of the unholy alliance of Russia, Iran, Armenia and Turkmenistan, with the purpose of opposing the Baku-Ceyhan plan of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Turkmenistan is also the main channel of Russian arms supply for the Taliban forces of Afghanistan, who are now deprived from Pakistani support since the takeover of General Pervez Musharraf to replace Nawaz Sharif’s corrupted regime. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan, led by dictatorial President Islam Karimov who has been recently accused of several political murders, seeks to increase its influence in North Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the Western-oriented leader of the liberation front, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the same who offered the fiercest resistance against the Soviet occupation, is still fighting for free Afghanistan against the Taliban tyranny, while former pro-Soviet and communist leaders are flocking in the leading circles of the Taliban. The Taliban has close relations with Turkmenistan and Russia. Therefore the Taliban’s recognition for Chechen independence was rather a Trojan horse than a true sign of sympathy, let alone assistance.

Hijackings in Political Context

Two hijackings were lately connected with Afghanistan. The first one in New Year, where unknown hijackers held passengers as hostages in the Afghan city of Kandahar. They were claimed to be Kashmiris but according to the passenger witnesses, they were not Kashmiris but (Indian) Sikhs. Suspicions that the hijacking could have been rather connected with the Indian anti-Pakistani propaganda campaign than with the Kashmiri liberation struggle have risen by the later development of the situation and rhetorics in the region. The second incident, hijacking of an Afghan aeroplane to Britain, proved to be a plot of asylum seekers in order to get to Britain. Majority of the passengers were involved in the affair.

Hunger in Mongolia

The hard winter caused serious humanitarian catastrophe in Mongolia where cattle has died in cold, and hunger demanded human lives.

EAST SLAVONIC REGION (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus)

The Rise of Putin

The year 2000 began with President Boris Yeltsin’s theatrical announcement that he would resign and leave the duties of the superpower’s leader to his prime minister Vladimir Putin, the chief of the Russian secret police FSB. By doing this, Yeltsin and the Kremlin ‘Family’ could virtually ensure that Putin would be the next president of Russia. Therefore it was no surprise for anyone that Putin got the needed over 50 per cent of votes already in the first round in the president election in March. The second candidate was the communist Gennady Zyuganov. The most eminent candidate who could have bring about a change in Russian policies, being against the Chechen War and being both economically liberal and politically democrat, was Grigory Yavlinsky, who did not have a chance in the election.

Although the West has practically adopted a very cautious and compliant line in relation to the new Russian leader, the prevalent interpretation of Putin’s goals has been that they are still not known. This mainly refers to the fact that the observers have had it difficult to decide whether Putin is a lackey of the ‘Family’ as well as the oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, the very man accused in Moscow of financing the notorious Dagestan uprising by 700 Dagestanis and 300 Chechens led by the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and an Arab zealot Khattab, or whether Putin is what the West seems eager to wish he was: a strongman who could ‘forcefully’ bring about stability and discipline in the chaos of the giant state, and probably ensure law, order and economic safety in Russia.

Putin’s Goals?

However, it seems Putin is neither a Russian Atatürk, nor another Lebed. Obedience to law and building a state of justice are not things that could easily be connected with a man who is largely suspected of most sinister means in order to gain power, use of provocations and disinformation, generally employing the KGB methods in ruling Russia. Stability would be an odd goal for a man who uses massive war as a means of dealing with minorities, and who has repeatedly rejected the possibility of a political solution in the conflict he started himself, stating that only military solutions are to be used, and will be used until the very end. Finally, Putin does not seem to be fulfilling the Western hopes in the last wish, either: It does not quite signal an economic reform that right after the parliamentary election, Putin allied with the communists, leaving all the liberal parties isolated from power.

