CC BY
44
the Mejlis.”28 It looks as if the Soviet leaders merely wanted to save face. Iran’s obvious orientation toward the United States and the intensifying Soviet-American confrontation gradually developing into a cold war deprived the Soviet Union of all its chances to gain access to Iranian oil. In August 1947, Ghavam officially rejected the oil agreement with the Soviet Union and thus fortified his position with the Americans and British. This was the tragic end of the processes that began in 1941 in Iranian Azerbaijan.
C o n c l u s i o n
The Cold War spread from Southern Azerbaijan; this is one of my main conclusions confirmed by archival documents introduced into academic circulation and a comparative analysis of academic writings. The failure of Soviet policy in Iranian Azerbaijan signified the Soviet Union’s first defeat in the Cold War.
Much has changed in Iran since that time: the Islamic revolution of 1978-1979 removed the Pahlavi regime, however the hopes that the Iranian Islamic revolution would settle the problem of the national rights of the people of Iran proved futile. This means that the acute and arduous problem of the fate of the Azeris in Iran will remain on the agenda until it is settled in a reasonable and mutually satisfactory way.
28 Kratkiy obzor sovetsko-iranskikh otnosheniy (1917-1955), Arkhiv upravlenia MID SSSR. 26.06.1956 g., RSACH, rec. gr. 5, inv. 30, f. 171, sheets 83-84.
Kenan ALLAHVERDIEV
Ph.D. (Philos.), associate professor at the Political Science and
Political Administration Department, State Administration Academy under the President of
the Azerbaijan Republic (Baku, Azerbaijan).
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND ETHNOPOLITICAL SECURITY IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Abstract
T
he author has posed himself the task of formatting the key parameters of national development and indicators
of ethnopolitical security in the post-Soviet states; he offers an in-depth analysis of several factors that bring together na-
tional development strategies and ethnop-olitical security to reveal their dependence on the globalization processes. To achieve this he scrutinized the strategic and eth-nopolitical problems created by this dependence and connected with the move-
ment of the post-Soviet states toward multivectoral development and integration into the global mosaic, on the one hand, and toward setting up a reliable shield designed to offer ethnopolitical security, on the other.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The first decade of the 21st century demonstrated that international and national security aspects have become closely intertwined; more than that: we need new flexible technologies and means of settling numerous armed and “non-military” crises.
The Caucasus and the Caspian, arenas where the interests of the international political actors clash, remain under the impact of negative dynamics of geopolitical and geostrategic threats maintained, among other things, by the failure of some members of the regional security system to adequately formulate their national interests.
This explains why today it is necessary to change the political paradigm and liberate public consciousness from the obsolete dogmas and stereotypes; this is an absolute priority for the present and the future of interstate relations and regional and national security—we need new instruments to approach the very complicated problems of the states’ domestic and foreign policies.
The sum-total of the conceptual models and strategic program documents that finally emerged across the post-Soviet expanse can be reduced, in the most natural way, to two large blocks:
■ The theoretical conceptual mechanisms of the functioning and development of the national statehood as a factor behind global and regional geopolitical and legal space. Most of the so-called new independent states were largely concerned with finding specific and unique formulas of their development to be able to join the mosaic of world development in an intrinsic and competitive way.
■ The problems connected with national security, that is, protection of the most important interests and life-supporting institutions indispensable to individuals, society, and the state. In the context of the international realities at the turn of the 21st century, the problems are obviously ethnopolitically biased.
The arguments related to the problem’s general exposition outline the sphere of specific research issues I intend to discuss in this article:
—Parameterization of the national development strategy;
—Identification of systemic criteria of ethnopolitical security;
—Bringing to light the dialectics of their interconnection.
National Development Strategy in the Rational Choice Discourse
An amazing paradox has emerged in political science and political practice: on the one hand, deliberations about the need for each contemporary nation and state to arrive at an adequate definition of its own development model have become a banality; on the other, the infinitesimally small amount
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of scientific and practical attention given the issues is hardly adequate to the problem’s scope. This should not be taken to mean that academics and practicians completely ignore the problem, but today we have no more or less clear paradigms or theoretical constructs. I have written above that so far the deliberations about national development use, in the absence of a clear and generally accepted catego-rial apparatus, more or less general terms when talking about the national development strategy,1 concepts, and programs (projects) of national development,2 etc. Adil Toygonbaev, head of the Expert Center for National Strategy (Kazakhstan), has identified four poles of national development: cultural, political, national expertise, and high-quality education and science.3
The national development category can be given widely differing interpretations when discussed in different aspects:
■ Subjects of realization (ethnonational, ethnocratic, national-state, civil-political, etc.);
■ Spheres of realization (economic, housing, cultural, demographic, information technologies, etc.);
■ Terms of realization (short-, mid- and long-term);
■ Program stages (idea, conception, project, model, strategy, etc.);
■ Scopes (state, macro-regional, regional, public, etc.);
■ Cores of interests underlying national development and promoting it (geopolitical priorities, military-strategic aims, so-called national ideas, historical past, ethnopolitical imperatives, etc.).
More or less close scrutiny of the above generalizations reveals that, for example, the U.S. national strategy is officially identified as the art and science of development and use of the armed forces and the country’s political, economic, psychological and other potential to achieve the national goals in war and peace. The two levels of American strategy—the national security strategy and the national military strategy—are hierarchically subordinated to the American national strategy.4 In this case the national strategy, in fact, identifies the aims and mechanisms of national development. France, a classical European country, stresses different aspects in the form of the National Sustainable Development Strategy.5
China, a power that is gaining economic and geopolitical weight, offers a somewhat different official interpretation of the meaning of national development. “ The National Development Strategy is the heart of Deng Xiaoping’s theory that rests on two cornerstones: the theory of socialism of the early period and the socialist market economy. Put in a nutshell this means that in the long-term perspective the Chinese want to see their country a modern, prospering, strong, democratic, and civilized socialist state. The road toward this is divided into three stages. At the first stage (1981-1990) the GNP was to be doubled and the problems of foodstuff and clothing for the entire population resolved. At the second stage (1991-2000) the GNP was to reach the figure of $1 trillion with per capita incomes between $800 and $1,000, which would bring China to the ‘relative prosperity stage.’ At the third stage (2001-2050) China should reach the level of the developed countries and realize the main
1 For example, the National Development Strategy of Moldova for 2008-2011 approved in January 2008 is the main domestic document of strategic planning for the mid-term perspective. It has identified the priority development trends and the steps leading to the final aim.
