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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Kenan ALLAHVERDIEV
Ph.D.(Philos.), Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Political Administration, Academy of State Administration under the President of Azerbaijan Republic
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
THE CAUCASIAN PENTAGRAM: A CURSE OR A LUCKY CHANCE?
Abstract
In this article the author identifies and analyzes the dynamics of five factors that most affect the development trends of the Caucasian region, the results of which may not
only crop up in all sorts of contexts, the protracted conflicts in the Caucasus included, but may also change the geopolitical balance and military-political configuration of the region.
KEYWORDS: The Caucasus, the Caucasian pentagram, globalizational,
geopolitical, ethnopolitical, confessional, national-strategic.
Introduction
Even the most superficial analysis of what political scientists have written about the Caucasus reveals several key narratives as starting points:
— Geopolitically and geostrategically, the Caucasus is an extremely important region;
—It can be described as a hub of the varied interests of the global and regional actors of international politics;
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—The role of numerous international mediators acting in different formats and combinations (real, declared, and potential) in settling the post-Soviet conflicts in the Caucasus is huge because:
(a) civilizationally—they prevent mutual extermination;
(b) preventively—they keep the conflicts frozen;
(c) constructively—they may encourage the conflicting sides to move closer or even push them into a semblance of peace.
It is not my task to assess these theses as realistic or mythologized. Depending on the political context, certain external and internal factors can be added to the above, viz. transformation trends of political regimes; peace initiatives; armed clashes (the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008 can serve as an example); or the threat of armed clashes (the notorious "Iranian threat"), etc.
These are short-term factors that may affect the Caucasian agenda; there are also fundamental, or long-term, factors responsible for its qualitative parameters: globalizational, geopolitical, eth-nopolitical, confessional, and national-strategic.
I have written this article with the sole purpose of analyzing these five systemic factors of Caucasian realities, which I have called, with a great degree of conventionality, the Caucasian pentagram.
The Global Dimension of the Caucasian "Political Palette"
Globalization as a movement toward stronger universal interconnections is based on communication means; national economies that are moving toward a single global economy and new international forms of infrastructure. At the same time, it stirs up varied, some of them mutually exclusive, development trends. Today, the following can be described as the hubs of contradictions:
(1) The challenges and threats (international terrorism and international crime, drug trafficking, slave trade, etc.) generated by globalization, the scope and possible repercussions of which have already neutralized or even diminished the unique development opportunities it creates.
(2) The vague relations between nation-states and quasi-states, between ethnicities and supranational integrias.
(3) The development of a unipolar world and factors of its rejection. The pillars of the emerging worldwide Anglo-Saxon hegemony are indirectly undermined by other global trends: today a meager 7% of the world population uses English as its native language, while over 20% speaks Chinese, etc.
(4) The "elitist" nature of globalization, which widens the gap between regions: unequal distribution of wealth makes rich countries richer and poor countries poorer.
This far from complete list of the globalization processes shows that they exacerbate the problems of development (North/South relations) and the problems of peace (West/East relations). It is no accident that many analysts say we are moving toward new world disorder rather than the desired New World Order.
On the strength of the above, globalization can be described as a geohistorical process that is demonstrated, with different degrees of intensity, in different aspects of social life and in different regions; depending on their "qualitative" parameters, it creates different impulses and development vectors.
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In this context, the contemporary ethnopolitical processes can be analyzed within two main components: the way globalization affects the ethnic processes proper and the forms of their political institutionalization.
The analytical community agrees that the 21st century will unfold under the aegis of two opposing trends: ethnic consolidation and ethnopolitical mobilization, on the one hand, and ethnic integration and the quest for a new form of global community, on the other. This describes the disintegration of the Soviet Union as the rejection of a historically untenable globalist model and an impulse that should have set in motion (and did set in motion) mechanisms of adaptation of the regional "development potentials" to a new globalist model.
In the Caucasus, where for a number of objective historical reasons1 the processes of nationbuilding and nation-state development, as well as ethnopolitical development on the whole have not been completed, the global trend of encouraging ethnic activism proved to be useful. The existing political-historical realities of the region set in motion specific mechanism of protection and adaptation, viz., ethno-nationalism based on the policy of ethnic domination and protection from the real or imaginary domination of other nations. At first glance, driven to extremes, this mechanism leads to its opposite: nation-state development falls into the trap of ethnocracy, national imperialism, which rejects supranational integration trends, everything that is alien, etc. Contradictions are the daily bread of the dialectics of development; globalization as a geohistorical process is manifested not as a unilineal ongoing and ascending stream, but as a sine wave, or mathematical curve, along which peoples and regions of the world are distributed. I would like to say in this connection, still keeping to the middle of the road, that the ethnopolitical processes in the Caucasus and, probably, in the Central Asian countries should, for historical reasons, pass (and have passed) through several stages.
In view of the fact that stadial ethnopolitical development is part of the "socially compressed time" created by globalization, the visible signs of evolution in the Caucasus of the still dominant ethnonationalism toward plebiscitary nationalism, which supplies democratic tools of ethnic compromises and ethnic cooperation, should come as no surprise.
It seems that we should not confuse two absolutely different processes: emergence and consolidation of modern nations and ethnicities in the Caucasus and the related specific political phenomena, on the one hand, and confirmation of ethnic exclusiveness based on violence, ethnic cleansing, deportations, annexations, etc., on the other.
Widescale migration flows, including waves of ethnic migration, make a "global village" out of the planet; most countries, including those that were recently relatively mono-ethnic, are turning into ethnic patchworks. As could be expected, quite a few ethnopolitical problems are moving to the fore, including:
—The relations between the "titular" and "non-titular" peoples, the so-called "center" and ethnic regions and enclaves;
—Ethnic reductionism, ethnic nationalism, and ethnic regionalism;
—The rights and statuses of ethnic minorities;
— The accents shifted from political to ethnic identity, etc.
Moreover, in some countries uncontrolled ethnic migration has already created the very real threat of ethnic succession (an extremely vast change in a territory's ethnic composition). The situation in the Russian Far East, where the 5-million-strong permanent Russian population is living alongside 3 million (according to certain sources) Chinese migrants, can serve as a pertinent example.
1 They include the geographically determined polyethnic structure of the Caucasian region; a weakly developed economic component of ethnosocial development; the absence of historically sustainable centralized states or strong supranational territorial-state units, etc. in the region until the turn of the 20th century.
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The gradually globalized demographic processes unfolding in the main ethnicities of any given country or region play an important role in the relatively fast crumbling of the previously fairly stable ethnic structures, a process fraught with ethnopolitical challenges and threats.