What is, however, known about Putin is that he does not hide his militarist attitude in solving any problems with cruel use of force. On the other hand, he seems to believe in an ultra-strong centralised state, preferably controlled by the security structures. The Otechestvo alliance of the Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the republican leaders (like the Tatar President Mintimer Shaimiyev, the Mordovian President Nikolai Merkushkin, the Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, and the Kalmykian President Kirsan Ilyumchinov) and governors, did not manage to give a real challenge to the Kremlin, although they seemed first to be backed by two veteran Security Committee eminencies, Yevgeny Primakov and Sergei Stepashin. Luzhkov was still last year largely seen as the most probable next president of Russia but about whom not much is heard any more. One after another, the Otechestvo figureheads have defected to the Putin camp. Present Russian development resembles the rise of national socialism in Germany rather than a return to the Soviet style communism. All in all, the many parallels to the rise of the Nazis in interwar Germany signal alarming tones in the present Russian development.

Alarming Signs of History Repeating Itself

In the political apathy and economic depression of the Weimar Republic, the senile President von Hindenburg agreed to appoint Adolf Hitler to Reichskanzler. By the rise of national socialism, the role of the secret police strengthened in internal affairs. Manipulation of elections and harnessing the media to serve official propaganda were the basic patterns of both fascism and national socialism. Even the Russian rhetorics of “state-controlled market economy“ sinisterly remind of the corporatist model of centralised state-controlled economy in the fascist and national socialist regimes. Finally, Putin has even employed the rhetorics of national socialist xenophobia and imperialism by stating that “a final solution in the North Caucasus“ is for him “a historical task“. Even though anti-Semitism of the 1800s and early 1900s has been replaced by newly fashionable anti-Islamism in the present world, and the race theories have been replaced by “culturally“ based geopolitics, the pattern seems notoriously familiar from the European situation right before both first and second World Wars. This may explain why the Western politicians have been so compliantly eager to see another kind of image of the nuclear superpower’s present condition. How long this illusion can survive is another question.

Crushing Resistance at Home and Abroad

If the controversial memo by Vladimir Putin to the communist Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyev is genuine, Putin has basically stated that his main goal within the Russian Federation would be to crush the Chechen resistance entirely, and then to crush any defiance by other Republics, such as Ingushetia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Kalmykia, Tuva, and many others. In foreign politics, Putin’s primary goal was stated as “normalising the relations between Russia and the CIS countries“, which has been widely decoded as an aimed reincorporation of all the newly independent former Soviet states into the Kremlin’s full control. This would lead to an enormous destabilisation of all the region stretching from Moldova and Ukraine to the Caucasus and to Central Asia. Even the Baltic countries cannot be sure of their security, being subjects to continuous Russian verbal attacks.

If this gloomy image of Russia’s present tendencies and Putin’s political goals is correct, the West can only expect an end to the interregnum of the 1990s, an era characterised by a process of liberation and democratisation of former communist block. Instead, strategic Eurasian alliance of Russia, China and India against Muslims on the other side, and the West on the other side whether the West agreed to acknowledge it or not, may loom in the near horizon.

Speaking about the Children of Dawn

A recent study of Estonian sociologists in Moscow suggests similar scenario for those who have hopefully expected a new and better generation to grow up in Russia, some day to replace the Soviet nomenclature. In the study, pupils of secondary schools were interviewed in Moscow. The biggest group, 29 per cent, demanded that Russia should annex all the territories in Russian control during the czarist era when the Russian Empire’s territory was at its largest – according to them also Finland, Poland and the Baltic states should be occupied by Russia. The second largest group of schoolkids, 24,5 per cent, would have been satisfied with annexing only all the former Soviet Union to Russia, while 8,7 per cent would have conquered only the CIS states. Only 13 per cent of the schoolkids were satisfied with the present Russian territory. A same amount wished the Soviet Union to return. More than half of the pupils accepted violence as the means of ethnic disputes, and 6 per cent considered direct military aggression as the only possible means of fulfilling the goals. Such hollow attitudes of the new generation only suggest that the nationalist and imperialist propaganda of the Russian media has indeed created a time bomb.