2 It is enough to mention here the widely promoted national projects of the RF in health protection, education, affordable housing, etc.
3 See: A. Toygonbaev, “Chetyre poliusa natsional’nogo razvitia,” available at [http://www.dialog.kz/
?lan=ru&id=93&pub=303].
4 See: O. Sultanov, Evoliutsia voenno-strategicheskoy kontseptsii SShA (1945-1997), Baku, 2000, p. 4.
5 Service des Affaires Internationales EU sustainable development networking event (14-15 July, 2005, Windsor, U.K.), available at [www.developpementdurable.gouv.fr].
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modernization aims.”6 As distinct from the American analogies the Chinese strategic theories are absolutely free from elements of aggression, they stem from the country’s national interests: sovereignty, security, economic development, international status, and dignity (it seems that China is the only country concerned with the latter as one of its national priorities).
Japan, China’s close neighbor, is concerned with a philosophy of its future based on an interpretation of not only Japanese history and traditions, but also on the history of the whole of mankind. Success will make Japan the world leader of the 21st century. Indeed, full understanding of the 21st century requires never-failing attention to the changing situation and complete understanding of the laws of these changes concentrated in the zones of globalization, technical innovation, the cultivation of individual abilities, spiritual revival, and the development of the global multipolar structure.7
In most post-Soviet states the national development concept blended, under the impact of the numerous complications of the transition period and frozen ethnopolitical conflicts, with the socioeconomic reforms carried out mainly in these countries, on the one hand, and with security problems, on the other. The former trend is amply illustrated by the national strategies of the Central Asian countries. As national action plans they identify the priorities as well as the mid- and longterm goals of their socioeconomic development. Such are the Development Strategy of Kazakhstan until 2030, the Strategy of Turkmenistan’s Economic, Political and Cultural Development until 2020, etc.8
The second trend is present in the Caucasus. The main program document of Armenia approved in 2007 says: “The National Security Strategy of the Republic of Armenia is a system that ensures sustainable development and security of the state, society, and every individual as well as state policy designed to preserve Armenian specifics.”9 Georgia’s recent documents, the National Security Strategy and the National Military Strategy until 2010 based on it, look at the development philosophy through the prism of security.
Russian politicians regard the geopolitical element as the foundation of all strategies. “The state’s domestic and foreign policies, the national security conception, and the national development strategy as a whole should stem from sober assessments of the state’s real geopolitical situation. This is especially topical in Russia today.”10
The situation in Azerbaijan is somewhat different: while being concerned with security issues and restoring territorial integrity in particular the state treats high rates of economic growth, a socially oriented market economy, and all-round modernization of society as priorities. The ambitious Program of Socioeconomic Development of the Regions of the Azerbaijan Republic for 2004-2008 and other national projects are geared to these national goals.
The very concise discussion has revealed that there is any number of formulas related to the “national development” concept ranging from geopolitical and military-strategic interpretations to statements that the moral-psychological aspects of the nation’s life should be improved while so-called cultural imperialism should be rebuffed.11
I am convinced that despite the extensive use of the national development concept we still lack its categorial definition: when discussed as a system the national development concept should be found both outside the rigidly determined international balance of forces and emotional fervor that formulates the goals in conformity with a priori accepted values. We all know that the “vulgar ma-
6 O. Arin, “O vneshnepoliticheskoy strategii KNR,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, “NG-stenarii,” February 1999.
7 See: Japanese Strategy in the 21st Century, available at [stra.teg.ru].
8 [http://www.cagateway.org/ru/topics/19/71/].
9 [http://www.ra.am/?num=2007022303].
10 V.V. Zhirinovskiy, “Strategia natsional’nogo razvitia Rossii,” available at [strategijnacrazvitij.doc].
11 Cultural imperialism is imperialism that captures vast territories by subjugating conscience, way of thinking, and lifestyle (see: V.A. Rubanov, “Sredstvo zashchity mira i bezopasnosti? (Materialy ‘kruglogo stola’,” Bezopasnost Evrazii, No. 1, January-March 2001, p. 230).
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terialism” of international policy and the axiological component of national development are and will remain the inalienable features. We should bear in mind however that effective realization of the proclaimed national development aims will depend to a great extent on adequate identification of the challenges and requirements of the nation or the state, on the ability to compile a list of possible solutions and realistic assessments, and on the distribution of national resources.
It seems that the national development system would be based on a clear understanding of three factors:
■ The system as a sum-total of elements able to affect its individual elements and the milieu in which they were formed;
■ The national development concept cannot and should not be reduced to mere declarations of national goals and their hierarchical arrangement: it is necessary, first and foremost, to offer qualitative and quantitative parameterization of the present conditions and criteria;
■ The sum-total of the ways, methods, and means leading to the desired, including alternative, aims should be analyzed.
Seen from this point the national development strategy should not be regarded merely as an aggregate of politically important documents, but also as a process proceeding in stages: an assessment of reality and overripe requirements; identification of the main development trends; elaboration of program and resource backup; realization, feedback, and readjustment of the strategic course according to the results obtained. Each of the strategy stages has a certain order of steps complete with its own algorithm. At the selection stage, for example, all sorts of criteria and models can be used.12
I am convinced that today when external threats to the states’ viability are piling up we should respond with rational (rather than emotional or ideological) mobilization; the bureaucratic machine is even less suited to the purpose. We should select a scenario, mechanisms and means conducive to integration and coordination (both horizontal and vertical) of purposeful activities of the individual, society and the state.