In the foreseeable future, a greater role of the ethnopolitical component in public life may cause fragmentation of polyethnic states, destruction of the current system of international relations, and numerous ethnopolitical clashes and conflicts that might develop into interstate or even regional wars. The world community is concerned about the prospect of "disintegration of the unity of the world," "exploded ethnicity," and the prospect of "increased aggressiveness of ethnonational minorities determined to protect their specifics and prospects from globalization."2
There is one more problem created and actualized by globalization. I have in mind the weaker role of nation-states, the foundations of which are undermined by different factors:
—Disappearance of national borders and emergence of transnational economies;
—Transformation of national sovereignty because of the growing number of transnational institutions;
—A new world without information borders;
— Stronger transnational migration and mounting pluralism of cultures and ethnicities.
According to some of the Western analysts (Yale Ferguson, Richard Mansbach, and others), globalist trends are undermining the states and the system of states as a whole. They warn that in the next few decades the world will be plunged into chaos, the authority of international organizations will be undermined, WMD will spread far and wide, a wave of international terrorism, crime, ethnic intolerance, and ethnic conflicts will rise high, economic inequality will become more obvious while ecological disasters more frequent, etc.3
Other authors write4 that even though it is wrong to absolutize the nation-state as the only possible form of state, it is equally wrong to talk about its death. They argue that there are up to 5 thousand ethnicities in the world and only about 200 states and that in 50 years there will be about 400 to 500 member states of U.N. This means that nation-building and nation-state development will go on. This is not yet as obvious as the supporters of this thesis surmise; if accepted, their logic suggests that globalization has triggered two opposite trends—integration and disintegration, centrifugal and cen-tripetal—in ethnopolitical processes.
It takes no wisdom to conclude that even though the number of states increases, not all nations will build their own states. This causes a lot of pain in those that "missed their chance" and is the pivotal point of ethnopolitical and interstate relations in the Caucasus. Let me specify.
■ First, we should accept (unrelated to our political, ethnic, or emotional preferences) that as long as there are nations, the national development and the whole gamut of related issues in the world, the national self-determination issue will survive in one form or another. Donald Horowitz, an American expert in conflictology, has written that "national self-determination is a problem rather than an answer... Much can be said in favor of the concepts of compromises and against the arguments in favor of self-determination."5 The following arguments can be applied to the Caucasian region:
2 R.G. Abdulatipov, Etnopolitologia, St. Petersburg, 2004, pp. 239-240.
3 See: A.I. Utkin, "Geostruktura XXI veka," Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1 September, 2000.
4 See: L.M. Drobizheva, "Etnichnost v sovremennom obshchestve," Etnopolitika i sotsialnye praktiki v Rossiyskoy Federatsii, No. 2, 2001.
5 Quoted from: V.A. Tishkov, "Vstupitelnaia statia", Bulletin No. 4 Mezhdunarodnogo proekta "Uregulirovanie etnicheskikh konfliktov v postsovetskikh gosudarstvakh," Moscow, 1995, p. 16, footnote 3 "Donald Horowitz, Irredentas, Secessions and Self-Determination, 1995, p. 15."
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(1) The threat of a "domino effect." We all know that even if frozen or latent ethnic disagreements continue gathering destructive potential, it means that the very fragile "neither war, nor peace" in the Caucasus can be blown up by any more or less consistent attempt to set up ethnic states. The interdependent nature or even closeness of ethnopolitical processes in all the Caucasian republics will inevitably spread the fire of "self-determination as a nation-state" started in one of the republics to other republics (the domino effect). This may happen for different reasons—geopolitical, economic, or resource—the main one being the presence of "autochthonous" ethnic minorities with external statuses (a state in which this ethnicity is either the only one or one of the titular).
(2) The threat of the "nesting doll" effect which will inevitably complement the domino effect to create new coils and levels of ethnopolitical activity.
(3) The threat of a "big bang" or a "big Caucasian war," which may become a shocking reality if one of the above scenarios is realized. Much has been written about the possible "five Karabakhs" in the Caucasus, a total war of bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all) that will turn the Caucasus into "another Balkans," etc. Some of the prophecies are obviously unfounded (the Caucasus as the source of another world war); the absolute majority of them proceed from what is going on in the region. The possibility (so far highly hypothetical) of an "independent" Chechnia or the "reunification" of Ossetia may trigger political shifts in the ethnopolitical space of the Caucasus caused by the use of force. It will suck in not only the seven North Caucasian constituencies of the Russian Federation and Russia proper, but also the three Central Caucasian states, Turkey, Iran, and who knows which other countries.
■ Second, the thesis of self-determination of a nation or a small ethnicity within a polyethnic state (that is, any state in which over 5% of population belongs to an ethnicity other than the titular) should not necessarily lead to ethnic separatism, extremism, or secession. Academics and politicians point to a multitude of other forms of self-determination: the right to internal self-determination, cultural-national autonomy, unhampered development of spiritual values, language, customs, historical and religious traditions, etc. So far, these ideas are not popular in the Caucasus. Why? Because they belong to the fairly sensitive area of political and ethnic psychology—emergence of hostility, prejudices, and fears. This calls for clarification of the following two points.
(1) It is an open secret that the Caucasian states with ethnic minorities (especially those with external statuses) not infrequently fear that external forces or states that patronize the minorities in their territories might move in to protect these minorities or, in extreme cases, annex their territories. The state takes preventive measures in the form of corresponding ethnic policy that forces the minorities to ask patron-states for protection. This justifies the suspicion of disloyalty of these minorities and sets in motion the mechanism of "self-fulfilled prophecies."
(2) The course of numerous conflicts in the Caucasus (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Os-setia, Chechnia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia) has demonstrated that ethnicity, the slogans of "liberation," and aggressive defense of the ethnic minority's rights are used to promote the interests of the ethnic elite6 frequently intertwined with the interests of local criminal groups and clans. If satisfied, even minimal demands to develop national languages and cultures and open national universities will escalate ethnic demands. Deliberately or not, ethnic elites are leading the ethnopolitical pro-
6 For more details, see: V.A. Tishkov, "Zabyt o natsii," Voprosy filosofii, No. 9, 1998.
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cesses into a dead end; this excludes all peaceful solutions; radical measures become the only option.
■ Third, regrettably, authors of political works and the ordinary people are wrongly convinced that the emergence of nation-ethnicities and nation-states is identical. They are mutually dependent and mutually complementary processes; in the contemporary world, however, they could and should be placed in the spheres in which they are formed. Rama-zan Abdulatipov has offered a memorable image: "A nation-state in the 19th and even 20th century meant, more likely than not, domination of one nation and the dissolution of others for the sake of its state status... A nation-state in the 21st century is a closely knit, equal, and equally dignified unification of ethno-nations into a single political community with a common social and political destiny."7 Is this idyll possible in the Caucasus? On the one hand, there is a lot of generally accepted pessimism: "The plural society, constrained by the preferences of its citizens, does not provide fertile soil for democratic values or stability."8 On the other, there is a much more optimistic practice of democratic, polyeth-nic, and multicultural Western countries. So far, this balance of power and ethnicity, distribution of powers on the basis of polyethnic democracy, is unattainable in the Caucasus. We should bear in mind, however, that when talking about the ethno-political process in the context of globalization, we should not dwell, theoretically or practically, on the potentially conflicting factors and processes (including the right to self-determination). We should, instead, try to predict their evolution and study the processes that create new transnational multi-ethnic entities. This approach looks absolutely understandable if we take into account that globalization creates a communication "network" of interdependen-cies and interpenetrations across the borders and boundaries to create a global entity at the civilizational level.
