14. Sergey Borisov, “Common Economic Space May ‘Absorb’ Union State of Russia, Belarus,” RT (October 19, 2010).
15. Borodin quoted by Ivan Savelyev, “Union State of Russia and Belarus Needs Intensive Care,” RIA Novosti (October 14, 2010).
16. Dmitry Medvedev’s blog, October 4, 2010. http://rt.com/About_Us/Blogs/kremlin-messages-president-talks-to-the-web.html.
17. “Union State Should Re-integrate Former USSR, Russian Analyst Says,” Belta (November 26, 2010).
18. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 94.
19. “Speaker Rules Out Ukraine Joining Belarus-Russia Union State,” iupdp.org (April 7, 2010).
20. “Speaker Rules Out Ukraine Joining Belarus-Russia Union State.”
21. “Klaus von Beyme: Slavic Federation of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia Would be a Natural Partner for the EU and NATO,” Information Analysis Portal of the Union State (November 19, 2010). http://www.soyuz.by/en/print.aspx?guid=93465 (accessed December 7, 2010).
22. “South Ossetia May Join Russia-Belarus Union State,” RT (August 2, 2011).
23. Andrew Jack, “Putin ‘Could Head Post-Soviet Confederation,’” The Financial Times (October 28, 2003).
24. “Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs Union,” Office for a Democratic Belarus (December 1, 2010).
25. “Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs Union.”
26. “Putin Reminded to Whom Belarus Obliged Its GDP Growth,” udf.by (July 13, 2012).
27. “Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs Union.”
28. Åslund quoted by Konstantin Rozhnov, “Will a New Customs Union Hurt Russia’s WTO Bid?” BBC News (June 30, 2010).
29. “Putin: Ukraina prodast Evrope 2 litra moloka, a Tamozhennyy Soyuz dast ey $9mlrd v god,” Zerkalo Nedeli. Ukraina (October 6, 2012).
30. Cf. Konstantin von Eggert, “Due West: Georgia’s Wildcard in Russia’s WTO Membership,” RIA Novosti (December 8, 2010). http://en.rian.ru/colmnists/20101208/161688551.html.
31. Pavel K. Baev, “Medvedev Enjoys Foreign Policy ‘Successes,’” Eurasia Daily Monitor 7, no. 222 (December 13, 2010).
32. “Putin Reminded to Whom Belarus Obliged its GDP Growth.”
33. “Russia Still Considering to Include Armenia in Single Customs Union,” News.am (December 6, 2010).
34. For a critical analysis of Medvedev’s proposal, see my paper “Medvedev’s Proposal for a Pan-European Security Pact: Its Six Hidden Objectives and How the West Should Respond,” The Cicero Foundation (October 2008). http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Marcel_H_Van_Herpen_Medvedevs_Proposal_for_a_Pan-European_Security_Pact.pdf.
35. Cf. Stephen Blank, “The CSTO: Gendarme of Eurasia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 8, no. 176 (September 26, 2011).
36. Fyodor Lukyanov, “Eurasian Union is Putin’s Top Priority,” Valdai Discussion Club (June 4, 2012).
37. Uwe Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS Region?” SWP Comments 1, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (January 2012), 3.
38. “Interview: Analyst Says Uzbekistan’s Suspension Shows CSTO is ‘Irrelevant,’” RFE/RL (June 29, 2012).
39. “Serbia Becomes PA CSTO Observer,” Tanjug (April 11, 2013).
40. Hall Gardner, Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia, and the Future of NATO (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 112.
41. Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, Putin Itogi: Nezavisimyy Ekspertnyy Doklad (Moscow: Novaya Gazeta, 2008), 54.
42. Eugene B. Rumer, “Russian Foreign Policy beyond Putin,” Adelphi Paper No. 390 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2007), 24.
43. Anders Åslund, “The End Seems Near for the Putin Model,” The Washington Post (February 26, 2010).
44. It led in South Africa to critical comments. One economist “berated the government for simply replacing Western corporations plundering Africa’s natural resources with a new group of what he called ‘sub-imperialist’ powers, the Brics.” (Peter Fabricius, “Brics Summit Important for SA,” IOL News (March 22, 2013).)