The above suggests that the phenomenon under study can be described in the following way: the national development strategy is a policy of accumulating the country’s integral potential based on mid- and long-term prospects realized by all political actors according to the principles of mutual dependence of all development aspects, optimization of the tactics and procedures involved and in close connection with the international aims of the progress of mankind.
It seems that it is important in this context to concentrate on identifying the objective field of national development and on possible versions of its parameterization. In the most general terms a scientifically correct interpretation of national development should be based on:
—Taking into account the already existing local sustainable spheres of its realization;
—Applying indicators that describe the parameters of the key spheres by revealing the local systemic ties;
—Elaborating development trends that make it possible to describe national development as a system;
—Identifying an active link among the local spheres.
In the most general terms the parameterization of national development can be tabulated as follows.
12 In his Politics Andrew Heywood offers four key decision-making models: rational choice, empirical model (gradual progress toward the goal), organizational-bureaucratic, and ideological models (see: A. Heywood, Politologia, Russian translation, IuNITI-DANA, Moscow, 2005, pp. 489-494).
Table 1
Parameters of National Development
Key National Development Spheres Key Indicators for the National Development Spheres
Economic13 ■ Economic Growth Index ■ GDP Growth Index ■ Index of Economic Competitiveness ■ Dominant type of economic activity
Political ■ Index of Clear Structural Organization of Political Aggregation and Articulation of Interests ■ Democratization Index14 ■ Circulation of the Political Elites Index
Social ■ Social Stratification Index15 ■ Human Potential Development Index16
Cultural ■ Index of the Population's Cultural and Confessional Reference ■ Index of Traditionalism / Acceptance of Cultural Innovations ■ The dominant type of the nation's cultural and civilizational self-identification
Strategic ■ The “Failed States” Index17 ■ The Global Peace Index18 ■ Indices of vulnerability of national and regional security and international security
The above calls for clarification.
♦ First, I have deliberately left the ethnic sphere beyond the bounds of the national development parameters because its functioning as an independent sphere of social life has caused
13 The fundamental work by N. Muzaffarli (Imanov) (Reiting Azerbaidzhana v mezhdunarodnykh sravnitel’nykh issledovaniiakh, the Caucasus Publishing House, Baku, 2006) discusses various aspects of the range of economic index problems.
14 Tsentr izuchenia democraticheskogo upravlenia, available at [http://www.csdg.uiuc.edu].
15 See: L.A. Scruggs, Social stratification index: Social Stratification and Welfare Regimes for the 21st Century: Revisiting the “Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism”, Paper prepared for delivery at the 15 International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago, 30 March-1 April, 2006.
16 The Human Potential Development Index (HPDI) is used for comparative assessment of the countries’ poverty, literacy, education, average longevity, and other indices; the U.N. has been using it since 1993 in its annual human potential development reports.
17 This international index (Failed States Index) is mainly applied to states the legitimacy of which causes doubts (see: [http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2007/06/peace_index_war.html]).
18 The Global Peace Index describes the degree of peaceful disposition of countries and regions. It was elaborated by economists of the international group of peace experts of the Institute of Economics and Peace together with the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (University of Sydney, Australia). Twenty-four indicators that take account of domestic and foreign factors are used; the index was first calculated in May 2007.
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and continues to cause bitter academic disagreements. Anti-primordial approaches that deny the national-ethnic principle an independent existence and that insist that it is diffused in society’s historical specifics dominate academic writings. The interpretation of an ethnos as an “imagined community” of sorts created for purely political reasons by American Benedict Anderson19 gained popularity in the 1990s. Some academics went even further. A. Inkels and D. Levenson, for example, were convinced that “limited cognition and research technologies of today do not allow us to assert that any of the nations has a national character. In fact, the academic majority agrees that this field of scholarly quest is in a crisis.”20
♦ Second, the above composition of the national development spheres and interests is undoubtedly:
■ Conventional because it compares qualitative and quantitative parameters measured in conventional points;
■ Open because the very composition of the spheres and their indicators reflects the author’s personal approach and may look different in other theoretical and methodological approaches;
■ Systemic because each of the parameters (indices) taken separately can be represented as an integral system with subsystems and index components of its own (this is best illustrated by the indices of globalization, democratization, economic development, etc.).
♦ Third, the differentiated nature of the relations among the key national development spheres that results from the dynamic state of their components creates a variety of unique combinations of all sorts of trends (of national development as a whole and of its individual spheres).
This suggests the key conclusion: the inner nature of national development has dynamics of its own and specific forms of responding to external challenges, which explains why in the globalization era only those national development strategies have a chance that take account of society’s stability and independence factors and the country’s specific roads toward contemporary civilization.
Despite the fact that the interpretation of the national development concept depends on the theoretical and methodological viewpoints of the researchers involved and on the political priorities of any given state (not all of them adequately reflecting the nation’s true interests), this phenomenon, on the whole, is an integral expression of any specific configuration of the national-state expanses (economic, political, cultural, etc.).
It seems, therefore, that a rational approach to the national development strategy demands that the arguments should be purely pragmatic and based on historically justified and currently topical requirements and that the sets of ideologems created by others and accepted for no specific reason that might distort the ideas about the content and meaning of the national goals and disorient those who follow them should be discarded.
The Caucasian reality suggests that political regulation of the national processes conducive to a constructive and purposeful impact on national development is one of the most important and highly pertinent requirements.
19 See: B. Anderson, Imagined. Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, New York, 1992 (for more detail, see: V.V. Koroteeva, “‘Voobrazhennye,’ ‘izobretennye’ i ‘skonstruirovannye’ natsii: metafora v nauke,” Etnografichekoe obozrenie, No. 3, 1993).
20 S.V. Lurie, Istoricheskaia etnologia, Moscow, 1997, p. 48.
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Ethnopolitical Security: Systemic Criteria
Optimization of ethnic relations (search for and realization of the most favorable options of interaction in the ethnic context) is an important task of state administration for any poly-ethnic state (they are in the majority throughout the world). In the 20th century, ethnic movements began invading the political expanse; they became part and parcel of political processes, thus acquiring a new, ethnopolitical, quality. This trend cannot be checked.