I will limit myself to a general observation: many well-known futurological scenarios related to ethnicities speak of weakening factors of national determination and the nations' typical features. This means that the principle of ethnic self-determination, the extreme forms of its realization in particular, will no longer be adequate. This can be easily explained: the challenges and demands of globalization will force all peoples (both those that "managed" and those that "did not manage" to set up their states) to choose between ethnic identity in its historical form and a new formula of harmonization of ethno-social content. The current development trends show that, in the final analysis, this will determine the historical destinies of peoples and their intrinsic integration into global civilization. On the one hand, all ethnicities are acquiring unique opportunities to organize their national existence on the principles of civil solidarity and social partnership, while on the other, globalization moves political and ethnic mythologems aside to let peoples take care of their real, rather than imaginary, ethnopolitical and ethnocultural demands and requirements.
Some of what has been said above does not fit the current ethnopolitical situation in the Caucasus or even contradicts it and the strategic aims of the main actors on this "playing field," to borrow a term from Brzezinski. In the most generalized form, this crops up as a confrontation between the growing ethnic regionalization and the objective requirements of the region's political and economic integration dictated by globalization.
We have to admit that so far a compromise between two opposing paradigms is hardly possible. This relates not only to the right of nations to self-determination but also to many other no less acute ethnopolitical issues. Politics has acquired hypertrophied ethnic forms; as a result, the minimum demands of one of the conflicting sides far exceed the maximum concessions of the other side. The
7 R.G. Abdulatipov, op. cit., pp. 104-105.
8 A. Rabushka, K. Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability, Coiumbus, 1972, p. 186.
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situation is even much worse: these issues have been pushed, with appalling irresponsibility, into the sphere of political-armed struggle when "the weapons of criticism" are easily replaced with "criticism by weapons."
If no large-scale integration projects are implemented in the Caucasian Region and if no wide-scale and final transfer to the multicultural model of ethnic politics very much in line with the demands of globalization is carried out, these contradictions will, sooner or later, revive as an open ethnic confrontation. We all know that statehood in the Caucasus is obviously ethnocratic (one language and the actual and formal privileges of the titular nations); this can be remedied if the states agree to accept the principles of concessional democracy when dealing with ethnopolitical problems. It seems that in the context of globalization and in view of Caucasian reality, this type of democracy will help preserve the best possible form of sustained economic and political order based on consistent national relations, among other things.
The Caucasian Chessboard: Geopolitical Dimension
Much has been written about the conflicts in the Caucasus: some authors are objective, others are too engaged to be objective; some authors indulge in theorizing, while others look at practical matters, etc. Practically all of them regard conflicts as antinomies: either ethnopolitical reductionism, which ignores the geopolitical context, or dependence on the interests of the great powers and involvement in the global geopolitical processes.
The latest academic and publicist approaches contain three key paradigms.
> First, the paradigm of passive involvement, which denies the Caucasus its own geopolitical subjectness; it is seen as one of the zones of global confrontation of thalassocratic and tel-lurocratic powers. Isabel Gorst of The Financial Times sees the Caucasus as a "scene of a new chapter in the Great Game."9
Alexander Dugin from Russia agrees: "Any discussion of the Caucasian region in the geopolitical system of coordinates presupposes that, in the final analysis, the highly complicated picture of the real balance of power will be reduced to a global geopolitical dualism and confrontation of the geopolitical interests of Russia and the United States, which are invariably opposite (or wider, between Russia and the countries of the North-Atlantic Alliance)."10
Frederick Starr and Svante Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University (U.S.), look at the Caucasus through the prism of the hierarchy of geopolitical subjects: "Viewing the entire Caucasus within the prism of a greater Black Sea region makes sense politically as well as economically... In this context, the Caucasus is a discernible geographical entity forming an important eastern pillar in the Black Sea region, and hence a gateway to both Central Asia and Iran for the EU."11
Janusz Bugajski, senior associate in the Europe Program at CSIS, believes that the situation in the region is determined by three factors: first, territorial integrity of states (Armenia occupies part of the territory of Azerbaijan, while Russia de-facto controls part
9 I. Gorst, "Foreign Investment: Caucasus is Scene of New Chapter in the Great Game", The Financial Times, 31 October,
2007.
10 A. Dugin, "Kavkazskiy vyzov," available at [http://www.arctogaia.com/public/vtor11.htm].
11 S.E. Cornell. S.F. Starr, The Caucasus: A Challenge for Europe, Silk Road Paper, Washington, D.C., June 2006,
p. 73.
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of Georgian territory); second, observance of international regulations (on the one hand, international law frequently contradicts local traditions; on the other, there is a struggle for control of energy and transportation flows, which leads to conflicts); and third, the independence of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia which, under the impact of stronger players, cannot always act independently.12
The opinion that "at no time did the Southern Caucasus play an independent geopolitical role" can be described as highly chauvinistic. "It had to choose its patrons. Under the patronage of the northern power (that is, Russia), the Transcaucasian countries were invariably protected from all threats much better than when they depended on other neighbors."13
> Second, the paradigm of active involvement does not deprive the Caucasus of its own geopolitical activity and says that together with the Caspian it is an independent entity of world geopolitics.
According to several analysts (Ariel Cohen, Pele Escobar, and others), its resource and pipeline potential makes the Caucasian-Caspian region the central segment on the maps of the new "Great Game."14 Here is what Bay Fang, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, has written: "Today, there is a new map of Central Asia, pored over by governments and oil company executives. It is known as 'hub and spoke.' The hub is the Caspian Sea, and the spokes are the multiple pipe-lines emanating from it, representing potential export routes for the vast oil and gas resources that lie beneath."15 We have to admit, therefore, that the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of the communicational potential of the Caucasus and the Caspian goes far beyond the region's limits and should be discussed in the Eurasian context.
> Third, the paradigm of autonomy. Experts in the Caucasus and Caucasian developments write a lot about the geopolitical consequence and the region's autonomy within the New Great Game:
■ As an intertwining of the relations among Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Russia, and Iran, the Caucasus can be described as a Greater Indivisible Caucasus;
■ As a subject and vehicle of specific historical mission, the Caucasus serves as a bridge between the North and the South and the East and the West;
■ As a geo-strata, the Caucasus is the region where geopolitical projects are either synchronized or clash, etc.16
The above paradigms are present in the state of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and the efforts to resolve it.
