RUSSIA’S “PIVOT” TO EURASIA edited by Kadri Liik ABOUT ECFR The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent, effective and values-based European foreign policy. ECFR has developed a strategy with three distinctive elements that define its activities: • A pan-European Council. ECFR has brought together a distinguished Council of over two hundred Members – politicians, decision makers, thinkers and business people from the EU’s member states and candidate countries – which meets once a year as a full body. Through geographical and thematic task forces, members provide ECFR staff with advice and feedback on policy ideas and help with ECFR’s activities within their own countries. The Council is chaired by Martti Ahtisaari and Mabel van Oranje. • A physical presence in the main EU member states. ECFR, uniquely among European think-tanks, has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sofia and Warsaw. Our offices are platforms for research, debate, advocacy and communications. • A distinctive research and policy development process. ECFR has brought together a team of distinguished researchers and practitioners from all over Europe to advance its objectives through innovative projects with a pan-European focus. ECFR’s activities include primary research, publication of policy reports, private meetings and public debates, ‘friends of ECFR’ gatherings in EU capitals and outreach to strategic media outlets. ECFR is a registered charity funded by the Open Society Foundations and other generous foundations, individuals and corporate entities. These donors allow us to publish our ideas and advocate for a values- based EU foreign policy. ECFR works in partnership with other think tanks and organisations but does not make grants to individuals or institutions. www.ecfr.eu RUSSIA’S “PIVOT” TO EURASIA edited by Kadri Liik The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. This paper, like all publications of the European Council on Foreign Relations, represents only the views of its authors. Copyright of this publication is held by the European Council on Foreign Relations. You may not copy, reproduce, republish or circulate in any way the content from this publication except for your own personal and non-commercial use. Any other use requires the prior written permission of the European Council on Foreign Relations. © ECFR May 2014. ISBN: 978-1-910118-03-0 Published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 35 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9JA, United Kingdom [email protected] Contents Kadri Liik 5 Introduction: Russia’s pivot to (Eur)asia WHAT IS THE EURASIAN UNION? 17 1. Fyodor Lukyanov 18 Building Eurasia and defining Russia 2. Timofei Bordachev 25 Eurasian Russia in the twenty-first century Mikhail Shishkin Russian Monologue 38 THE LOGIC OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY 41 3. Dmitri Trenin 42 Drivers of Russia’s foreign policy 4. Pyotr Stegny 49 Russia’s foreign policy: searching for a new paradigm Anna Arutunyan The Coronation 54 THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE EURASIAN UNION 61 5. Evgeny Vinokurov 62 From Lisbon to Hanoi: the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union in Greater Eurasia 6. Vladislav Inozemtsev 67 Russia turns east: Eurasian integration, regional development, and the West as East Andrei Rubanov Temujin Highway 74 RUSSIA’S ECONOMIC “PIVOT” TO ASIA 84 7. Alexander Gabuev 89 The development of the Russian Far East 8. Mikhail Krutikhin 91 Can Russia reroute natural gas from Europe to Asia? Anna Arutunyan The Paleologue Donation 95 AN ASIAN RUSSIA? 99 9. Vassily Kashin 100 Russia turns to Asia 10. Pavel Salin 107 European Asia: why Russia is ready to turn to a “backward” East Kadri Liik Introduction: Russia’s pivot to (Eur)asia The annexation of Crimea has shattered the West’s notions about Russia, the motivations and limitations of its behaviour. But as the West in general and Europe in particular searches for explanations of what has happened and struggles to predict what will happen next, two simplistic narratives have emerged that both interpret Russia’s expansionism or geopolitical revisionism – embodied by the annexation of Crimea – as almost inevitable. In the first, Russia acted because the European Union failed to respect a “natural” red line by offering an Association Agreement to Ukraine. In the second narrative, President Vladimir Putin always intended to restore the Soviet Union and has become more expansionist simply because Russia is now finally strong enough to act. In fact, Russia’s journey from Belovezhye (where the agreement to dissolve the Soviet Union was signed in December 1991) to Simferopol has been a long one, with multiple junctions, changes of directions, and breakdowns. The annexation of Crimea was prepared long in advance, but it was launched almost overnight. Hardly anyone foresaw it, either among Russian elites or among