D. Dragunskiy of Russia describes the ethnopolitical processes as a “process of interaction of fairly large population groups, each of which can be described by a clearly stated ethnic identity, on the one hand, and is associated with definite (real or desired) institutions of sovereignty, on the other. In this way the ethnic demands articulated by these groups become political (broader sovereignty) while political, economic, or humanitarian demands acquire ethnic hues. Their realization involves ethnic mobilization mechanisms.”21
A. Andreev, another Russian academic, has come up with an “ethnic revolution” formula, the synthesis of the dramatic developments of the late 20th century, the ethnic factor being the dominant of the political process: “An ethnic revolution is a complicated process of recurrent ethnogenesis and changed socioeconomic and cultural models that create the matrices of the ethnic communities’ reproduction. The ethnic revolution concept adds a shade of integral meaning to post-Soviet history, it explains the most paradoxical of its specifics and binds them together.”22 Western scholars (Ted Robert Curr, John Ishijama, Breuning Marijke, Paul B. Rich, and others) have written extensively on the subject.23
Interdisciplinary studies of the ethnos-politics-security triad are only just beginning;24 and they remain fragmented to a large extent: the authors seem to be more interested in the bond between the ethnic component and politics25 while others concentrate on the politics-security inter-connection.26
It should be said that the post-Soviet academic community has found itself in a situation when the basic binary “ethnos-security” opposition is studied in the regions with high conflict potential.27
21 D.V. Dragunskiy, “Etnopoliticheskie protsessy na postsovetskom prostranstve i rekonstruktsia Severnoy Evrazii,” Polis, No. 3, 1995, p. 40.
22 A. Andreev, “Etnicheskaia revoliutsia i reckonstruktsia postsovetskogo prostranstva,” ONS, No. 1, 1996.
23 For the bibliography of these and other Western authors’ writing on ethnopolitical issues see: N.V. Koksharov, Nationality. Ethnicity. Nationalism. Multiculturalism. Reference Book, St. Petersburg, 2005.
24 For more about the general state of studies of the ethnopolitical security issue, see: K.G. Allahverdiev, “Ethnopolitical Dimension of National Security and Globalization Challenges,” The Caucasus & Globalization, CA&CC Press, Sweden, Vol. 1 (5), 2007.
25 See: Etnicheskie i regional'nye konflikty v Evrazii, in three books, Book 1, Tsentral'naia Azia i Kavkaz, ed. by A. Malashenko, B. Coppieters, D. Trenin, Ves mir Publishers, Moscow, 1997; M. Esenov, “Sovremenny politicheskiy protsess v Tsentral’noy Azii. Teoretiko-metodologicheskie aspekty issledovania,” Tsentral’naia Azia, No. 2, 1998; S.E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers. A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, Curzon Press, England, 2001.
26 See: A.V. Makeev, “Politika i bezopasnost: vzaimosviaz i sootnoshenie,” Vestnik MGU, Series 18 “Sociology and Political Science,” Moscow, No. 1, 1998.
27 See: Zapadnaia Azia, Tsentral’naia Azia i Zakavkazie. Integratsia i konflikty, Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS, Moscow, 1995; Spornye granitsy na Kavkaze, ed. by B. Coppieters et al., Ves mir Publishers, Moscow, 1996; Severny Kavkaz-Zakavkazie: problemy stabil’nosti i perspektivy razvitia. Materialy mezhdunarodnoy konferentsii, Moscow, 1997; Studies of Contemporary History and Security Policy, Vol. 3, 1999, available at [http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/publ/studies/vol-ume_3/Aydin.htm]; B. Coppieters, “The Politicisation and Securitisation of Ethnicity: The Case of the Southern Caucasus,” Civil Wars, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2001, pp. 73-94; S.K. Kushkumbaev, Tsentral’naia Azia naputiakh integratsii: geopoliti-ka, etnichnost, bezopasnost, Kazakhstan Publishers, Almaty, 2002; “Etnopoliticheskie aspekty bezopasnosti v konflikt-nykh ochagakh i zonakh potentsial’noy napriazhennosti na Kavkaze i v Sibiri. Konferentsia, Krasnodar, 23-26 oktiabria
Not infrequently the results are politically biased and, to the detriment of academic objectivity, never go beyond the limits outlined by the ethnic elites.
I hope that theoretical and methodological discussions of the ethnopolitical security issue will go on. There is another fact that cannot but cause concern: practically nothing has been done so far to identify the systemic criteria of ethnopolitical security without which, strictly speaking, it is hardly possible to determine the subject range of the phenomenon under study and outline its borders. I believe that this is caused by the fact that the expanse described by the ethnopolitical security category:
—Goes far beyond the limits of mono-disciplinary studies, which makes its content slightly
vague;
—Permits more theoretical and methodological interpretations;
—Has fairly low (let us hope, only for the time being) methodological support.
To overcome at least some of the above difficulties I shall try to quantify (parameterize) ethnopolitical security based, in the most natural way, on a poly-disciplinary component that includes: ethnological monitoring (applied ethnology), formalized methods of analysis of ethnopolitical situations and processes (ethno-methodology, ethno-political studies); instruments of ethno-sociological studies, cultural anthropology, the national security theory, etc.
We have to identify those systemic blocks that, while serving as the structural basis of ethnop-olitical security, make it possible to group the key indices within them that might prove important when assessing its state. The specific set of key indices depends on the paradigm the researcher selects for himself.
It should be said in this connection that ethnopolitical security (alternative terms—security in the ethnopolitical sphere, ethnic aspects of national security, etc.) might be integral by nature, while its objective content, structures, and problem range cannot be explained within a single paradigm, approach, or principle.
For this reason it seems expedient to integrate (within the general complex approach) both the already existing theoretical lines (in political anthropology, the structuralism of Radcliffe-Brown and his school, etc.) and methods of calculation (indices, coefficients, and parameters offered by international and national research centers), as well as the factors that are not always taken into account as variables in the process of indexation and which may be of basic importance when assessing the country’s ethnopolitical security.