However, a beacon of hope may still be shining in the darkness of war and misery of the Russian citizens. In Chechnya, Russia will be in increasing trouble since the forests of the mountain slopes are turning green. This means it could be the right time for those Western governments hoping to see political steps towards peace to pressure the Russian government. Making the policy of war and imperialism as expensive as possible for the Kremlin is the best insurance that the Russian citizens will wake up to demand that their leaders would concentrate in their domestic duties instead of building up a new “Evil Empire“.

MIDDLE EAST (Arabs, Israel, Iran)

Israel and Its Neighbours

After both Boris Yeltsin and the Pope John Paul II visited the Holy Land, Israel is being stuck in the Golan peace talks with Syria. The peace process with Palestine has advanced considerably better during Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s period. The question with the Golan Heights is more complicated, due to the continued hostile activity by Syria and some Lebanese groups. Egypt and Jordan have taken increasingly pro-Western lines and the Turkish-Israeli military co-operation against the threat of the pro-Russian Muslim regimes of Iran, Syria and Iraq, has made Jordan, too, to approach Israel. The Golan Heights are, however, still seen as a strategic guarantee of North Israel, because from the Golan it is too easy to strike Israel with grenades every now and then. The Syrian regime, led by the dictator Hafez al-Assad, does not give reason for similar confidence as the Jordanian and Egyptian regimes. Thereby it is improbable that Israel would seriously consider giving up the Golan hills in the present situation. Even the independence of a Palestine state seems to have better prospects.

Iran’s ‘Perestroika’

The most convincing times of Iran’s variant of the ‘perestroika’ method, successfully used by Russia to gain Western support for the rescue of a collapsing regime, seem to be over. While the collapse of the Soviet regime was result of total economic failure of communism, defeat in the arms race, and unavoidable liberation movement of the non-Russian nations oppressed by the Russian-dominated Soviet empire, the failure of Iran’s Islamist dictatorship was rooted in the very pearl of the Islamist strategy: their youth policy. Iran invested massively in high-quality education system, and the population growth produced a situation where most of the Iranians are now the very generation that has been educated by the Islamist system. This was meant to be the guarantee for the future of Iran’s religious regime, but it was the opposite. In Iran, where one has full citizen rights, including voting, already at the age of sixteen, it is the teens who are most critical at the Islamist rule. Iran’s idealist tyrants did not realise that good education is never good for totalitarianism.

Although Iran’s Gorbachev, President Mohammed Khatami, is being marketed to the people as well as to the West as a true reformer and saviour of Iran, the power of the secret police in the shadow of Mr. Khatami’s charisma has not decreased considerably. One of Khatami’s main advisors is a notorious secret police torture chief, and in the Iranian-held ‘South Azerbaijan’ harsh human rights violations and oppression of the large Azeri minority are everyday life. Such events as the shooting of the liberal politician Said Hajjarian (who was seriously wounded) tell about an internal power struggle, but on the other hand, if the religious eminencies and the supreme true leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would really be against Khatami, he would simply not be the president any longer.

So, Iran is changing, and it depends largely on the level of correct judgement of the situation by the Iranians as well as by the West, how successful the reformation of Iran will be. In the best case, Iran could develop into a stable and even democratic country like Turkey, offering good prospects for Eurasian stability and the renaissance of the Caucasus and Central Asia, a New Silk Road, when Russia loses one of its most loyal independent vassals in the south. In the worst case, misjudgement by the West and neglecting the historical opportunity may create a hoax equally disastrous for the stability of Eurasia as Russia has become. For still a long time, however, Iran will probably stay somewhere in between.

Iraq’s War Continues in Silence

Iraq has not been seen in the headlines lately, but that does not mean that the war would be over. Instead, the US bombings of Iraq have even increased recently. Like Milosevic in Serbia, also the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein continues to live and prosper in Baghdad, despite all the misery that the blockade against the country has caused to common Iraqis. In the north of Iraq, the Kurds’ dream of an independent Kurdistan is at its closest to becoming true – in co-operation with Turkey! The democratic Kurdish party of Iraq, KDP, has traditionally been positive at Turkey, and confronted the communist PKK, which, for its part, has had close relations with both Saddam’s Iraq and Russia.