Alexander Dugin, for example, is convinced that, in an effort to avoid a settlement, the United States lobbied the Armenian-Turkish protocols. "It was a large-scale geopolitical project: Americans tried to draw Armenia into their sphere of influence and put huge pressure on Turkey."17
12 See: "Yuzhny Kavkaz: puti razvitia," available at [http://www1.voanews.com/russian/news/Analysis-and-perspectives/ Caucasus-development-2010-02-23-85151567.html].
13 "Pokhishchenie Kavkaza," available at [http://russianews.ru/newspaper/20/15923].
14 Cohen A. "The New 'Great Game': Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia," available at [http://www.heritage. org/research/russiaandeurasia/bg1065.cfm], 25 January, 1996; Escobar P. Oil Pipelines Are the "New Great Game," available at [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/oil-pipelines-are-the-new_n_178715.html], 24 March, 2009.
15 B. Fang, "The Great Energy Game," available at [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060903/11game.
htm].
16 See: V. Maysaya, "Kavkazskaia geostrata—sinkhronizatsia ili konfrontatsia geopoliticheskikh proektov: soprikosnovenie teoriy Attali i Huntingtona?," available at [http://cge.evrazia.org/geopolitics_10.shtml].
17 [http://www.day.az/news/politics/205632.html].
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The last decade saw numerous initiatives with high sounding titles that invariably spoke of security, stability, and cooperation and a multitude of regional security models of the "3 + 3" and "3 + 3 +2" type; in 2008, the Turks moved forward with The Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform, etc.
This brought no desired results, not because the Caucasian peoples refused to live in peace and prosperity, but because these projects and initiatives were geared toward the strategic interests of individual players (or their alliances) in the New Great Game in the Caucasus and, as could be expected, were blocked by their opponents.
We cannot but wonder whether the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved in conditions of geopolitical pluralism that have already led the process into an impasse. The answer is that as long as the regional status quo and the current balance of power survive, endless discussions of all sorts of settlement (the use of force, compromises, intermediate, package, stage-by-stage, etc.) will bring no practical results either in short- or long-term perspective.
This stirs up doubts: what if the international efforts to settle the conflict are nothing but a political myth? The international intermediaries have been working for twenty years now, hence the conclusion that "only Azerbaijan is not satisfied with the present state of affairs; all the other countries are willing to accept the status quo."18
—The international peace process has not yet exhausted all its potential; however, to be successful, it must reach at least one of the three key conditions:
—The geopolitical interests of the global and regional actors of world politics (the U.S. and Russia in the first place) must coincide in time to lead to coordinated efforts;
—The geopolitical balance of power and the military-political configuration in the Caucasus must undergo radical changes;
—The domestic political situation in one of the states of the Greater Caucasus must change.
In view of the above, I would like to say the following about the geopolitical possibilities of settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict:
(1) As things stand today, the conflict is of a cognitive nature: each of the sides wants more than the opposite side is prepared to give. Armenia wants horizontal relations between Baku and the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, while Baku insists on vertical relations. Neither of the sides is prepared to commit political suicide by moving away from its rigid position.
(2) The conflict's bilateral nature is an illusion: from the very beginning it has been an international conflict. Today, we are getting a much clearer picture of the opposing interests of the United States, NATO, Russia, Turkey, and Iran and of the conflict's multisided format.
(3) The regional outcrops of global geopolitical rivalry do nothing for conflict settlement. If the regularly repeated incantations about prompt settlement are realized, bringing peacekeepers into the conflict zone to ensure observation of a peace agreement without settling its main (cognitive) disagreement may, in the final analysis, have dramatic consequences:
■ Numerous precedents have taught us that foreign military humanitarian interference leads to the country's dismemberment (this happened in the Congo, Yugoslavia, and Cyprus). Today, the future of Iraq as three independent states (Sunni, Shi'a, and Kurdish) is actively discussed;
18 A. Rar, "Trudnooshchutimaia dinamika," 28 December, 2009, available at [http://www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2009-12-28/9_ dynamics.html].
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■ Foreign military presence "with humanitarian purposes" will prove to be an ideal instrument for drawing Azerbaijan into the orbit of the New Great Game, which presupposes new state borders in the Caucasus and the Middle East. In 1999, Paul Goble published an article titled "New Moves on Caucasus Chessboard," in which he wrote, in particular, that new railways and oil and gas pipelines "will allow the countries of this region to reach Europe without passing through either Russia or Iran. Together, these moves on the chessboard of the Caucasus may come to transform the geopolitical environment of both this region and Eurasia as a whole;"19
■ Today, the mechanisms of peace enforcement are being implemented by scenarios that have little or nothing in common with the real interests of the sides (this is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Georgia).
This brings to light another aspect of the same problem: a new regional power center, which could become a reality. For obvious reasons, Georgian, Azeri, and Armenian political scientists see their own countries in this role. It should be said that the most justified claims come from the Azeri political elite; indeed, the rich and stable republic has every reason to claim regional leadership and realize it. Azerbaijan is an "unsinkable ship," a regional power to be reckoned with, irrespective of what other countries want or think.
Azerbaijan has already demonstrated that it is an independent player at the regional level:
■ It has become abundantly clear that those who say that Azerbaijan is not a self-sufficient state and cannot ensure its national security are trailing behind the times;
■ The Azeri leaders and the Azeri public have no illusions about the true aims of the players of the New Great Game: no one is being duped by the talk of "strategic partnership" (the U.S. and Russia); "fraternal friendship" (Turkey and Iran), and other political and diplomatic elegancies.
■ The country is using the oil-and-gas and pipeline diplomacy for the purpose of national development; it not only chooses partners that suit its interests, but is also successfully blocking all the attempts of players in the New Great Game to infringe on its interests.
This has given rise to a new (Azeri) vector in the geopolitical situation in the region and made the outcome of the games being played in the Central Caucasus uncertain. It remains to be seen whether the new vector will retain its stability and whether it will tip the regional balance of power or affect the course of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It has become clear that the "old players" must radically revise their plans and abandon, at least partially, the old habit of using the conflict as a lever of pressure.
Those who write about conflict settlement and its place in world politics have changed their tune: "Strange as it may seem, Europe's future will be determined not in Paris, Berlin, London, or Brussels, but in the Southern Caucasus, a tiny territory where several strategic oil and gas pipelines cross. They are the only routes outside Russia that bring energy resources to Europe. Meanwhile, those who control the pipelines that bring energy resources to Europe control Europe as well."20
The above is a clear indication that the struggle for another redivision of the global geopolitical space is underway.
There is a more or less generally accepted opinion that this struggle is being fed by the mounting might of Europe and the need to stand opposed to it. There is an opposite opinion: Washington agreed to partial restoration of Russia's influence in the post-Soviet space (Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and
19 P. Goble, "New Moves on Caucasus Chessboard," Asia Times, 21 April, 1999," available at [http://www.atimes. com/c-asia/AD21Ag01 .html].