The table below illustrates my approach to the problem and fills, at least to a certain extent, the vacuum in this field.
Table 2
Parameters of Ethnopolitical Security
Key Spheres Key Indicators of Ethnopolitical Security
Ethnoeconomics ■ Globalization Index28 ■ Per capita GDP in the ethnic area as compared with the country's average
2003 g.,” Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, available at [http://www.intertrends.ru/three/014.htm]; “Etnopoliticheskaia bezo-pasnost Iuga Rossii v usloviakh globalizatsii. Vserossiiskaia nauchnaia konferentstia. Regional’ny tsentr ethnopo-liticheskikh issledovaniy (RTsEI) Daghestanskogo nauchnogo tsenra RAN (oktiabr 2007 goda),” available at [http:// kavkaz uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1199967.html], etc.
28 Calculations can be based on the globalization index from: [http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,4,1,127].
Table 2 (continued)
Key Spheres ■ Key Indicators of Ethnopolitical Security
■ Per capita GDP in ethnic groups as compared with the ethnic area's average
■ Economic Optimism Index29
■ Index of Transnationality30
■ Relevancy of the ethnic division of labor (in the country and ethnic area)
■ Dominant type of ethnic migration (in the ethnic area and country)
■ Strategic resources in the ethnic area
■ Strategic communications in the ethnic area
■ Siting competitive economic sectors and enterprises (in the ethnic area and country)
■ Level of employment, in percent of the able-bodied population (in the ethnic area and country)
■ Poverty level (in the ethnic area and country)
■ Human Development Index31
■ The Quality of Life Index32
Ethnogeopolitics ■ Geopolitical status of the country and ethnos
■ The country's type of ethnogeopolitical configuration: presence or absence of kindred states and ethnic territories on its borders
■ International Security Index33
■ War Index34
■ International Influence Index35
29 The Economic Optimism Index is a generalized index of the situation in the national economy calculated by the IBD/TIPP (see: “Economic Optimism Index. TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics,” available at [http:// www.tipponline.com]).
30 The Index of Transnationality is an average of the relation between the volume of foreign assets and aggregate assets, foreign sales and the total volume of sales, and the number of those employed by foreign branches of transnational corporations and the total number of employed. For the calculation methods, see: World In-vestment Report, 2006.
31 Human Development Index (HDI) (see: [http://hdr.undp.org]).
32 Can be calculated from: Politicheskiy atlas sovremennosti: Opyt mnogomernogo statisticheskogo analiza po-liticheskikh system sovremennykh gosudarstv, MGIMO-Universitet Press, Moscow, 2007.
33 iSi Index (international Security index) is a universal index of international security used to demonstrate the extent to which the international situation differs from the ideal (taken as 4,210 points calculated according to a special methodology) where security is concerned at any given moment (see: Tsentr politicheskikh issledovaniy. Rossia , available at [www.pircenter.org]).
34 American historian Q. Wright has established an interconnection between the degree of ethnocultural communication and frequency of wars (see: Q. Wright, A Study of War, Chicago, 1941).
35 See: Politicheskiy atlas sovremennosti.
Table 2 (continued)
Key Spheres Key Indicators of Ethnopolitical Security
■ Martial Potency Index36
■ Terrorism Index37
■ Membership in military-political blocs
■ Presence of “traditional” allies and enemies
■ Military bases of foreign states in the country or its neighbors
■ Ethnic Globalization Index38
■ Location of ethnos, ethnic area, contested ethnic territories in centers of world and regional geopolitical interests
Ethnopolitics ■ Statehood Index 39
■ External and Internal Threats Index40
■ Index of Procedural and Institutional Democracy41
■ The state's type of poly-ethnicity (ethnic tribalism, titular ethnos in the minority, poly-ethnicity, poly-ethnicity that tends toward ethno-domination, ethno-domination, monoethnicity)
■ Index of Ethnic Mosaic of a country (region)42
■ Share of ethnic minority (minorities) in the country's total population43
■ Ethnic area in the country's territory
■ Ethnicity Index44
■ Location of ethnic areas according to the “center-semiperiphery-periphery” pattern
36 The Ten-Point Martial Potency Index was offered by the British research associates of the Royal United Research Institute (RUSI) (see: [www.rusi.org]).
37 Elaborated by American researchers of the Center for American Progress (see: [www.americanprogress.org]).
38 From: V. Galetskiy, “Rossia v kontekste vyzovov demograficheskoy globalizatsii,” Znamia, No. 4, 2007, pp. 178-187.
39 See: Politicheskiy atlas sovremennosti.
40 Ibidem.
41 Ibidem (see also: “Index of Democracy based on another group of variables,” Tsentr izuchenia demokratichesko-go upravlenia, available at [http://www.csdg.uiuc.edu]).
42 Suggested in 1976 by B. Ekkel (see: V.V. Sazhin, “Matematicheskie medody v sovetskoy etnicheskoy ge-ografii,” Sovetskaia etnografia, No. 1, 1989, pp. 122-127).
43 See: “Minorities at Risk,” Center for International Development and Conflict Management. University of Maryland, available at [http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar].
44 The Five-Level Ethnicity Index reveals the interaction between this factor and political involvement (see: P. Lien, “Ethnicity and Political Participation: A Comparison between Asian and Mexican Americans,” Political Behavior, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1994, pp. 237- 264, 242-244, 245).
Table 2 (continued)
Key Spheres Key Indicators of Ethnopolitical Security
Type of settlement of ethnic minorities (dispersed, compact, mixed)
Index of External Status of Ethnic Area / Ethnic Minorities
Exploitation of the status of the ethnic area
(ethnic minorities) according to the “loyalty-preferences”
scale
Coefficient of ethnopolitical demands according to the “socioeconomic development-cessation” scale
Degree of internationalization of ethnopolitical conflicts
Dominant types of ethno-genetic processes (evolution and transformation; ethnic unification and division; ethnic consolidation, assimilation, interethnic integration and mixing, partition, separation and dispersion, etc.)