experts on Russia, but in retrospect, it can be interpreted as the logical outcome of long-term processes. At the same time, however, it was not predestined. And even though it is likely to cast a long shadow over Russia’s relationship with the outside world, it is too early to say how exactly and for how long. This essay collection reflects this complicated journey. It was first conceived in the aftermath of a study tour to Moscow in the summer of 2013 whose aim was to understand the changes that had taken place in Russia during Putin’s third presidency. One of the clear messages we brought back from Moscow was that Russian elites were disappointed in the West and were turning towards (Eur)asia. We asked ten Russian authors to explain the essence of this 5 disappointment and the nature of their hopes and fears for Russia’s turn to the East. The initial drafts of the essays in this collection were written before the current crisis. But Russia’s actions in Ukraine, though unexpected, seemed to confirm pre-existing narratives rather than making them obsolete. The collection explores Russia’s increased focus on Asia and on post-Soviet “Eurasia” – two distinct, but in many ways interlinked processes. Both of them have their roots in the dynamics of globalisation, in Russia’s disappointment in the West, and in the country’s attempts to find a place for itself in the contemporary world. Struggling to imagine what “an Asian Russia” would really look and feel like, we also asked several Russian novelists to paint us fictional pictures of Russia’s future. We hope these vignettes will help to unlock realities that remain beyond the reach of expert analyses and give texture to the analyses. They convey a Eurasian world without borders – a space in which past and future have merged. Asia, Eurasia, and Eurasianism The term “Eurasia” can mean different things. In terms of physical geography, Eurasia most often refers to the landmass that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In terms of political geography, however, things are more complicated. Other terms relating to the region are clearer: when they speak of “Central Asia”, Russians mean the former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union; “Asia” means first and foremost China and East Asia; the “Far East” refers to Russia’s own south-eastern and Pacific territories. But “Eurasia” is harder to define. It is usually used to refer to the territory of the former Soviet Union with the exception of the Baltic States. But the exact boundaries of this political Eurasia vary depending on geographical or political preconceptions. The political concepts of Eurasia and Eurasianism have their roots in the 1920s, when mostly emigré thinkers such as Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy and Petr Savitsky suggested that maritime (Euro-Atlantic) and continental (Eurasian) civilisations were fundamentally different in their values, attitudes, and habits, and were therefore bound to compete. Russia, according this theory, represented a unique civilisation with a mission to unify the huge space of Eurasia and to withstand the attempts of maritime (Atlantic) civilisation to encircle and crush it. But such ideas were suppressed in the Soviet Union. The most famous Soviet adherent, the historian Lev Gumilev (the son of the 6 famous and persecuted poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev) spent nearly 20 years of his life in the gulag and, even after his release, his books were largely banned. Thus Soviet Eurasianism was confined to underground circles, where it mixed and mingled with most different lines of thought debated by opponents of Soviet ideology. It was in these circles that Eurasianism was discovered by Alexander Dugin – its most important contemporary adherent. Dugin began to promote the concept at the advent of perestroika and continued to do so after the demise of the Soviet Union again made ideological and existential debates both possible and necessary. Even so, in independent Russia, Eurasianism remained a fringe concept with a marginal following, mostly among the unfashionable left. But this changed in 2013 when it was suddenly rediscovered as the supposed driving force behind Putin’s Eurasian Union. In fact, it is a mistake to equate the Kremlin-driven project with the ideology of Dugin and his predecessors, let alone to see Dugin as “Putin’s brain”.1 Putin may be fond of ideas and is certainly acutely aware of the power of symbols. He is increasingly ideological and nationalist. But he has always been a practical man. For him, the Eurasian Union is a practical project that also reflects the thinking of Russia’s foreign policymaking class as a whole. The overlap between Putin’s project and the historical and theoretical Eurasianism put forward by earlier thinkers is almost accidental – except that both have their roots in Russia’s eternal need to define its place between Asia and Europe.