20 [http://www.inosmi.ru/caucasus/20090508/248967.html].
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some of the integration projects, such as the Collective Peacekeeping Forces, the Customs Union) to draw Moscow to its side in order to build up an anti-China tandem, settle the Iranian issue, etc. Time will show whether these are mere illusions, or whether there is a grain of truth in these deliberations. It should be said that an unfavorable combination of global geopolitical impacts may defrost the "frozen" conflicts, an unwelcome possibility perilous for Azerbaijan and the post-Soviet space as a whole.
The Caucasian "Patchwork": Ethnopolitical Dimension
All ethnopolitical conflicts have at least two dimensions: internal and external. The former is characterized by the active involvement of ethnicities as actors of the political process. This triggers an ethnopolitical process, i.e. the interaction of fairly large population groups, each of which has its own clear ethnic identity, on the one hand, and certain (real or desired) institutions of sovereignty, on the other. Their ethnic demands immediately become political demands for wider sovereignty, while the political, economic, and humanitarian demands assume ethnic hues and, therefore, rely on mechanisms of ethnic mobilization.21 Ethno-national movements tend to progress from ethno-cultural to economic demands and on to political and status demands. This means that their struggle becomes fiercer, while the lulls are used to accumulate force to resume fighting rather than to look for a way out of the conflict.
The external dimension of ethnopolitical conflicts is manifested in the fact that in the epoch of globalization they develop into geopolitical problems (for example, conflict settlement in Kosovo, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia has an international causal importance). It comes as no surprise that nearly all the governments drawn into the whirlpool of ethnic conflicts blame foreign interference (real or imaginary).
The history of the world has proven that an ethnopolitical conflict can easily move from the non-violent to the armed stage. According to British sociologist Evan Luard, who studied the origins of war, between 1400 and the present, about half of the armed conflicts were fought by states. "Altogether, in the period since 1945, there have been at least 127 significant wars," about 37 of them could be described as international.22
These ethnopolitical conflicts are rooted in the nature and conditions in which ethno-national communities function. The geographical boundaries of ethnic communities that do not coincide with the political division of the world transform the space in which states-territories are created into an arena of struggle for national (ethnic) states; this gives birth to ethnic movements and conflicts.
There are from 3 to 5 thousand ethnic groups in the world; the number of ethnic minorities is even larger since many ethnicities are scattered across different countries; 269 ethnicities are over 1 million strong; 90 percent of nations and nationalities live in multinational states; 291 ethnic minorities living in 99 countries can be described as risk factors. C. Kegley and E. Wittkopf have written in their World Politics: Trends and Transformation that "since the end of the Cold War it is argued that ethnic conflict is among the world's greatest killers."23 (p. 498). Between 1993 and 1994, 50 large-scale ethnic conflicts turned over 26 million people into forced migrants; each of these con-
21 See: D.V. Dragunsky, "Etnopoliticheskie protsessy na postsovetskom prostranstve i rekonstruktsia Severnoy Evrazii," Polis, No. 3, 1995, p. 40.
22 See: Obshchaia i prikladnaia politologia, MGSU, Soyuz Publishers, Moscow, 1997, p. 195, footnote 1 "E. Luard, The Blunted Sword: The Erosion of Military Power in Modern World Politics, London, 1988, p. 65."
23 C. Kegley, E. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trends and Transformation, 5th edition, Saint-Martin's, New York, 1995,
p. 498.
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flicts killed about 80 thousand; 32 percent of the international crises that occurred between 1918 and 1988 had an ethnopolitical dimension.24
It should be said that the academic community has not yet arrived at a clear definition of the ethnopolitical dimension of social processes. Those who side with the constructivist (post-modernist) approach speak of ethnicity as one of the dimensions of the main spheres of public life (political, economic, spiritual, etc.) they manifest and, therefore, cannot be described as an independent subjective-objective sphere. They argue that the ethnic in its pure form is "absent from nature; hence the reduction of ethnicity to either an artificial artifact or a cognitive picture of the social world formed by individuals."25 In this context, even the sharpest forms of ethnopolitical conflicts are reduced to different configurations of familiar social, political, economic, and other factors. In the most extreme cases, this approach resolutely excludes the ethnic factor from the list of national security determinants: "The following can be described as the main national security components: military, economic, social, ecological, and informational."26
Those who disagree with the above and support the theory of primordialism proceed from a fact they regard as obvious and unbeatable, i.e. that the entire set of ethnic relations, ethnic life as a whole, and everything related to it (ethnic history, psychology, mentality, etc) functions as a special social substance, the ethnic sphere. Having accepted the ethnic substance as real, the primordialists, not infrequently, go to extremes: they conclude that ethnicity is the only reality. In view of the fact that in recent decades, ethnic identification and politicization of ethnicity have become dominant and even threatening all over the world, the primordialists insist that security problems in the ethnic sphere should receive more attention. The most consistent of them suggest that ethnopolitical security should be identified as a new segment of national security. What has been written on this problem can be put into the following nutshell:
■ First, the terms are not strictly scientific from the logical and conceptual point of view; so far, they are fairly attractive linguistic and semantic formulas that need profound catego-rial substantiation.
■ Second, the formation of nations and nation-states is a historical process rooted in antiquity. On the other hand, nation-building has been gaining momentum since the early 20th century. In 1910, there were 15 states; today, there are about 200 states in the world. Each epoch of geopolitical earthquakes (World Wars I and II, the collapse of the colonial system and of the world socialist system) added vigor to the otherwise natural process that multiplies the number of dividing lines between the state-forming peoples (nations) and ethnic minorities.
■ Third, when analyzing the ethnopolitical factors in the context of globalization, we should not concentrate on the potentially conflicting factors and processes. This approach looks absolutely understandable if we take into account that globalization creates a communication "network" of interdependencies and interpenetrations not only and not so much among nation-states as across the borders and boundaries which disunite peoples to unite diverse ethnic identities into a global entity at the civilizational level.
■ Fourth, the challenges and threats of globalization have created a dilemma that relates to practically all peoples (with or without their own states): either preserved ethnic identity in its historical context, or a quest for a new formula of harmonization of its ethnosocial con-
24 See: M.A. Medvedeva, "Etnopoliticheskiy konflikt kak faktor ugrozy mezhdunarodnoy bezopasnosti," in: Filosofía XX veka: shkoly i kontseptsii. Nauchnaia konferentsia SPbGU, 21 November, 2000, St. Petersburg, 2001, p. 156.
25 S.E. Rybakov, Filosofia etnosa, IPK Gossluzhby, Moscow, 2001, p. 8.
26 Z.A. Jade, "Natsionalnye interesy i bezopasnost Rossii v kontekste geopolitiki," available at [http://www.vestnik. adygnet.ru/files/2005.2/123/jade2005_2.pdf], p. 60.