THE SUBCONTINENT (Pakistan, India, Himalayas, Sri Lanka)

The Kashmir Imbroglio and the New Pakistan

Tensions have once again intensified in Kashmir, the Himalayan state divided by the surrounding three hegemons, India, Pakistan, and China. China has only annexed two mountainous regions (Aksai Chin or eastern Ladakh and eastern Gilgit-Baltistan) while the rest of Kashmir is divided into an Indian colonial state of Jammu and Kashmir, and a Pakistani protectorate of Azad Kashmir (‘Free Kashmir’), Gilgit-Baltistan being in direct Pakistani control. Although according to even Indian surveys (The Outlook) a vast majority of the Kashmiris would prefer independence on both India and Pakistan, the Kashmir problem has usually been seen as an Indian-Pakistani trouble, and as such it continues to cause tension in South and Central Asia. Now the hazard of the Kashmir situation is highlighted by the fact that both India and Pakistan have manifested their nuclear weapon capacity.

India is presently led by a religious extremist party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, with the notorious Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the prime minister. Pakistan, however, has recently turned into more attractive for the Kashmiris, by the shift that has made Pakistani more genuinely Western-oriented, legitimate and stable – paradoxically due to a military coup. Pervez Musharraf’s takeover in Pakistan, however, ended the corrupted regime of Nawaz Sharif, cut short the Pakistani support for the extreme Islamist Taliban movement of Afghanistan, and made a sudden stop to a political murder wave, which had stroke against Pakistan’s Shi’ite minority, and which has been suspected to have been provocation by Sharif’s secret police. Musharraf’s Pakistan has also agreed with Iran about collaboration against the Taliban, and the strategic tie between Pakistan and China may soon be cut, as India is possibly approaching both the Taliban and China.

The unholy alliance of Eurasia – Russia, China, India and the Taliban – is becoming clearer, whereas Pakistan would be, along with Turkey, the West’s most probable ally in the Muslim world, and generally in Eurasia. Considering this, the US President Bill Clinton’s cold attitudes at Pakistan and compliance at India’s atrocities in Kashmir, during his recent visits to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, comes in a very bad time and could be considered most unwise regarding the American strategic interests in Eurasia.

Mao’s Ghost Haunts Nepal

In the Himalayan monarchy of Nepal, where Prime Minister Koirala was recently appointed to another new period in power, a bloody rebellion by a Maoist terrorist movement has demanded already 1200 people’s lives in four years.

EAST ASIA (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan)

Tension between Taiwan and China Grows...

Taiwan’s presidential election raised furious war-mongering by China, but the long era of the Kuomintang was replaced by a pro-independence regime nevertheless. China’s war policy towards Taiwan – and as well the expansionist policy towards the Pacific and South China Sea islands, Southeast Asia, and possibly Mongolia – will in the near future state a direct challenge to the United States’ courage to guarantee the security of the free East Asian states: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. If the US courage shakes and the American foreign policy shifts increasingly towards the newly fashionable multipolarist doctrine, Taiwan may soon share the fate of Hong Kong and Macao. Yet with the considerable difference that the Taiwanese are prepared, and willing, to defend their liberty with arms. Despite the economic reforms in coastal metropoles of China, the communist regime has not shown serious signs of shift towards democracy or any kind of liberalisation of the dictatorship. In spite of ostensible strength, this development will not bring about stability in East Asia, but instead, increasing internal tensions that may lead to an explosion. The recent return towards hard-line Party control in China signals of a dangerous development that, together with the development of Russia and India, can produce a very ugly form of the greeted multipolarism: an Eurasian era of aggressive empires.

