Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 4 | Eurasia A New World Order? page 2

From Independence to Integration
Besides, who would take them? The United States and Europe were busy in the Balkans, in Somalia, in the Persian Gulf. The United States famously declared its lack of interest through Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who rejected the atavistic “Great Game” approach to the region, suggesting that it become instead free of great powers. The “Great Game,” of course, referred to the term pioneered by Rudyard Kipling in his 1901 book Kim and used for generations to describe the struggle for influence in the heart of Eurasia between the British and the Russian empires in the 19th century.³

Would Europe embrace the new Eurasia? Not knowing how to handle Turkey’s European aspirations and saddled with the prospect of new members in Eastern Europe, whose Europeanness was a matter of fact, not political correctness or bureaucratic convenience, it certainly was not interested in casting its membership nets even farther afield.

Russia, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, began to talk about gathering its old possessions in an exclusive sphere of influence—a Russian Monroe Doctrine put forth by some Russian politicians and analysts—but was neither welcome as a big brother nor capable of playing the role of the regional hegemon. Its economy was in a free fall, its military went hungry, homeless and unpaid, its politics was chaotic and unpredictable.

For the states of Cen-tral Asia comprising the biggest slice of the new Eurasia, there was also the challenge of defining their relations with China—the rising giant, whose intentions were unclear. Caution would be the by-word in their dealings with China.

For China, too, the emergence of five newly independent states at its doorstep was a development to be viewed with caution. Its own Sinjiang province with its Muslim minorities bordering on ex-Soviet Central Asia was a source of headaches for Beijing as it sought to balance economic growth with political stability. Russia’s loss of control across the border in Central Asia and the prospect of instability there was therefore troubling for China’s leaders who didn’t seem to be looking for new commitments in the restive region. Anything that would preserve the status quo in the region and keep its troubles contained would serve their interests just fine for the time being.

A Difficult Divorce
The status quo in the meantime was not to be taken for granted. The new Eurasia’s economies were in a free fall. The breakup of the Soviet Union disrupted the arcane economic links created in the course of more than half a century of Soviet central planning. From raw materials to spare parts, factories all over the former Soviet states had come to rely on supplies from trading partners that were now not only thousands of miles, but also several international boundaries away. Russia—the biggest link in this chain—shared the plight of its former possessions. And, as if the trauma of economic disruption caused by the Soviet breakup was not enough, the domestic marketplace of the new Eurasia was now open to external competition rendering many goods uneconomical and noncompetitive.

Furthermore, Russia—the biggest economy and the biggest market of the old Soviet marketplace—was also the source of uncounted subsidies for its former colonies. Those subsidies paid for major industrial, infrastructure and social welfare projects in regions—now countries—that had long suffered from chronic poverty and underdevelopment. Much of that money was stolen and misspent—a record of theft and mismanagement amply documented in the Soviet press during Gorbachev’s campaign of glasnost. But with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the flow of that money ended, with little foreign aid coming in to replace it.

The financial system—or systems, rather—had to be created anew. Cur-rencies had to be created from scratch, central banks stood up, exchanges opened—all hugely important but tasks for which none of the Eurasian states, including Russia, was prepared. Russia had inherited the Soviet Union’s Central Bank and ruble currency, but its coffers were empty, the ruble was in a free fall, and for other former Soviet states, using rubles as currency meant compromising their sovereignty and their finances.

Much as they sought to free themselves from Russia and secure their independence, the states of the new Eurasia found it impossible to sever the links. The most important ones were in the area of energy and transportation. Russia—the region’s biggest oil and gas producer—continued to supply its former possessions with cut-rate hydrocarbons and electricity, thus exercising considerable leverage over them.

Russia also controlled their links to the outside world. It controlled the railroads, the pipelines and even some of the ports through which these new entrants in the global marketplace would conduct their trade.

But the dependency sometimes cut both ways and does so to the present day. Russia has had to rely on its neighbors to reach key markets. The Russian-Ukrainian relationship is the most notorious in this regard, for Russia relies on pipelines through Ukraine to reach markets in Europe. In 2004, for instance, Russia relied on Ukrainian infrastructure for the transit of 78 percent of its total natural gas exports.⁴

Central Asia, too, has come into this picture, especially of late. Ukraine has sought to wean itself from Russian gas by cultivating Central Asian suppliers. But Russia controls Central Asia’s gas exports by virtue of its control of the pipelines. Moreover, with doubts arising about Russia’s ability to sustain gas production to satisfy domestic demand and maintain an ambitious export program, speculation is growing that Russia will soon need Central Asian gas more than its Gasprom gas monopoly is willing to admit.⁵ Recent reports of reduced Russian gas deliveries to Europe amid severe cold weather in Russia are certain to fuel further speculation about the reliability of Russian gas supply and the need for Central Asian gas. Winter cold is hardly a new phenomenon in Russia, yet Gasprom admitted in January 2006 that it was unable to meet the needs of its customers in Poland, Hungary and Italy because of domestic commitments.⁶

Next page: The U.S. was perceived throughout the new Eurasia as not merely supporting, but encour aging the ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia, the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine and the ‘Tulip Revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan.

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³ Strobe Talbott, “A Farewell to Flashman: American Policy in the Caucasus and Central Asia,” U.S. Department of State Dispatch 8, no. 6 (July 1997), http://www.treemedia.com/cfrlibrary/library/policy/talbott.html

⁴ United States Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Ukraine Country Analysis Brief,” January 2005, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/ukraine.html.

⁵ Tatiana Yegorova, “Strane ne hvataet gaza [The country lacks gas],” Vedomosti, no. 7 (1534), 19 January 2006.

⁶ Jeffrey Stinson, Russian Gas Deliveries Fall Short, USA TODAY, January 26, 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-01-24-gas-usat_x.htm.