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tent. This means that no country, especially those with polyethnic populations, can continue ignoring ethnic problems and contradictions when dealing with its national security concerns.
■ Fifth, the contradiction between the international legal regulations that establish the limits of state sovereignty and ongoing globalization is deepening. Globalization supplies international and regional organizations with pretexts (ethnic conflicts in particular) to interfere in the domestic affairs of states; at the same time, this invites accusations of neo-imperial-ism, the desire to re-divide the world, and dual standards hurled at the leading powers of the world and international supranational actors.
■ Sixth, throughout the better part of the last century, the "security" category was rarely, if ever, used by political scientists when dealing with ethnic matters. In the West and in the Soviet Russian schools, ethnicities were "dissolved" in the social-historical communities, an approach that dominated in the political writings of the 20th century. I have in mind the classes (prevalent in Marxism), population groups (the stratification theory), states (statist ideology), and all sorts of ideological constructs. The bloody ethnopolitical conflicts of the late 20th century revealed that the problems caused by ethnic mobilization caught the world community unaware. They also triggered considerable transformations of the philosophy of ethnic security in the epoch of globalization. The Human DevelopmentReport-2005 tried to meander between "territorial integrity of states" and the "right of nations to self-determination," but under the pressure of security threats had to admit: "In security terms, a cohesive and peaceful international system is far more likely to be achieved through the cooperation of effective states ... than in an environment of fragile, collapsed, fragmenting or generally chaotic state entities."27
This means that at the turn of the 21st century and in the context of the democratic transit, political science and political practice have readjusted their ideas about the ethnopolitical dimension accordingly. In the era of globalization, which is changing the causal foundations of the conflicts that shatter the world, it has become clear that the world needs a new theoretical-methodological paradigm of comprehension of ethnopolitical processes and corresponding research fields.
The Caucasian "Patchwork": Confessional Dimension
Mankind's accelerated development, mounting internationalization of permanent violence, and ethnic and religious conflicts as some of the typical features of globalization make the widest possible cooperation of all public forces for the sake of mending the holes in civil peace and socio-cultural harmony an absolute necessity.
Quite a few academics, inspired by Samuel Huntington's well-publicized forecast of the "clash of civilizations"28 with strong religious overtones, hastened to prove that the future had come. Political scientists developed a taste for such formulas as "ethno-political and ethno-confessional conflicts" without bothering to look inside them and clarify the meaning of the new coinages. The authors of a fundamental monograph called Konflikty na Vostoke. Etnicheskie i konfessionalnye (Ethnic and Con-
27 Human Development Report-2005, Chapter 5, p. 162, available at [http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/266/ hdr05_complete.pdf].
28 S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Simon and Schuster, London, 2007, 368 pp.
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fessional Conflicts in the East) did not bother to discuss the phenomenon of ethno-confessional conflicts as a target of their studies in theoretical-methodological terms even in the first chapter "Etnokonfessionalnye konflikty sovremennosti i podkhody k ikh uregulirovaniiu" (The Present Ethno-confessional Conflicts and Approaches to Their Settlement). The authors have limited themselves to studying the religious (confessional) factor, which makes ethno-confessional conflicts nothing more than one of several types of ethnopolitical conflict.29 There is any number of monographs,30 educational programs, and textbooks31 that demonstrate a similar approach to these categories as being absolutely or partly identical and interchangeable.
In the late 20th century, the world community began exerting efforts to use the potential of peaceful coexistence of peoples and religions accumulated throughout centuries to bridge the gaps between ethnicities and religions. We have every reason to say that Azerbaijan, a country of ancient traditions of peaceful coexistence of peoples and confessions, is one of the historical zones of religious and ethnic tolerance.
The phenomenon of tolerance as a readiness to accept opinions, convictions, and behavior models different from those prevalent in any given society has stirred up and continues to stir up very contradictory responses ranging from positive to aggressively negative. On the one hand, Western mentality ascribes to tolerance the miraculous ability to bring together, in the most natural way, wide communicativeness and the freedom of self-identification of individuals and groups. In this context tolerance is seen as a social-cultural tool for settling accumulated contradictions. On the other hand, not infrequently, tolerance is interpreted as a factor that destroys nations and states and annihilates everything that could have united individuals on an ethno-confessional or state platform.
Primordialism looks at tolerance and its varieties (social-ethnic, religious, etc.) as an immanent quality present in all peoples. The participants at the All-Russia Scientific Conference on Preserving Tolerance in Polyethnic and Multi-Confessional Regions held in Makhachkala in 2007 spoke of ethnic tolerance as a feature present in all ethnicities and an inalienable part of ethnic mentality.32 The cruel realities of the early 21st century in the Caucasus and elsewhere dampened this optimism.
This explains why the development of Azeri statehood was closely associated with deliberate reliance on the traditions of tolerance. Many public and religious figures pointed out that the democratic development vector of contemporary Azeri society and the state added vigor to confessional tolerance.
At all times, swords are crossed over interrelations between religion and politics and their derivatives: traditional and political cultures, values, and institutions. Academics and politicians, who have produced mountains of political-religious, academic, and quasi-academic works about the new conditions in which religion and ethnopolitics have to live side by side, have left many lacunae.
Meanwhile, these issues are of huge importance for the countries living through the transition period in their development (all the Soviet-successor states, including those in the Caucasus). The incomplete processes of ethnosocial and nation-state development, the far from simple democratic transit, and the superimposition of political, ethnic, and confessional problems create tension accompanied by a fairly involved combination of threats with great conflictogenic potential.
I should say that the ethnic and confessional characteristics are not so much mutually exclusive as mutually complementary: the varied types of negative and positive, integrating and disintegrating processes are mainly balanced. At the same time, since it is hard to identify the exact mechanisms of
29 See: Konflikty na Vostoke. Etnicheskie i konfessionalnye, ed. by Prof. A.D. Voskresensky, Aspekt-Press, Moscow, 2008, 512 pp.
30 See: Etnosy i konfessi na Vostoke: konflikty i vzaimodeystvie, MGIMO, Moscow, 2005.
31 See: E.M. Travina, Sovremennye problemy etnokulturnykh i konfessionalnykh otnosheniy, St. Petersburg, 2007.
32 See: Z.M. Dzarakhova, "K voprosu o tolerantnosti v etnokulture narodov Kavkaza," in: Vserossiyskaia nauchnaia konferentsia "Problemy sokhraneniia tolerantnosti v usloviiakh polietnichnogo i mnogokonfessionalnogo regiona (Makhachkala, 2007)," available at [http://www.ingush.ru/serdalo395_2.asp].
