IMPLICATIONS OF THE ARAB SPRING IN EURASIA
From its inception, the Arab spring has had an international cast as revolutions in one country have inspired subsequent revolutions across the Middle East. Consequently there has been much speculation as to whether this inspiration or example could carry over to post-Soviet Eurasia. Clearly the possibility of such a diffusion or inspiration has profoundly frightened leaders in Russia and Eurasia. A mixture of repression and economic concessions imply that leaders in Russia, Belarus and Central Asia have sought to forestall the possibility of aroused public protests. However, these facts hardly exhaust the international implications of the Arab Spring for Eurasia.
BACKGROUND: Eurasian responses to the Arab spring include actions to create new paramilitary forces in Russia, new restrictions on electronic and other media throughout Eurasia, and sudden raises in wages and pensions in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. However, the escalation of protest into civil war and foreign intervention (real or potential) in Libya and, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen also carries other potential warnings to Eurasian states. The first is the possibility of foreign intervention, as in NATO’s Libya operation. The second is the possibility of an intervention for counterrevolutionary purposes. We may see this in the CSTO’s recent decision to contemplate intervention in its members’ domestic affairs and devise a common internet policy to suppress electronic media, and in Russia’s decision to send warships to Syria waters to deter a supposed NATO intervention. The third is the possibility of direct foreign intervention to incite a revolution to obtain a desired political outcome or unseat a “hostile” government.
We see the possibility for all three of these forms of foreign intervention in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and even the European CIS. Russia massively intervened, albeit unsuccessfully, in Ukraine’s 2004 election to secure Viktor Yanukovych’s victory. Likewise, it clearly incited and helped foment the Kyrgyz revolution of 2010 to unseat the Bakiyev government. Thus the precedent has been set. Neither is Moscow “resting on its laurels.” It is clearly the leading actor in the CSTO and the main force behind the organization’s decision to prepare plans for domestic intervention in threatened regimes as well as a common policy to suppress electronic media in member states. This last point has led to strong Uzbek opposition, as Uzbekistan’s government suspects a pretext for intervention and an attempt to use the CSTO precisely to intervene in the domestic affairs of its member states. Nothing arouses Uzbek opposition more than Russia’s efforts to play its traditional role of the gendarme of Eurasia or Central Asia, especially as Tashkent already harbors the gravest suspicions of Moscow’s intentions.
IMPLICATIONS: Given past events in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, not to mention the Russo-Georgian war, such suspicions are well founded. Moreover, Russia continues to justify them and thus highlights the potentially negative implications of the Arab spring in Central Asia. On November 15, 2011, Vice-Speaker of the Russian Duma and head of the Russian Gas Society Valery Yazev warned Turkmenistan that if it continues to pursue a multi-directional foreign policy, and in particular sends gas to the Nabucco pipeline, it will soon experience the danger of a revolution. Therefore it should understand the negative implications for its government of the UN resolution on Libya and NATO’s aerial operation there and realize that “only the principled positions of Russia and China in the UN Security Council and its involvement in regional international organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union, can protect it from similar revolutions.” In other words: unless Turkmenistan renounces Nabucco, joins the SCO, CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union, Russia will incite a revolution there that will lead to the overthrow of the regime and a hostile NATO or Russian military operation. In plain English, this is overt blackmail and intimidation. Unfortunately such policies are the stock in trade of Russian foreign policy.
This is not the only example of regimes being threatened with revolution incited from abroad. The religious opposition in Azerbaijan to the regime’s laicizing policies, e.g. restrictions on wearing the Hijab, clearly have connections to Iran. Whatever its domestic merits and origins, leaders of the religious opposition have already indicated their ambition to unseat the government with Iranian support. Baku has warned Tehran about this and has now cracked down at home by imposing stiff controls on religious activity to limit Iran’s ability to interfere in Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs. This crackdown has naturally aroused both domestic and foreign opposition to its restrictions on the freedoms of speech, religion, and possibly assembly, however failing to deter the Azerbaijani government.
Similarly restrictive anti-religious policies directed against Iran have been implemented in Tajikistan and directed against Islamic terrorists in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This is testimony to the anxiety of local governments about religion and political protest coming together in a local version of the Arab spring. But in Azerbaijan’s case they also demonstrate the potential for foreign, i.e. Iranian, incitement of domestic upheavals and the regime’s determination to squelch that possibility.
It is impossible to overlook the possibility of the deliberate incitement of revolutions in Eurasia in the wake of the Arab spring. The precedents for such acts already exist. Moreover, as the use of the CSTO and Libya’s example suggest, such actions are fraught with the danger of international intervention and civil war as appears to be developing in Syria. The governments involved, especially Russia, take these potentialities with the utmost seriousness. Indeed, in October 2011, Russian Chief of the General Staff General Nikolai Makarov told the army that the events in North Africa and the Middle East were so unpredictable and rapid in their development that nobody could foretell their future impact upon states. Therefore the army must be prepared for a Libyan or similar scenario.
On November 17, 2011, General Makarov stated that local conflicts are rising all over the former Soviet perimeter due to the disintegration of the USSR and that, “Under certain circumstances local and regional conflicts might escalate into an all-out war, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear arms ... We have it all in the doctrine, all the circumstances when the use of nuclear weapons is warranted.” This is by no means a new position, as his predecessor General Yuri Baluyevsky said in 2005 that while Russia faced no direct threat of aggression, “[given] the existence of nuclear weapons, any localized armed conflict – let alone a regional conflict – could lead the international community to the brink of a global war.” As the war in Libya seemed protracted and fratricidal, Russia feared that it could become an anti-western or “civilizational” Middle East conflict. Alternatively, before the capture of Tripoli, pundits feared that the upheavals could become a multi-theater civil war or even evolve into a new Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Iran might play a role. If a revolution breaks out in Eurasia and leads to civil war, that could trigger a comparable set of contingencies, possibly involving Russia, Iran, China, or other powers in a prolonged and possibly major war. We neglect this possibility at our own peril, so it must be faced in analytical and policy considerations.
CONCLUSIONS: The foregoing analysis is admittedly a contingent one. These things have not yet happened in Eurasia. But they could come to pass with unforeseen rapidity and engulf not just the states where a revolution occurs but also neighbors, the great powers, and international security organizations like the UN, NATO, SCO, and the CSTO. While no such events have yet occurred, the warnings given to Turkmenistan, Iran’s meddling in Azerbaijan, and the new functions or missions of the CSTO all show a readiness to entertain the possibility of using revolutions along Arab lines as a deliberate instrument of statecraft or to think in terms of a counter-revolutionary intervention by force majeure against them. As these issues are now on the agenda, analysts and political actors alike must confront them as they show how Central Asia and Eurasia as a whole could become engulfed in crises. However, they also show just how desperate Russia is to retain its hegemony over Eurasia and to what lengths it is prepared to threaten anyone seeking to fight that neo-imperial drive. The Taliban are certainly not the only threat to international security in Eurasia. But it would be more than an irony of history if the self-proclaimed gendarme of Eurasia actually becomes the moving spirit of the revolutionary and interventionist wave there.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Stephen Blank is Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute
U.S. Army War College. The views expressed here do not represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department, or the U.S. Government.
