Accommodating revisionism through balancing regionalism: A case of Central Asia
by Aliya Tskhay and Filippo Costa Buranelli
Accommodating revisionism through balancing regionalism: A case of Central Asia was featured in the Special Issue “Hybridisation of Political Order and Contemporary Revisionism”, Europe-Asia Studies, 72(6), pp. 1033-1052
We were invited to contribute to the special issue of Europe-Asia Studies on contemporary revisionism in Russian foreign policy and the perspective from Central Asia by three colleagues based at Masaryk University in Prague, Czech Republic – Nik Hynek, Aleš Karmazin, and Vit Střítecký. This was a good opportunity for us to explore the relation between Central Asian states, Russia’s aggressive behaviour in the broader Eurasian geopolitical context, and the role of different regional formations. The intention was to explore how Central Asian states, by being members of different regional organisations, keep in balance great powers in times of aggressive power politics at the regional level. Our purpose was also to present Central Asian states as active actors in foreign policy-making and not just as the passive receivers of revisionist policies by adding sharper analytical content to concepts such as ‘omnibalancing’ and ‘multivectorism’, as well as to continue offering alternative views of regionalism than that often associated to Central Asia.
Our analysis begins with a definition of revisionism, which we conceptualise as a set of thoughts, behaviours, practices, principles, and doctrines that, more or less openly, challenges established norms in a given social domain and seeks to create an alternative order. We then review the most recent existing literature on revisionism to then come up with our theoretical framework, combining the work of Stacey Goddard and Alexander Cooley and colleagues to show how Russia pursues two different sets of revisionism depending on whether it is carried out at the global/systemic level or at the regional/sub-systemic one.
We then focus on the regional domain and building on our previous co-authored work on regionalism, the argument we advance in this paper is that the Central Asian republics, contrary to a common argument in the literature that present them as a virtual region or even as a non-region at all, do engage in multilateralism and regionalism, which we define as state-led projects of region-making that often involve a certain degree of institutionalisation, usually—yet not necessarily—expressed in the creation of formal regional, international organisations. However, the main insight we offer is that regionalism in the Central Asian case is not necessarily meant as a conscious political and bureaucratic project that revolves around sharing sovereignty and/or creating supranational institutions to crystallise a common identity or common set of purposes, but rather as a strategy to fend off excessive pressure and interference by neighbouring great powers, especially (but not only) Russia – hence, the adjective ‘balancing’ in our title. We therefore define balancing regionalism as defined as the act of countering a neighbouring country’s aggressive foreign policy not by directly balancing it militarily or economically but rather by acting through a number of regional organisations and formats, promoting dialogue between them, and fostering additional regional platforms that help diversify ties with and relax obligations towards the dominant state and increase the costs of revisionism.
The important caveat that we make in the paper, though, is that balancing regionalism is not a deliberate strategy that results by a common explicit agreement and plan of the Central Asian chanceries. Rather, what we argue is that balancing regionalism is the unintended, and yet agreeable outcome of the shared identities of the Central Asian states as ‘being at the crossroads’ and being the ‘balancers of great powers’, something that it is visible and identifiable in each country’s foreign policy concept for example. This is why, crucially, we do not claim that balancing regionalism is an official foreign policy conduct of any Central Asian state or their concerted effort, but is nonetheless visible in the in the analysis of repeated practices over time, and/or in discourses of blame, opposition, and reprimand whenever a regional state grants excessive rights and access to an extra-regional great power.
By proceeding with an inductive focus on official discourses and practices over time, our research has found that this strategy is based on three distinct mechanisms, which are presented as separate for analytical purposes, for in fact they may well be at play simultaneously. The first mechanism is what we call bridging. By bridging, we refer to the attempts of those Central Asian states who are part of specific regional organisations where Russia is also a member to forge partnerships, dialogue and cross-institutional collaboration with other regional organisations where Russia is either absent or where another great power is a member so to count on a counterbalancing actor. An example we found in our analysis is Kazakhstan’s attempt to create partnerships and dialogue between the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where China is predominant, and possible even with the European Union (EU) and the Association of South-East Asian States. Another example may be that of Tajikistan purposefully proposing cooperation between the SCO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the EU in the field of security.
The second mechanism we identified is that of dovetailing, which refers to fostering simultaneous cooperation projects in two or more regional groups, especially if these different groups are led by different hegemons. An example of this would be the almost exponential creation of the platform Central Asia plus, which exists in partnership with Japan and South Korea, but also with the US and China. Another example may be the discussion of the Tajik-Afghan border, the importance of which was voiced in the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and then by four Central Asian states at the SCO, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia and with an appeal to NATO, too, so not to leave the full management of the area to the CSTO.
The third mechanism we found in our research is branding, which refers to the promotion of a specific regional identity for strategic and instrumental purposes. Ideas of ‘Eurasia’, ‘Central Asia’, ‘European values’, ‘Asian identity’ and ‘Turkic heritage’ among others are only a few examples of the labels and tags that Central Asian states adopt in different regional platforms to portray a sense of commonality and conformity to a specific set of values, principles, and norms which, if broken and violated by Russia or another great power, may lead to reputational consequences and backlash from other states embracing and legitimising those very identities. The recent emphasis on the fact that ‘only Central Asian states should deal with Central Asian problems’ and that ‘regional issues require a regional mindset’ is indicative not of integrationist or multilateral institutionalisation, but rather of an intention to keep great powers at bay when it comes to sensitive disputes that pertain to the Central Asian republics.
What we want to stress is that there are certainly some important policy recommendations that we can be drawn from this paper and be addressed to different policy-makers and experts. First, our article shows that a multiplicity of regional organisations and formats has an instrumental role and is utilised more and more by Central Asian states to promote their concerns and positions. With a more engaged foreign policy pursued by Uzbekistan, there are more contact points between the regional states in various regional organisations and this trend should be monitored to account for macro- and meso-level dynamics in Eurasia. Those who want to pursue cooperation with the Central Asian states should keep in mind these ramifications and overlapping networks.
Second, balancing regionalism in Central Asia should be also considered as a welcome opportunity for other middle-powers to engage more with the region. The diversification of geographical cooperation for Central Asian states is the solution of avoiding dependence on Russia. Hence, even informal settings of inter-state and inter-regional cooperation (e.g. Central Asia and the EU) could provide an alternative (but crucially not a substitute) to Russian vector.
Third, the international expert community often criticises Central Asia for the lack of regional integration, yet this paper demonstrated that what we observe is rather cooperation and coexistence, and that this regional cooperation and coexistence is a complex, often instrumental multi-layered process. Thus, aware that our paper is just an initial theorisation of balancing regionalism, what we suggest is that it would be beneficial to study more in depth how Central Asian states are performing in each of the regional organisations and formats, how domestic politics influences these processes, how much preparation goes into them, how much political capital is spent there, and how much information is shared on each platform.
For more details, please read the article in full.