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interaction of the immanent properties of ethnic and confessional factors, we should identify the contact zones of such interaction responsible for the new social and anthropogenic reality—ethno-confessionality, a blend of ethnicity and confessionality. The specific vector of the ethno-confession-al impact is the sum-total of the influence of social-ethnic and religious-confessional institutions and target-oriented policy of the institutional system designed to regulate ethno-national and state-confessional relations. Here are the vectors arranged according to the mounting conflictogenity.
1. Ethnic and confessional tolerance—the state in which any given society exists at a low level of ethnic and confessional awareness, while preserving its ethnic and confessional identity at a normal level.
2. Ethnocentrism—a high level of ethnic awareness combined with a relatively low level of confessional awareness. Discrimination in the form of deliberate insistence on "superiority" of the titular ethnicity and passive intolerance push all other ethnic and confessional communities to the periphery of social life.
3. Religious fanaticism—a high level of confessional awareness combined with a relatively low level of ethnic awareness. In transition states, the resultant incompatibility between the dominant confession and all other religions may lead to conflicts in the struggle "for the purity of religion," etc.
4. Ethnic and confessional intolerance—a high level of ethnic and intolerably high level of confessional awareness. Such societies demonstrate the inability, sometimes in fairly aggressive forms, to live side by side with other ethnic and confessional identities.
This suggests two questions: What is the mechanism of the ethno-confessional impacts on the national security system? What are the specifics of this process in the transit states of the Caucasus?
To answer the first question we should bear in mind that the four types of ethno-confessional impacts discussed above are not realized in the form of direct impacts: ethno-confessionality—eco-nomic security; ethno-confessionality—political security, etc. It seems that there is a segment in the national security system that serves as a natural outlet for the basic ethno-confessional impulse that has taken shape in society.
I believe that this role belongs to ethnopolitical security, within which specific vectors of the ethno-confessional impacts (intolerance) and the set of national interests that appeared in the context of ethnonational existence are balanced out. This makes the choice of interests (real or false, strategic or short-term, important or not) as interests of national importance dependent on an ethnopolitical filter of sorts.
It was in the last quarter of the 20th century that the ethno-confessional dimension of the problem of tolerance was pushed to the fore by revived conflicts in the Middle East (Cyprus, Lebanese, Kurdish, etc.). This was when politicians, public and religious figures, and academics tried to use the philosophy of tolerance to build an efficient system of prevention and neutralization of security threats.
In the transit Caucasian countries, ethno-confessional impulses are reflected in ethnopolitical security differently than in the European countries.
■ First, the external factor plays a much greater role in determining any specific ethno-confessional vector of ethnopolitical security in the Caucasus than in the developed democratic countries;
■ Second, there is a much wider scope of ethno-confessional models: —In Armenia—ethno-confessional intolerance;
—In Georgia—a trend toward ethnocentrism; —In Azerbaijan—ethno-confessional tolerance.
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■ Third, the opposing ethnic elites rely, to a much greater extent, on the ethno-confessional factor to be used as a mobilization instrument or a unification banner.
■ Fourth, ethno-confessionality removes the borders between confessional and ethnopolitical conflicts and highlights the trend of internationalization of regional or even local conflicts.
This means that the ethno-confessional factor plays an important role in structuring the system of ethnopolitical security of the transit states in at least two aspects.
■ First, as distinct from the ethnic and confessional spheres, ethno-confessionality is not an independent segment of life. It is a product of these spheres blended by the logic of history into a qualitatively new social and anthropogenic identity. It creates a social and psychological background against which the ethnicity is further structuralized through the ethno-national implementation of religion, the translation of confessional context into ethnic forms, and the construction of new systemic components of the social life of an ethnicity.
■ Second, ethno-confessionality that does not stay within certain borders cannot be and is not a direct cause of ethnopolitical conflicts, but supplies them with specifics and vectors.
In the majority of polyethnic transit states (in the Caucasus in particular), ethno-confessionality has become a pragmatic ideological and political basis for all sorts of constructs of national ideas, national ideology, and national ideals (in Russia this is the idea of Russia-nism; in Azerbaijan, the ideology of Azeri-nism). This means that the development of ethnicities (nations) is reduced to a movement toward an ideal (idea, program ideology), which suggests a question: To what extent is this social ideal "national," or to what extent is this national ideal "social?" It seems that ethno-con-fessionality, as a universal accumulator of the historically developing ethnic, social, and spiritual experience of people, serves as the yardstick.
In the context of international, regional, or national security, ethno-confessionality may be a positive or (unfortunately, more frequently) negative factor. In the former case and in the context of ethnopolitical security of the post-Soviet transit states, ethno-confessionality should create a social-psychological attitude of tolerance in all subjects and at all levels. In the latter case, the images of "chosen" and "inferior" peoples created on the basis of ethno-confessionality push the ethnic elites and a large part of population toward aggression. History has repeatedly demonstrated that the never-ending struggle against "enemy nations" under the slogan of "freedom and security" for one's own nation pushed the society suffering from intolerance into tyranny, under which there is neither freedom nor security.
The National-Strategic Dimension of Development
Today we have to admit that the negative dynamics of the geopolitical and geostrategic threats in the Caucasus and the Caspian caused by the clashing interests of international political actors in the region and the failure of some of the members of the system of regional security to adequately formulate their interests remain as obvious as ever. There is an amazing paradox of political science and political practice: on the one hand, frequent repetitions have made a banality out of what is said about the need for every nation and every state to adequately identify its development models; while, on the other, these deliberations are not accompanied by practical steps comparable to the problem's dimension. It has not been buried, yet neither academics nor politicians have come forward with more or less clear paradigms or theoretical constructs. What is said about "national development" lacks clarity and generally accepted categories—much is said, instead, about national development strategies, national development concepts, all sorts of national development programs (projects), etc.
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For example, the National Development Strategy of Moldova for 2008-2011 approved in 2008 was the basic document of strategic mid-term planning that identified the priority development trends and specified corresponding steps. The Russian Federation, too, has numerous and widely publicized national programs in health care, education, affordable housing, etc.
Adil Toygonbaev, Head of the Expert Center for National Strategy (Kazakhstan), has offered a very interesting combination of four poles of national development: cultural, political, national industry, and high-quality education and science.33
The content and meaning of the "national development" category varies from one aspect to another by:
—the subject of realization (ethnonational, ethnocratic, national-state, civil-political, etc.);
—the spheres of realization (economic, housing, cultural, demographic, information technologies, etc);
— the time of realization (short-, mid-, and long-term);
— the degree of conceptual concentration (an idea, concept, project, model, strategy, etc);
—the scope (state, macro-regional, regional, public-civilian, etc);
—the "core" interests as the foundation and the driving force behind national development (geopolitical priorities; military-strategic aims, "national idea," the past, ethnopolitical imperatives, etc.).