45. Alain Faujas, “La création de la banque de développement des Brics renvoyée à 2014,” Le Monde (March 29, 2013).
46. “Russia Offers S. Africa Help with Nuclear Power,” RIA Novosti (March 26, 2013).
47. “Russian, South African Presidents Sign Declaration on Strategic Partnership,” ITAR-TASS (March 26, 2013).
48. Cf. Michael Schuman, “Should BRICS Become BRIICS?” Time (March 3, 2010). Cf. also Karen Brooks, “Is Indonesia Bound for the BRICS?” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 6 (November/December 2011).
49. Martyn Davies, “Indonesia and Turkey Top Brics Contenders,” Business Day (South Africa) (March 3, 2013).
50. Ruchir Sharma, “Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 6 (November/December 2012), 4–5.
Chapter 5
The Eurasian Union
Putin’s Newest Imperial Project
On October 8, 2011, Vladimir Putin launched a new project, when he published in the paper Izvestia an article with the title “A New Integration Project for Eurasia: The Future That Is Born Today.” In this article he announced the creation of a “Eurasian Union.” The Union, he wrote, would be “an open project.” The three countries of the Customs Union—Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan—formed the core of this new Union. However, wrote Putin, “we hope for the accession of other partners, and first of all of the countries of the CIS.”[1] This was the first time, after the establishment of the CIS in December 1991, that the Kremlin launched an integration initiative that intended to incorporate the quasi-totality of the former Soviet Union. Putin explicitly denied that it was an attempt “to recreate, in one form or another, the USSR.” On the contrary, he said his project was inspired by the example of the European Union. Like the EU the Eurasian Union would develop itself through a process of deepening and enlargement. It would, like the EU, also have its own supranational organs, such as a Commission and a Court.
Precursors of the Eurasian Project: Igor Panarin and Aleksandr Dugin
Ideas about creating a “Eurasian Union” were not new. They had already been circulating for many years in Russia. What was new was the fact that the Russian leadership, after years of hidden support, finally decided to embrace the project openly. One of its main protagonists was Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst, who, in his capacity as dean of the Diplomatic Academy of the Foreign Ministry, became one of the main ideologists of the Eurasian idea. In an interview in Izvestia,[2] published in April 2009, he had predicted the creation of a powerful “Eurasian Union,” led by Vladimir Putin. This Union, modeled on the EU, would have a parliament in Saint Petersburg and create a single currency. The Eurasian Union, he said, would not only encompass the territories of the former Soviet Union. He predicted that Alaska would return to Russia and that Russia would play a leading role in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. In the end China and the European Union would also become members and form a triumvirate that would dominate the world. Panarin predicted that the global role of the United States was over. According to him this country would soon fall apart.[3] In a lecture, delivered in Berlin in February 2012—after Putin’s official adoption of the Eurasian Union project—Panarin declared that “the Eurasian Union should have four capitals: 1. St. Petersburg; 2. Almaty; 3. Kiev; 4. Belgrade.”[4] He added a timetable also. Armenia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine could join by December 30, 2012; Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia, by December 30, 2016. After this date “Turkey, Scotland, New Zealand, Vietnam, and several other countries could join.”[5] When Putin declared that the Eurasian Union is not a reconstitution of the former USSR, he was completely right because the scope of the project seems to be much more ambitious. Panarin mentioned here no fewer than seven possible members that were not for
mer parts of the defunct Soviet Union, although New Zealand[6] and Scotland (after independence) are improbable candidates. Panarin warned that the West had started the “Second World Information War” against Putin’s Eurasia project. This war would be led by Zbigniew Brzezinski (“an agent of British (!) Intelligence”), Mikhail Gorbachev (“the Judas of Stavropol,” who must “be brought before a public tribunal in Magadan, for his role in the collapse of the USSR”), and Michael McFaul, the US ambassador in Moscow (“a theoretician and practitioner of coups d’état,” “sent to Moscow to enhance the efficiency of Operation Anti-Putin”).