...While the Koreas Agree on a Summit

Dialogue is perhaps to be expected in Korea. It seems that the desperacy of North Korea, the most isolated communist tyranny in the world, has grown to the stage that the regents of Pyongyang will have to start dialogue with South Korea. This was undoubtedly helped by China’s decision to normalise its relationship with Seoul. After the Cold War, China has been the only supporter of the North Korean communist dictatorship. Electoral victory for the ruling party in South Korea may be a sign of the Koreans’ confidence in a better future and peace talks with the North. Still, North Korea is in a suicide condition, which is very dangerous for a country, which has nuclear weapon capacity and over a million soldiers in arms, and which has legitimised all its tyranny with the idea of a forthcoming armageddon against South Korea and the United States. Considering this, the peace process of the Koreas should be observed with immense carefulness, simultaneously preparing for facing a pathological psychotic regime on the edge of total collapse.

New Prime Minister in Japan

Japan’s prime minister was changed after the break of Keizo Obuchi’s health, but no radical changes are to be expected in Japan’s political position. However, if the Democrats win the forthcoming US president election, there may be shift in American strategic policy towards Eurasia, which will enforce the free states of East Asia to gain strategic independence. If the US will increasingly comply at Eurasian multipolarism, a code for hegemony of Russia, China and India, hard times will meet Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Southeast Asian states. They may seek to improve their military capacity in order to be able to defend themselves against the rising empires.

SOUTHEAST ASIA (Indochina, Sundas, Philippines)

Instability in Indonesia

Instability of Indonesia and Malaysia has continued throughout the first period of 2000. It has been especially serious in Indonesia, where the failure of the new leadership of Indonesia to solve the intensification of centrifugal disintegration of the island empire has resulted the repeating of the East Timor tragedy in Aceh, Irian Jaya and in the Moluccas. However, the same Western world that rushed to support East Timorese independence and to celebrate the collapse of President Suharto’s regime, has given no support for the idea of peaceful independence process of Aceh, Moluccas and West Irian. In respect to Aceh, the Western leaders even warned President Wahid to allow a similar referendum on independence that President Habibie agreed to arrange in East Timor – strongly pressured by the West. The Western double morality concerning the demands for further federalisation and self-determination of Indonesia has contributed to the destabilisation of the strongest West-oriented country of Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s tragedies and possibly increasing hostilities between Muslims and Christians in the islands may serve Chinese aspirations of hegemony over Southeast Asia. Besides Indonesia, Thailand has been the main anchor of Southeast Asian independence, and Thailand is still the lighthouse of Western political values in Southeast Asia. If the destabilisation of Indonesia and Malaysia reach also Thailand, the whole region may be in serious danger. Western interests in the “tiger economies“ of Southeast Asia should be seen as possibly endangered, and more responsible as well as more logical political attention should be paid on the situation in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Southeast Asia in Cataclysm

Also the third ethnically highly heterogeneous island state of Southeast Asia, the Philippines, faces serious threats of destabilisation. In the southern island of Mindanao, a predominantly Muslim region in Philippines, dominated by Catholic Christians, a separatist struggle for independence has taken place in all silence for a long time already. Also the military dictatorship of Burma (Myanmar) is challenged by various separatist claims. The most active of them in the first period of 2000 has been the Christian Kareni separatists, who in January took a Thai hospital as a hostage.

The secessionist struggle of Mindanao from the Philippines was suddenly brought into wide publicity in April, at least in some countries, after a Mindanao separatist guerrilla organisation kidnapped a group of tourists in the Malaysian island of Sipadan off Borneo’s coast. Due to the Finnish nationality of two of the hostages, the case as well as the Mindanao situation have been widely covered in Finnish media. At the same time, among others the BBC has paid attention on the prevailing pirate activity in Southeast Asian, especially Indonesian, waters. It has been hinted that the roots of the organised crime running pirate leagues are in China. China, indeed, has the largest geopolitical interest in destabilisation of Southeast Asia.