The national strategy of the United States, for example, can be described as the art and science of development used to move toward the national aims in peace and in war together with the armed forces and also using political, economic, psychological, and other factors of power. Two other levels of American strategy—national security and national military strategies—are subordinated to the national strategy.34 This means that in the United States, national strategy is interpreted as specification of the aims of national development and the mechanisms for its realization. France, a classical European country, has identified its aims in the form of the National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS).35
China, which is rapidly building up its economic and geopolitical potential, has offered a different official interpretation of the aims and meanings of national development. "The national development strategy is the core of Deng Xiaoping's theory which rests on two pillars: the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the theory of market-oriented socialism. Put in a nutshell, this strategy speaks of the main long-term objective as China's transformation into a prosperous, strong, democratic and civilized modern socialist state. To achieve this, the country has to travel through three stages. The first (1981-1990) presupposed doubling GNP and producing enough food and clothing. The second (1991-2000) was expected to bring GNP to $1 trillion with a per capita income of $800 to $1000, thus ushering in a period of relative prosperity. The third (2001-2050) will bring China to the level of the developed countries with the main aims of modernization realized."36
The problems of the transition period and quite a few frozen conflicts have brought together the social and economic reforms underway in the Soviet-successor states, on the one hand, and the "security" problems, on the other, in the "national development" concept. The former is illustrated by the national strategies of the Central Asian countries best described as national action plans, which
33 See: A. Toygonbaev, "Chetyre poliusa natsionalnogo razvitia," available at [http://www.dialog. kz/?lan=ru&id=93&pub=303].
34 See: O. Sultanov, Evoliutsia voenno-strategicheskoy kontseptsii SShA (1945-1997), Baku, 2000, p. 4.
35 See: Service des Affaires Internationales EU sustainable development networking event (14-15 July, 2005, Windsor, UK), available at [www.developpementdurable.gouv.fr].
36 O. Arin, "O vneshnepoliticheskoy strategii KNR," Nezavisimaia gazeta, NG-stsenarii, February 1999.
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includes mid- and long-term priorities of, mainly, social and economic development, such as the Kazakhstan-2050 Strategy, the Strategy of Economic, Political, and Cultural Development of Turkmenistan until 2020, etc.37
The latter looms prominently in the national security concepts of the Caucasian states. In 2007, for example, Armenia adopted a program document which said that the national security strategy of the Republic of Armenia was a system designed to ensure sustainable development of the state and its security, society, and each of its members, as well as to allow the state to further pursue the policy of preservation of Armenian specifics."38 The recently adopted program documents of Georgia—The National Security Concept of Georgia and Georgian National Military Strategy (the main part of the National Security Strategy, which significantly shapes implementation of the national defense policy through 2010)—look at development through the prism of security.
In Russia, the political community believes that strategic programs should rest on geopolitical dimensions: "This explains why the domestic and foreign policy of any state, the concept of its national security and strategy of national development as a whole should rest on a sober assessment of its geopolitical situation. This is especially important for Russia."39
Azerbaijan is in a special situation; while concerned about its security and territorial integrity, it pays a lot of attention to national development treated as a priority and concentrates on reforms designed to accelerate economic growth, create a socially-oriented market economy, and achieve comprehensive modernization of society.
The Development Concept "Azerbaijan-2020: Outlook for the Future" is geared toward all-round economic development to elevate the status of the Azerbaijan Republic from its current status of the regional leader to the status of a highly competitive member of international economic relations."40
In short, the strategies and concepts demonstrate a variety of interpretations of the "national development" formula ranging from geopolitical and military-strategic aspects to the moral and psychological dimensions of the nations' existence, as well as the need to fight so-called cultural imperialism (imperialism that has captured vast territories by winning over human minds, ways of thinking, and lifestyles).41
It seems that the widely used "national development" term still lacks a categorial definition: "national development" as a system should be discussed outside the rigidly determined international "balance of power" and emotional statements that formulate goals on the basis of a priori and fairly vague values. "Vulgar materialism" of international politics and the axiological component are both present in national development and will remain part of it in the future, too. We should not forget, however, that realization of the proclaimed aims of national development demands an adequate assessment of challenges and requirements; the state should compile its own list of possible decisions, realistic assessments of national resources, and their distribution.
The system that we call "national development" requires three factors:
—as a sum-total of elements, it should be able to produce feedback aimed at its individual elements and the environment as a whole;
— "national development" cannot and should not be reduced to a declarative enumeration of national goals and their hierarchy; these operations should stem from clearly identified qualitative and quantitative parameters of available conditions and criteria;
37 [http ://www. cagateway.org/ru/topics/19/71/].
38 [http://www.ra.am/?num=2007022303].
39 V.V. Zhirinovsky, "Strategia natsionalnogo razvitia Rossii," available at [http://www.viperson.ru/wind.php?ID= 238034].
40 "Development Concept "Azerbaijan-2020: Outlook for the Future," available at [www.president.az/files/future_ru.pdf].
41 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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—the sum-total of ways, methods, and means by which these goals (including alternative ones) can be achieved call for a detailed analysis.
The national development strategy is not a pile of important political documents, but a stage-by-stage process unfolding from an assessment of reality and urgent needs to identification of the main development trends, elaboration of the strategy's program and resource backup, and implementation, feedback, and readjustment of the strategic course according to the results obtained.
Caught in a web of steadily rising external challenges, the state should not seek responses in emotional and ideological mobilization and not with the help of the bureaucratic machine. It should seek and find the most rational scenarios and the best mechanisms and means of integration and coordination (both horizontal and vertical) in purpose-oriented activities of the individual, society, and the state. This suggests the following definition of the investigated phenomenon: the national development strategy is a policy for building up the country's integral potential on the basis of its mid- and long-term prospects realized by all the political actors on the basis of interdependence of all development aspects, optimization of tactics and procedures, and in close connection with the aims of the development of mankind.
In view of the above elaboration of analytical instruments and verification system, a scientifically correct interpretation of the national development concept should take into account:
—The stable local spheres of its realization;
—The indicators related to the state of the main spheres identified with the help of local systemic ties;
—The development trends that allow us to provide a description of the system of national development as a process;
—The active ties between local spheres.
It seems that a rational choice of national development strategy should not rely on a set of ide-ologemes gathered together who knows when and by whom: they might produce distorted and disorienting ideas about the content and essence of what is called national aims. We should proceed from pragmatic arguments based on requirements inherited from the past that have not lost their urgency. Only those strategic lines of national (state) development that take into account the pillars of independence of society and the specifics of integration of any given country into contemporary civilization should be taken into account.
Conclusion
The above offers the main conclusion: in the 21st century, old forms of statehood are being dissolved under the pressure of globalization; this makes a new format of geopolitical and ethno-confessional processes and, therefore, a more intensive quest for national development strategies inevitable. In the Caucasus, this quest for and the emergence of a new world order will cause many painful problems, which means that it is too early to think that we have found the answer to the question asked in the title of this article.
