Eurasian Visions INTEGRATION AND GEOPOLITICS IN CENTRAL ASIA PONARS Eurasia Policy Perspectives September 2015 Eurasian Visions INTEGRATION AND GEOPOLITICS IN CENTRAL ASIA PONARS Eurasia POLICY PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2015 The papers in this volume are based on a PONARS Eurasia policy workshop held at Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan, in June 2015 and co-sponsored by Nazarbayev University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. PONARS Eurasia is an international network of scholars advancing new policy approaches to research and security in Russia and Eurasia. PONARS Eurasia is based at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. This publication was made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors. Program Directors: Henry E. Hale and Cory Welt Managing Editor: Alexander Schmemann Senior Research Associate: Sufian Zhemukhov Program Assistant: Eileen Jorns Research Assistant: George Terry PONARS Eurasia Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) Elliott School of International Affairs The George Washington University 1957 E Street NW, Suite 412 Washington, DC 20052 Tel: (202) 994-6340 www.ponarseurasia.org © PONARS Eurasia 2015. All rights reserved Cover image: From left: Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon, Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek Atambayev, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov pose for a photo ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Ufa, Russia, Friday, July 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev) Contents About the Authors vii Foreword viii Cory Welt and Henry E. Hale, George Washington University Ideologies of Eurasian Union Eurasia, Eurasianism, Eurasian Union: Terminological Gaps and Overlaps 1 Marlene Laruelle, George Washington University Reassembling Lands or Reconnecting People? Geopolitics and Biopower in Russia's Neighborhood Policy 7 Andrey Makarychev, University of Tartu Kazakhstan and the “Russian World”: Is a New Intervention on the Horizon? 13 Viatcheslav Morozov, University of Tartu Promoting Islam within the “Russian World”: The Cases of Tatarstan and Chechnya 19 Alexandra Yatsyk, Kazan Federal University Eurasian Union in Practice How Russia’s Food Embargo and Ruble Devaluation Challenges the Eurasian Customs Union: Russian Trade with Belarus and Kazakhstan at a Time of Crisis 23 Serghei Golunov, Kyushu University Labor Movement in the Eurasian Union: Will Freedom of Movement Trump Domestic Controls? 27 Caress Schenk, Nazarbayev University Eurasian Union Uncertainties 33 Nicu Popescu, EU Institute for Security Studies v Eurasian Geopolitics Central Asia’s Autocrats: Geopolitically Stuck, Politically Free 39 Eric McGlinchey, George Mason University Why Central Asia is More Stable than Eastern Europe: The Domestic Impact of Geopolitics 45 George Gavrilis, Columbia University The Ukraine Conflict and the Future of Kazakhstan’s Multi-Vector Foreign Policy 51 Sean R. Roberts, George Washington University China and the Two Pivots 57 Elizabeth Wishnick, Montclair State University; Columbia University New Silk Roads The New Silk Road Initiative: Are Its Economic Underpinnings Sound? 63 Sebastien Peyrouse, George Washington University Can Azerbaijan Revive the Silk Road? 69 Anar Valiyev, ADA University New Silk Route or Classic Developmental Cul-de-Sac? The Prospects and Challenges of China’s OBOR Initiative 73 Alexander Cooley, Barnard College and Columbia University Is the Russian Economy Finally Tilting East? 79 Vladimir Popov, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Eurasian Politics The Sochi Syndrome Afoot in Central Asia: Spectacle and Speculative Building in Baku, Astana, and Ashgabat 87 Natalie Koch, Syracuse University Anar Valiyev, ADA University Post-Succession Scenarios in Central Asia 93 Scott Radnitz, University of Washington vi About the Authors Alexander Cooley is Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute and Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. George Gavrilis is Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University. Serghei Golunov is Professor at the Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies at Kyushu University in Japan. Henry E. Hale is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University and co-director of PONARS Eurasia. Natalie Koch is Assistant Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Central Asia Program at the George Washington University. Andrey Makarychev is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Government and Politics at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Eric McGlinchey is Associate Professor of Politics at the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University. Viatcheslav Morozov is Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Sebastien Peyrouse is Research Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University. Nicu Popescu is Senior Analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Vladimir Popov is Professor at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and Professor Emeritus at the New Economic School. Scott Radnitz is Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington. Sean Roberts is Associate Professor and Director of the International Development Studies Program at the George Washington University Caress Schenk is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University. Cory Welt is Associate Research Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University and co-director of PONARS Eurasia. Elizabeth Wishnick is Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University and Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Anar Valiyev is Assistant Professor and Associate Provost at ADA University in Baku. Alexandra Yatsyk is Head of the Center for Cultural Studies of Post-Socialism and Associate Professor of Sociology at Kazan Federal University. vii Foreword Cory Welt and Henry E. Hale George Washington University The idea of regional integration in post-Soviet Eurasia is as old as the post-Soviet states themselves. From the moment the USSR collapsed, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan spearheaded efforts to establish supranational links to replace the domestic ones they had sundered. The Commonwealth of Independent States that the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine founded in December 1991 served more as a protracted mechanism for divorce than a basis for new forms of integration. But more targeted efforts at security and economic integration, like the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the pre-EEU Customs Union, held more promise of success, even as questions concerning the practical functioning of their institutions and the distribution of benefits across their members remained. Then, in October 2011, Vladimir Putin declared Russia’s ambition to “go beyond” existing levels of post-Soviet integration by building a Eurasian Union that would become “one of the poles in the modern world” and serve as a “bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region.” Many observers dismissed the Eurasian Union as campaign rhetoric in advance of Putin’s return to the Russian presidency. But just over three years later, in January 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) came into being, uniting the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and later Kyrgyzstan into a regional trade bloc with a set of EU-imitating administrative institutions. The timing of the EEU’s inception could not have been worse. In the months before, Russia had engulfed Ukraine in conflict over the ousting of Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovych. The birth of the EEU thus became entangled with the specter of a new Russian “gathering of lands,” by which Moscow would force countries into ever closer integration and threaten to tear off Russian-populated chunks of those that resisted. The juxtaposition of the Ukraine conflict and the EEU’s inception highlighted tensions in Russian foreign policy: between multinational integration and ethnic unification; geopolitical ambition and economic rationality; respect for territorial integrity and the fomenting of secession and annexation. These tensions have been acutely felt by Russia’s neighbors and not only by those that have distanced themselves from Russia’s integration ambitions. Other EEU members have sought to balance their Russia-oriented integration efforts by cultivating close economic and, occasionally, security relationships with other powers, in the West but also with China. These powers have eagerly reciprocated. In Central Asia, they have engaged in parallel bids for influence, promoting alternative visions of “New Silk Roads” that would embed the region into Southern-oriented or Eastern-oriented trade and investment networks to complement (or, in the extreme, replace) established linkages with the North. viii