Identity in a Great Power Called Russia

1. Identity in a Great Power Called Russia Tapani Kaakkuriniemi Helsinki Summer School 8 August 2008

2. Doctrines and foreign policy • Military doctrine, 2000 • Concept of foreign policy, 2000 • Concept of national security, 2000 • Naval doctrine up to the year 2020, 2001 • Ecological doctrine, 2002 • Concept of the development of healt care up to the year 2020 (in the process) • Concept of demographic policy, 2007

3. National interest & security • Soviet system: excessive securitization • Russian Fed.: desecuritization? • Soft security: human rights, dignity and welfare of the individual citizen • Now: security ≈ empire → more securitization • Primakov 1998: ”to strengthen the foreign ministry’s efforts to protect Russian national interests, i.e. being a great power and having a policy reflecting that status”

4. Security challenges • Russia could not prevent NATO’s enlargement nor NATO’s 1999 air war punishing Serbia for its brutality in Kosovo and elsewhere in ex-Yugoslavia • Russian population in ex-Soviet republics: Estonia, (Latvia), Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Transdnistria/Приднестровье • Security interests in border areas: Chechnya, Ossetia (South/North), Abkhasia

5. Military might • Problems of the army: substantial re-equipment, modernization of the principles for manning the army • Colonel-General (2003): 56 % of officers are living below the poverty line • An increasing proportion of the weapons systems are out-of-date or will soon be so • Shortages of fuel, spare parts, lubricants and ammunition: no excercise

6. Military might #2 • In 2007, Ground forces: an estimated total 395.000 including ca. 190.000 conscripts • In 1995–96: estimated 670.000 including 210.000 conscripts • Problems of the in-barracks discipline: according to Min. Ivanov, 531 men had died on duty in accidents and crimes in 2002, and 20.000 had been wounded

7. Ground & Coastal Defence Forces of the Baltic Fleet Leningrad Military District ……. Moscow Military District ……… 20th Army ……………………… North Caucasus Military District Trans-Caucasus Group of Forces Volga-Ural Military District …… Siberian Military District ……… Far East Military District ……… HQ Kaliningrad HQ St. Petersburg HQ Moscow Voronež HQ Rostov-na-Donu Tbilisi HQ Yekaterinburg HQ Chita Khabarovsk Military districts

8. Russian Federation

9. Economic security • External debt has diminished drastically. • Exchange rate is stable. • Registered unemployment decreasing. • Ecological problems grow in importance. • Fuel and energy sector is the main source of environmental degradation: 70 % of total greenhouse gas emissions • Deterioration of health: 60 million people live in environmentally hazardous conditions

10. Economic security • Demography, health and economy: • Quality & qualification of labour force • Aging & diminishing population Population of Russia: projection Year Population (million) 2008 140,7 (est.) 2010 138 2015 134

11. Geopolitical view to security • Nikita Lomagin: 1999-2002 remarkable shift from traditional realist/liberal think-ing to a broader understanding of security • The National Security Concept (2000) http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/doctrine/gazeta012400.htm • Foreign Policy Concept (1999/2000) http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/doctrine/econcept.htm • Responsibility of international security, commitment to create a new world order

12. CIS and Russia • CIS: weak organ for integration • Multi-level cooperation: councils of… • heads of states, governments, foreign ministries, defence ministries, joint armed forces, commanders of border troops • Inter-governmental economic council + bank-financial council • Russia: problematic status of Big Brother

13. CIS and its alternatives • Treaty Organization on Collective Security • Eurasian Economic Community (BY, KAZ, KYR, RUS, TAJ, UZ • Central Asian Community (KAZ, KYR, UZ, TAJ, RUS) • Shanghai Organization of Cooperation (KAZ, KYR, RUS, TAJ, UZ, CN) • Unified Economic Area (BY, KAZ, RUS, UA) • Federal Union of Russia and Belarus

14. Russia as an island, #1/10 • The model of Vadim Cymburski is an alternative version to Mackinder’s 1904 vision of Eurasian geopolitics understood as a competition between Heartland and Rimland. • Heartland: unconquerable land power in the central and northern parts of the landmass • Rimland: maritime powers at the coastal edges of the Eurasian landmass

15. Russia as an island, #2/10 • Crucial conception for Cymburski: hard nucleus of the continent, i.e. Island Russia, a metaphysical model of the centre of the Russian polity • Abandoning the Eurasianist models from the 1920s, C. claims that there are three characteristics that describe Russia as a geopolitical object: • 1) it is the whole geopolitical niche of the Russian ethnos, located east of the "Roman-Germanic ethno-civilizatory platform" without having a relationship with it.

16. Russia as an island, #3/10 • 2) the width of the areas in the east that are extremely difficult to conquer. This is why he abandons the Mackinderian model, too. • 3) Russia is bounded in the west by the Roman-German Europe, to the "homeland of liberal civilization, to the belt of the nations and regions that are connected to the Europe proper but do not belong to it". This intermediate region Cymburskij calls "strait territories", despite of their continental location.

17. Russia as an island, #4/10 • By this statement, C. emphasizes that the Russian world does not fall into western categories, but is large and vital enough to form a category by itself, and thus act as a core of its own type of civilisation. • Island Russia: Russia as an ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious and historical entity • Island Russia is a pure civilization in the Huntingtonian sense, without alien elements.

18. Russia as an island, #5/10 • Cymburskij's thought about maintaining the nucleus of Russia intact re-awakens the Slavophile ideas of the 19th century. • Its counterpart is the peripheral and amorphic limitroph, a border territory around the nucleus. • Geographically it is the periphery of Island Russia, but being outside of the nucleus, it falls under the historical influence of other civilizations.

19. Russia as an island, #6/10 • Because of Eurasian history and geography, Island Russia is actually surrounded by not only its own limitroph, but also the Great Euro-Asian Limitroph, starting in Finland in the northwest and ending in Korea in the southeast. • This belt is a miscellaneous mixture of the peripheries of all major Eurasian civilizations.

20. Russia as an island, #7/10 • From the Russian point of view, the limitropg forms a single geopolitical megasystem, with criss-crossing civilizational boundaries. Russia's central location means that it borders the Great Limitroph along its entire length. • Russia has no obligation to, say, maintain the economies of the limitroph in a good shape by preferential treatment or investments, but less costly political meddling is Russia’s natural right in the area.

21. Russia as an island, #8/10 • Island Russia necessarily is smaller than the Russian Federation, because the latter contains many ethnoses, which are not Russian. • They nevertheless are within the jurisdiction of the Russian state, and thus competition against other centres is easiest there, but at the same time the political necessity to control and “civilize” these non-Russian elements and keep them within the Federation is very strong.

22. Russia as an island, #9/10 • The Near Abroad: The former Soviet sphere of influence forms the inner core of the Great Euro-Asian Limitroph. • This way, the belts around the nucleus can be perceived as a space available for the Island Russia. • Other civilizational elements, such as Orthodox Christianity, or the wider Slavic ethnos, also make for commonalities with the Island Russia.

23. Russia as an island, #10/10 • Does Balkan belong to the Great Limitroph of Russia or not? No, it is not, at least in geographical terms, an area in the immediate sphere of interests of Russia. • Probably the best solution suggested for the case of Balkan is the proposal of Mikhail Il'in that in many respects, Balkan should be regarded as a special item in the Great Limitroph.