A similar combination of geopolitical megalomania and wishful thinking could be found in another admirer of the Eurasian idea, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of an international Eurasian movement. Dugin similarly pleaded for a reconstitution of the Soviet Union. And like Panarin he did not want to stop at the frontiers of the former empire, but wished also to incorporate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (except the former GDR), as well as Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and the Orthodox world of the Balkans. Dugin’s main focus, however, was Ukraine, the independence of which he considered to be an anomaly. For him, “the battle for the integration of the post-Soviet space is a battle for Kiev.”[7] It might not come as a complete surprise that Dugin is an admirer of Italian fascism. In his book Konservativnaya Revolyutsiya (The Conservative Revolution) he praised the “third way,” which was “not left and not right” and was embodied in “Italian fascism in its early period and also in the time when the Italian Social Republic [Mussolini’s mini-fascist state at the end of the war—supervised by the Germans] existed in Northern Italy.”[8] Dugin was also a source of inspiration for the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who in 1994 had spoken out in favor of the formation of a Eurasian Union.
Fear of Loss of Sovereignty
On November 18, 2011—only six weeks after the publication of Putin’s article in Izvestia—the presidents of Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, acting as the “Founding Fathers” of the future Eurasian Union, took the first concrete steps. In Moscow they signed a treaty installing a “Eurasian Economic Commission.” This Commission, to be located in Moscow, consisted of nine persons (three from each country), who were given the title of federal minister.[9] The Commission was headed by a council consisting of the deputy prime ministers of the three participating countries. In Moscow the three presidents also signed a declaration on Eurasian economic integration, a road map that would lead to the Eurasian Union.
However, in the speeches of the three presidents during the ceremony different accents could already be heard. Although Russian president Medvedev reassured his colleagues that “the decision making mechanism in the Commission’s framework absolutely excludes the dominance of any one country over another,”[10] it was clear that the question of a possible loss of sovereignty was, indeed, in the back of the minds of Russia’s two junior partners. During the ceremony president Lukashenko reminded the audience that at home people were against this process. “One could understand who were standing behind these people,” he said,[11] —a reference to secret foreign enemies that certainly would not have displeased his Kremlin hosts. Lukashenko added: “But we overcame all this and clearly said: yes, we will not lose any sovereignty, nobody is driving anyone anywhere. . . . Any question can be brought to the level of the heads of government (the three of us) and only by consensus can we make any decision.”[12] Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, spoke in the same vein. He was in fact the auctor intellectualis of Putin’s new project, because in 1994 he had proposed the formation of a Eurasian Union in a speech to students of Moscow University. At that point in time his proposal fell on deaf ears. Yeltsin considered it an unpractical pipe dream. However, Nazarbayev’s proposal met with more sympathy in Putin’s Russia, and when he relaunched his project in 2004 he asked the Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin to write a book on the subject. As a result Eurasianism got a prominent place on the political agenda—not only in Kazakhstan, but also in Russia. However—just as in Belarus—in Kazakhstan also not all shared this enthusiasm for integration projects with Russia. “In March 2010,” wrote Laruelle, “175 members of the Kazakh opposition parties, as well as non-governmental organizations and people from the world of the media, signed an open letter to President Nazarbayev asking him to pull out of the [Customs] Union.”[13] The opposition feared that deeper economic integration would cause not only political, but also economic problems by opening up Kazakhstan to the competition of Russian manufacturing and chemical industries, thereby reducing Kazakhstan to a market where Russia could dump its goods. The opponents argued that economic integration with Russia would hinder rather than promote the necessary modernization of the Kazakh industry. This criticism of the opposition seemed to be confirmed, when, in 2011, Kazakhstan’s exports to Russia and Belarus amounted to $7.5 billion, while imports from these countries rose to almost $15.9 billion, causing a large trade deficit.[14] The higher external tariff barriers that were imposed on Kazakhstan also had a negative effect on its trade with China.[15]
