Putin's Wars (15 page)

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.

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 former 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.

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]

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 between 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]