Autochthonous nature of the ethnoses living in the country or ethnic area
Ethnic nature of state power
Political rivalry among ethnic elites for representation in the institutional structures
Type of interaction of state power with local self-administrations in ethnic areas
Index of Ethnopolitical Activity of the Titular Ethnos, Ethnic Minorities (in the country and ethnic areas)
Level of ethnopolitical mobilization in the country and ethnic areas according to the “institutional-noninstitutional forms” scale
Ethnohistory
Critical points of ethnogenesis of the main ethnoses
Historical continuum of ethnonational statehood (emergence, format, sustainable statehood, etc.)
Historical succession coefficient (changing ethnic composition of any given territory)
Coefficient of geohistorical mobility of external and internal ethnic borders
Ethnoculture
Level of ethnic (national) awareness and self-awareness Ethnic Self-awareness Index Ethnic Isolation Index45
45 See: Etnopoliticheskaia napriazhennost v Latvii: poiski putey razreshenia konflikta, Riga, 2005, p. 60.
Table 2 (continued)
Key Spheres Key Indicators of Ethnopolitical Security
■ Index of Openness of Ethnic (National) Culture
■ International Impact of National Culture Index
■ Index of Cultural and State Nationalism46
■ Model of the use of the national language
(of titular nations, ethnic minorities, and diasporas)
■ Openness of Confessional Culture Index
■ Index of Confessional Milieu according
to the “poly-confessional-metaconfessional-monoconfes-sional” scale
Some of the above parameters have already been tested and accepted by the political and academic communities; others are still being discussed and specified, as well as some of the viewpoints stated above. The task of this article, however, was not so much to formulate a rigid combination of empirical features—I have posed myself the task of formulating a research problem and postulating a possible systemic definition of ethnopolitical security based on a qualitative and quantitative description of its most important aspects.
This approach suggests several ways an integral system (ethnopolitical security is one of them) can be divided into its components. Still, any of their combinations should fit at least three criteria:
—Direct relation to the ethnopolitical security aspects;
—Possible formalization (quantitative, qualitative, and complex) of its parameters;
—Internal correlations among the components.
This means that ethnopolitical security requires adequate selection of its indicators, on the one hand, and positive correlation (in their selected sum-total) between the major spheres and structural components, on the other.
Changed Interconnections between National Development and Ethnopolitical Security
Academic writings have extensively covered the various dimensions of human civilization’s new development stage known as globalization and offered all sorts of its interpretation: classical (political, economic, cultural, information); humanitarian (historical, human, demographic); geopolitical (military-strategic, spatial, energy), etc.47
46 Elaborated by Yandri Gua (see: V.N. Lukin, “Sovremennye strategii snizhenia riskov mezhdunarodnogo terror-izma: kitayskiy kul’turny natsionalizm,” available at [http://www.orenburg.ru/culture/credo/02_2006/luk.html]).
47 See: A.I. Utkin, Globalizatsia: protsess i osmyslenie, Logos Publishers, Moscow, 2000; I. Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Russian translation was published in St. Petersburg in 2001 by the Universitet-skaia kniga Publishers); Grani globalizatsii: trudnye voprosy sovremennogo razvitia, Alpina Publishers, Moscow,
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Those scholarly writings that offer differentiation of the development of nation-states and describe a much more pronounced ethnic nature of politics and security in various regions of the world look much more promising in the context of the present article.48 For example, a group of American authors in their collective effort Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization has analyzed the “globalization-territory-conflict” triad49 to convincingly refute the globalization myths about the “end of history,”50 “end of geography,”51 etc.
Indeed, today all deliberations about the multisided and contradictory nature of the unfolding globalization processes have become a banality. It is growing clearer that today we need quantitative and qualitative analysis of globalization and its decomposition as a system for identifying its levels and interacting subsystems. In this way globalization can be described as a geohistorical process that encompasses, to varying degrees, all sides of public life and all regions of the world; it supplies them with varying development impulses and vectors depending on their “qualitative” state.
A simple verification of the interaction between the national development strategic aims discussed above and ethnopolitical security is one of the obvious truths. A scholarly approach to the problem calls for formulation of the questions related to the structural and factor dilemmas of interconnection.
The “formulation of aims-subsidiary” dilemma: are the national development aims and related strategies fundamental determinants of the transformation of ethnopolitical aspects in the security sphere, or vice versa, do the latter determine the strategic priorities and institutional design of the country’s national developments?
The dilemma of “lineal-discrete” interaction: is it of a direct lineal nature when any changes of individual parameters (ethnopolitical security, for example) cause inevitable transformations in corresponding national development indicators, or vice versa, is it of an indirect and discrete nature? This suggests that there is a functional “meta-field” of indicators in which the original impulses of ethnopolitical security are first accumulated to be sublimated into a qualitatively new impulse and only then are projected onto national development. In other words, will the skyrocketing “bread” prices (a development indicator) turn out to be the last straw before a revolutionary storm (indicator of security) bursts out? Those who write forecasts sometimes predict precisely this.
The “space-time” dilemma: which of the parts of this opposition of external factors that affects the systemic “national development-ethnopolitical security” interconnection is the dominant one: the specifics of a particular socio-natural expanse (so-called regional specifics) or the key development trends of the present historical continuum (so-called demands of time)?
I shall do my best to provide consistent answers to these questions. I should say, first of all, that any strategic activity realized, as a rule, within national limits rests on a hierarchy of aims. In a polyethnic state (most states are poly-ethnic) the hierarchy of aims should be inevitably correlated with the priority of either ethnic (social-group) or national (state, civil-political) principles of public life.
2003; V.I. Pantin, Tsikly i volny global'noy istorii. Globalizatsia v istoricheskom izmerenii, Moscow, 2003; D. Held et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 8.