On November 18, 2011, at the Eurasian summit in Moscow, Nazarbayev addressed his opponents, declaring: “During this time we heard a lot of criticism coming from all sides: from the West, from the East, from within our countries. . . . They say, in the first place, that we will lose our sovereignty. However, nobody mentions the fact that each of us . . . will gain a great sovereignty . . . because we will vote there by consensus, we will solve questions together. That is the first thing. In the second place, they tell us that Russia is initiating the reincarnation of the Soviet Union—that the empire attacks again. . . . But tell us, please, how one can speak of a reincarnation? The Soviet Union was a rigid administrative command system with total state ownership of the means of production and one communist idea as the embodiment of the communist party. Could you imagine us reinstalling now the Gosplan [committee in Soviet Union responsible for economic planning] and Gossnab [Soviet central State Committee for the allocation of producer goods]? We need to tell people that these are just irrational fears of members of the opposition or simply of our enemies, who don’t want such an integration taking place on this territory.”[16]
Eurasian Union Versus European Union
Putin, in his Izvestia article, had already tried to dissipate fears concerning his new integration project. “Some of our neighbours have made clear that they don’t wish to participate in advanced integration projects in the post-Soviet space,” he wrote, “because this allegedly goes against a European choice. I think this is a false alternative. . . . The Eurasian Union will be built on universal integration principles as an integral part of Greater Europe, united solely by the values of freedom, democracy and market laws. . . . Now dialogue with the EU will be undertaken by the Customs Union, but later it will be the Eurasian Union. Therefore, entering the Eurasian Union . . . will leave each of its members in much stronger positions to integrate more quickly into Europe.”[17] In fact in his article Putin used three arguments:
The first argument was that the Eurasian Union was a project similar to the European Union. It was presented by him as a supranational project with similar institutions to the EU, which would include a commission, a council, a court, and—in time—a common currency.
The second argument was that the Eurasian Union—like the European Union—was built on shared values. As examples of these shared values he mentioned freedom, democracy, and a market economy.
A third argument was his suggestion that no competition existed between the Eurasian Union and the European Union. A choice to adhere to the Eurasian Union, according to him, would not imply a definitive geopolitical choice that would exclude future integration with the EU.
In fact all three arguments were severely biased. In the first place the Eurasian Union is not a European Union bis. This is not only because its institutions lack real supranational authority, but also because of the fundamental disequilibrium in particular that exists be
tween its constituent parts. The EU is a union of four big states, two medium-sized states, and a group of smaller states in which none of the member states would be able to establish a unilateral hegemony over the others. Even Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse, is in no position to dominate the rest. It has to recognize the superior military and diplomatic power of both Britain and France. In the Eurasian Union, on the contrary, the disequilibrium between the member states is striking. Not one of its prospective member states can match the economic and military power of Russia. Even if the whole CIS were to join, Russia’s weight would still dwarf the collective weight of the other member states. In addition, there is still another problem. Russia is the former imperial center with a centuries-long history of imperial conquest, which was characterized by the suppression of the national identity and autonomy of the dominated peoples. For this reason, wrote Umland, the “intellectual elites of the other post-Soviet republics have more or less ambivalent stances, and, sometimes, negative views on their nations past relations with Moscow.”[18] These reservations also concern Putin’s past. Putin, as a former KGB colonel, is “a representative of those organs previously responsible for the execution of, among other crimes, anti-national policies.”[19] One could, of course, point to Germany, which from being a European outcast became a respected member of the EU. However this comparison would not be valid for two reasons. The integration process in Western Europe was set up after World War II to heal the scars the war caused. Germany started a painful process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with its past), which led to repentance, official apologies, and compensation payments (Wiedergutmachung). In the case of Russia there are few signs that it feels responsible for the crimes committed or the repressive policies in the former Soviet Union and Soviet bloc (excuses for the Katyn massacre are a rare exception). The European Community, in addition, was not only meant to heal. This originally French project was also meant to bind Germany to prevent history from repeating itself. Putin’s initiative for the Eurasian Union, on the contrary, comes from the former imperial center. It neither heals the crimes of the Soviet past, nor does it bind the former imperial power. On the contrary, it represents a thinly disguised attempt to restore the lost empire on new foundations.[20]
Putin's Wars Page 12