Like the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Kashmir, also Southeast Asia constitutes a part of the zone of intermediate lands between the rising empires of a multipolar Eurasia. This means that also Southeast Asia may become an increasingly important part of the millennium’s reshaping of the world order. Thus, demands of self-determination, autonomy, federalisation, democratisation, and reformation that will not end up in Chechnya, Kosova, Indonesia, Kashmir and so on, state a most serious and acute challenge for the world politics. The old world order has become obsolete and the interregnum of the 1990s is beginning to be over. It is time to revise the doctrines of frozen state map, rejection of new sovereign states, and immobility of status quo. It is time to base Western policies in Eurasia logically on respect of liberty, self-determination and human rights. Otherwise the results might be disastrous. It is the Western duty to encourage the great empires of Eurasia to accept democratisation, liberation and decolonization of the Eurasian intermediate zones. Only such policy will bring about a positive era of Eurasian prosperity, and promote the change in the great empires as well.

THE REST OF THE WORLD:

AFRICA

Africa has got its own unholy alliances, which became visible already during the Congo civil war where the regime of the old dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was replaced with a new dictatorship, led by the Marxist tyrant Laurent Kabila. Other Marxist regimes of Africa, including Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and José dos Santos’s Angola, but even the new South Africa and Namibia, supported Kabila, while Yoweri Muse­veni’s Uganda has supported the rebels fighting Kabila’s dictatorship. The Angolan liberation movement Unita has faced increasing isolation from its former supporters in the West, while certain African regimes like Togo and Burkina Faso continue to support the Unita against the communist regime of Mr. dos Santos. The ugly war of the Sudanese regime against the Christian separatists of South Sudan continues, while South Sudan is assisted by Museveni’s Uganda.

Uganda has been shaken by a scandal regarding a Christian apocalyptic sect that has committed a massacre of its own supporters. Ethiopia and Somalia are tortured by starvation, and Ethiopia has been accused of refusing to use Eritrean harbours to transport Western aid to the starving people. The situation is especially catastrophic in the province of Ogaden near Somaliland (a de facto independent province of the anarchic Somalia).

In Zimbabwe, racism has turned the other way round, when the authoritarian President Robert Mugabe is trying to preserve his power by fomenting takeover of land and farms owned by the white minority of Zimbabwe by black “war veterans“. It is probable that a large-scale land reform would be needed in Zimbabwe, but it should be implemented by legal means and privatisation, not by collectivisation and aggressive takeover of land on the grounds of skin colour, with the sole purpose of backing the power-greedy president’s position.

NORTH AMERICA

In the United States pre-election John W. Bush and Al Gore won the candidacy of Republican and Democrat parties, and defeated their main challengers, John McCain and Bill Bradley. Considering Eurasian politics, the main effect of the pre-election results was that McCain’s defeat implies primacy of internal politics to foreign politics in the US. McCain’s morally high-profile stands in Eurasian questions already promoted some hope for Caucasians, Central Asians and many others for an end to the American support for Russian aggressive approach towards its near abroad. McCain’s earlier speaks on Chechnya as well as on enlargement of the NATO were considered as positive signs that would signal a more active and more “righteous“ American foreign policy in Eurasia. It would be wise for Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore to adopt at least some of McCain’s ideas concerning his Eurasian policy.

However, the fact that the Americans generally seem to find the Elián González affair more relevant for world politics than the ongoing holocaust in Chechnya, the threats of new destabilisation in the Balkans and in Georgia, the tense India-Pakistan relations, or the growing aggression of China against Taiwan, suggests that the era of “Wag the Dog“ continues to dominate United States foreign politics. This does not promise anything good for the stability in Eurasia.

LATIN AMERICA

A socialist, Ricardo Lagos, was elected to new president of Chile, while General Augusto Pinochet avoided trials and returned home in safe. Also the authoritarian but economically successful reign of Alberto Fujimori in Peru has got a challenger from a more left-wing camp. In Ecuador, the economic collapse led to a coup and resignation of President Jamil Mahuad. Some territorial and sea border disputes have taken place between Central American states. The miraculous survival of a 6-year-old refugee boy from Cuba, Elián González, has generated a furious propaganda war between the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the Cuban refugee colony of Miami, Florida. The US president candidates have eagerly seized the media game and the little boy has suddenly become a tool of political slander on all the sides.

AKK