48 The scope of writings on the issue is impressive. I shall limit myself to the most interesting of them: J. Eyvazov, “From the Traditional to Postindustrial State: Geopolitics and Security in the Globalization Era,” The Caucasus & Globalization, Vol. 1 (4), 2007; V.A. Achkasov, S.A. Babaev, “Mobilizovannaia etnichnost”: etnicheskoe izmerenie po-liticheskoy kul'tury sovremennoy Rossii, St. Petersburg, 2000; V.S. Malakhov, Gosudarstvo v usloviakh globalizatsii, KDU, Moscow, 2007; V.K. Levashov, “Globalizatsia i sotsial’naia bezopasnost,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovania, No. 3, 2002, pp. 19-28; Is there a future for the nation-state in an era of globalisation? If so, what future? (see: [http:// www.shaneland.co.uk/academic/ma/globalisationessay1.pdf]).
49 Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, ed. by Miles Kahler and Barbara F. Walter, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006.
50 F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, 1992 (Russian translation appeared in Moscow in 2004).
51 R. O’Brien, Global Financial Integration. The End of Geography, London, 1992.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Those who tend toward the national principle argue that “ethnicity is depoliticized; the nation should be co-civilian, that is, exist in a political rather than cultural community of citizens.”52 Their opponents, on the other hand, insist on the principle of ethnicity because “even if the equal status of peoples and ethnic groups that live together in a poly-ethnic state is formally realized the ‘rule of the majority’ model inevitably includes certain parameters of ethnic competition and results, in a systemic way, in their hierarchy registered at the level of legal decisions and norms.”53
It is too early to bury ethnicity, however we should admit that after its outburst at the turn of the 21st century instrumentalization of the ethnic factor gradually moved away to give way to the national-civilian legitimization of the social order that acquired political normative values. This trend will probably continue since the process relies, in principle, on the same substance that underlies ethnic activities, viz. the discrepancy between ethnic areas and political affiliations. This provided an answer to the “formulation of aims-subsidiary” dilemma: in future common national (state) aims will acquire clearer definitions.
Hence a logical question: what is behind the reverse movement from ethnic nationalism to state nationalism? Some authors explain this by the globalization factor since “in certain cultures the globalization processes stir up nationalist responses.”54 Others (H. Kohn, L. Greenfeld, R. Brubaker, A. Smith, and others) distinguish between “ethnic” and “civilian” “nationalisms” in the globalization framework.55 Benedict Anderson goes even further when he describes “long-distance nationalism,” that is, nationalism that no longer associates with living in one’s home country as one of the globalization effects.56
While agreeing on the whole that globalization was a powerful catalyst for the ethnosocial and ethnopolitical processes, I am convinced that it is not merely a mega trend of the contemporary world in which the local has no borders while the global has no location,57 but also a mechanism-sphere of self-structuring of the new social universum and the outline of a new civilization predicted by any number of authors.
The universal socially homogenous forms emerging under the impact of globalization are promoting a rapid increase in the number of very specific niches (points of bifurcation). They are completely transforming the definiteness of values, trends, and society of the past into the qualitative indefinitenesses of the present day. The ambiguous nature of the processes that are taking place in this mechanism-sphere, the vagueness of the notions used to describe it, and, on the whole, the obscurity of the globalization-born challenges and answers cannot bury the main thing: a new civ-ilizational standard is rapidly coming into being complete with evolutionary trends and measurement parameters.
The “space-time” dilemma perfectly fits the above: indeed the “national development-ethnopo-litical security” formula can be successfully conceptualized if spatial and temporal factors are taken into account. Which of these factors is the key one is still being discussed.
At the same time, the entire natural-historical course of human development testifies to the gradual weakening of the natural factor (territorial localization that determines, to a great extent, the
52 From V. Achkasov’s contribution to the round table “Etnopoliticheskie problemy v sovremennoy Rossii. 26 oktiab-ria 2005g.,” POLITEX journal, available at [www.politex.info].
53 T.B. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, “Etnichnost, kollectivnaia identichnost i polozhenie etnomen’shinstv v smeshannykh soobshchestvakh,” in: Prava cheloveka i problemy identichnosti v Rossii i sovremennom mire, ed. by O.Iu. Malinova, A.Iu. Sungurov, Norma Publishers, St. Petersburg, 2005, pp. 203-214.
54 E.D. Panarin, N.S. Mukhametshina, Natsional'nye problemy na postsovetskoy territorii. Uchebnoe posobie, St. Petersburg, 2001, pp. 51-52.
55 For an analysis of the views of these and other authors, see: V. Koroteeva, “Sushchestvuiut li obshchepriznannye istiny o natsionalizme,” Pro et Contra, No. 2 (3), 1997.
56 See: B. Anderson, “Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism: Is There a Difference that Matters,” New Left Review, Vol. 9, 2001, pp. 31-42.
57 See: U. Beck, What is Globalization?, Cambridge, Polity Press. 1999.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
closed nature of ethno-national societies) and to the gradually increasing importance of historical time that determines the differentiation of the ethnopolitical expanse and the inner hierarchy of its elements. It is for this reason that in the mutual translation of the “national development-ethnopoliti-cal security” opposition the imperative of accelerating time, that is globalization, plays the role of the main actualizing factor.
By way of summing up the above let me stress the integral parameters of the dichotomy under study. It seems that the four following parameters can serve as points of bifurcation of globalization, at which the dialectical mutual transitions of national development and ethnopolitical security of the contemporary states take place.
Universalization of values. Culturologists, who have monopolized the subject, discuss it in the philosophical-culturological context because the stable cultural systems “cross the borders of social units and coincide neither with national nor state areas.”58 The fact that budding global society produces a normative-axiological ethnically mixed system of its own that results in sociopolitical reduc-tionism is frequently ignored. This creates a sort of a filter that permits purposeful selection of information, ideologies, and innovations. The “symbolic milieu” of individual segments of the globalizing world is universalized; there appears a “translator-language” of sorts used to describe the most important key priorities of national development and the security sphere.
Multivectoral development. It should be said that the various development dimensions offered by the U.N. and other international organizations in their documents include the thesis of social pluralism as an obligatory component. One can go as far as saying that Western political science rests on the conceptual “plurality” foundation: multi-component societies, pluralist democracy, pluralist political system, etc.
At first glance this looks like a contradiction: the idea of plurality is being made to fit the ideology of unitarianism of the globalizing world. There is no contradiction here: the higher the social plurality level the richer the social life and, consequently, the wider the aspects of its development. The higher the multivectoral index of national development the wider the social involvement in the globalization processes. In other words, by unifying the large structural blocks of the contemporary world globalization intensifies their inner differentiation. In economics this phenomenon is known as the Naisbitt paradox.59
In this context the following descriptions of multivectoral development can be presented as the main ones:
—Optimization of the balance of aims proclaimed by different social segments;
—The diffuse nature of short-, mid- and long-term aims;
—The complex nature of outlining the aims and the resources used to promote development.
There is another, at first glance, unrelated aspect of the same issue. I have in mind the fairly widely accepted opinion that a mono-ethnic milieu is the best for the development of the state and the nation. I am convinced that artificial mono-ethnicity, which at first glance improves national security, launches numerous negative processes: increased authoritarianism and ethnic isolation, wider ethno-social gaps, closed societies, defective democracy, etc., which in the final analysis deprives the development and security concepts of any meaning. This means that the efforts of certain key international
58 N. Danilevskiy, for example, called them “cultural-historical types,” A. Toynbee, “local civilizations,” O. Speng-ler, “high cultures,” P. Sorokin, “cultural supersystems,” A. Kroeber, “models of culture based on the highest values” (see: I.D. Kalandria, “Sistema obshchechelovecheskikh tsennostey v dinamike i dialoge tsivilizatsiy v usloviiakh globali-zatsii,” in: Chelovek: sootnoshenie natsional'nogo i obshchelovecheskogo. Sb. materialov mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma [Zugdidi, Gruzia, 19-20 maia 2004 g.], Issue 2, ed by V.V. Partsvania, St. Petersburg, 2004, p. 114).
59 See: J. Naisbitt, Global Paradox: The Bigger the World Economy the More Powerful its Smallest Players, Morrow, New York, 1994.
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actors to promote the monoethnicity policy of certain small countries can hardly be described as constructive and conducive to a stable global world order.
The universal nature of security. I tend to regard it as one of the most important integral indicators relating to both national development and national security. I have already mentioned the security indices described in academic writings; they, however, are mostly used to determine the level of threats to international security. In the context of globalization the universal nature of security can be expressed by:
—Removing everything that divides strategic (global), regional, and national security and different security types;
—Creating a new philosophy of security based on a clear understanding of the mutual interdependence of all aspects of security rather than on the “own defense” conception;
—Changing the nature of security caused by the changing correlation between the military and non-military, direct and indirect threats, etc.
I believe that these globalization parameters include not only the doctrines of national development and ethnopolitical security, but also a wide range of obvious and latent problems of their interconnection. The latter is of special importance since national development and ethnopolitical security are not unidirectional. Traditionally, security as a whole is explained as protection of the current interests, institutions, values, territories and nation identities against numerous threats, while contemporary national development best illustrated by the post-Soviet states has changes, modernization, and integration of the same security attributes as its aim.60
Political science and political practice traditionally derive the priorities of ethnopolitical and national security from the state’s and nation’s (ethnos) vital interests. Globalization has changed the system of reckoning by introducing the human dimension into it. As distinct from the security sphere national development is humanist-oriented from the very beginning. Under the globalization imperatives the state strategy of realization of national aims turns out to be dependent on the possibilities and wills of other entities of the global community. The multivariable dimension of the national development strategy and ethnopolitical security phenomenon is open to criticism since their quantitative descriptions (where they are possible at all) provide a mass of empirical data, but do not explain their interaction.
This raises several questions. Does systemic modernization of society aimed at a higher democratization index strengthen or undermine ethnopolitical security? We all know that one of the reasons why the Soviet Union fell apart was the policy of synchronized political and economic reforms launched in the latter half of the 1980s that increased ethnopolitical tension. Does the political stability index describe the political regime as democratic or authoritarian or the state of ethnopolitical tolerance in the country? To what extent and in which forms can the dynamics of the circulation of the political elites index affect realization of the national development aims?
These questions are more confirmation of the need to study and create integral indices to reflect both positive and negative correlations among the parameters of national development and ethnopolitical security, especially when they cross certain threshold values.
C o n c l u s i o n
I have not posed myself the task of offering a fundamental and comprehensive investigation of the issues discussed in the article. I was guided by much more modest aims: to demonstrate that the
60 The philosophical approach to the nature of security is best presented in N.N. Rybalkin, “Priroda bezopasnosti,” VestnikMoskovskogo universiteta, Series 7, “Philosophy,” No. 5, 2003, pp. 36-52; idem, Filosofia bezopasnosti, MPSI/ Bagira-2, Moscow, 2006.
global changes going on in the world, especially in the post-Soviet states, call for new systemic indices to generalize different sides of the same problem in order to use them for a comparative analysis of countries and regions.
The problems of the national development strategy and ethnic security discussed in this article have been theoretically substantiated in academic writings, but have not yet been used in practice. This explains why my understanding of the interconnection between the national development strategy and ethnopolitical security was aimed at revealing the ambiguous and multivariable nature of their dialectics in order to receive clearer answers to the globalization challenges.
Nana GEGELASHVILI
Ph.D. (Political Science), head, Section on Regional Problems, The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia).
THE IRANIAN PROBLEM AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE RUSSIA-U.S. RELATIONS AGGRAVATION
Abstract
The article gives an analysis on the Iranian problem from Russian and American perspectives with an emphasis on possible areas of cooperation and confrontation as well as their stance on the Iranian problem as a whole. The author points out the two states have an important legacy of
preventing proliferation of which they should be proud. It is a legacy that should be revived and focused on the core proliferation threats in Iran and elsewhere before the nuclear confrontation of the Cold War is replaced by a broader nuclear competition the two states will not find as easy to control.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The author notes that even in the depths of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union often worked together to halt the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries. Now, both countries realize that Iran’s nuclear program is more advanced than supposed before and may be aimed directly at creating nuclear weapons in the next few years. The article says that the current political line has nothing to slow Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, so new approaches and better coordination are urgently required before it is too late.
