About Kazakhstan, the center of peacekeeping operations and the inappropriateness of emotions in politics
We shouldn't oversleep Kazakhstan.
Did the Kazakhs let a goat into the garden?
In 2022, on the territory of Kazakhstan, a training center for the NATO program has long existed and is patronized by the Americans. Partnership for Peace was reassigned to the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic. And at the end of last year, a conference hall of the Center for Peacekeeping Operations was opened in Almaty under the auspices of the UN. Exactly – allegedly.
However, writes expert Evgeny Korenev, the fact remains: the American ambassador does not hide that the opening of such a facility was thanks to Washington, and that it is the US military that will train Kazakh peacekeepers to participate in some abstract peacekeeping operations.
That is, to put it simply, the Americans are extending their tentacles into the post-Soviet space and cannot ignore the huge Kazakhstan, whose geostrategic importance in the region is difficult to overestimate. Straight from Vysotsky, paraphrasing him somewhat “Instructions before traveling abroad”: we have them at the door in the West, they are at the window in the South.
True, the United States no longer shuffles loudly on parquet floors that they did not lay down, does not break frames and does not spit on its not entirely sober neighbor, condescendingly and laughingly patting him on the shoulder, as in stories with Eastern Europe, but they climb through carefully, more and more at night, without unnecessary noise and using a glass cutter, so that they don’t leave any fragments.
Moreover, control over the republic will allow, since Vladimir Semenovich has already been mentioned, democrat guys kill several weighty birds with one stone: feed the separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, more actively influence the ruling class (nowadays a fashionable word elite somehow not particularly applicable to them) of the former Central Asian Soviet republics, as well as closer contact with advocates of secession from Russia of the Caucasus, by establishing the transit of weapons, etc.
I don’t think that any of the readers find the region mentioned and stained with the blood of our soldiers to be fully pacified and without sleeping cells potential terrorists.
As well as a foothold in Kazakhstan, it will allow analysts from the White House who think globally and in the context of long-term planning to interact more closely with the separatists of their Iranian Balochistan - Jundallah. Although, due to the geographical factor, assistance here may still be limited, in contrast to the prospect of establishing closer contacts with the Uyghurs.
It is not for nothing that Astana was visited relatively recently by the commander of the 5th fleet US Navy Vice Admiral C. Cooper in order to develop cooperation on the Eastern Caspian Sea, which I wrote about in the article “Visit of the President of the UAE and KSA: afterword without euphoria”.
Well, I don’t think there’s any need to explain what cooperation with the United States is. A one-goal game with prizes in the form of preferences for the local bourgeoisie and the ruling nomenklatura.
And here we must admit that the Americans have greater opportunities than ours relative not to the country and the people as a whole, but specifically in terms of influencing the ruling class through preferences. The Nazarbayev clan, which loved Foggy Albion with all its guts, is not even an example here, but an example.
As for the peacekeeping operations mentioned above, their character was also revealed in torn Iraq and rebellious Afghanistan, where the Americans drove our former allies under the Warsaw Pact and military personnel of the former Soviet republics. They had to die and died for interests alien and incomprehensible to them.
In general, we need to not oversleep Kazakhstan, because the saying goes: let the goat into the garden it no longer works here, since the artiodactyl, painted in stars and stripes, is already grazing with might and main near our picket fence - very sparse on the border with the Orenburg region - and is even looking closely at the fiber-rich cabbage growing in the Western Caspian Sea.
And this is where the reaction on our part from some part of the political establishment is interesting and only makes us shrug our shoulders in bewilderment.
The analyst mentioned above quotes the words of State Duma deputy Abdulkhakim Gadzhiev, which I would like to dwell on in more detail:
More recently, the CSTO saved the republic from chaos. Russia is aimed at developing mutually beneficial relations with Kazakhstan and other countries in all areas. I believe that it is better for our neighbors to follow the same approach. Yet our peoples have much more in common than with Western states. If Kazakhstan decided to let NATO in, then this is fraught with problems... The most striking example of this is Ukraine.
Right away: I agree with the deputy regarding the problems in the event of Astana’s integration into the North Atlantic Alliance - it is unlikely that things will come to formal accession, at least as long as Russia retains its strategic nuclear forces and demonstrates - albeit with a number of reservations - political will. And informal integration (we would call it absorption) is already underway, as Korenev rightly writes about.
So the warning quoted above is justified. A separate question: the levers of our influence on Astana. No, they certainly exist, and they are significant. But are we ready to use them?
Actually, a similar question arose to me after reading the first sentence in the above quote, which contains, I think, an unambiguous hint to the Kazakhs: you owe us.
But the appeal to emotions, to a sense of duty in Big game, from my point of view, is wrong.
Genuine politics (or, if we follow Bismarck's terminology, Realpolitik) must be built in a Machiavellian vein. And appealing to the moral side is nothing more than scoring a goal into one’s own goal.
The history of the Russian Empire, starting from the second quarter of the 19th century, is clear evidence of this. Just a few examples.
On foreign policy, the harmfulness of emotions and the phantom of consciousness
Let's start with Russian-Austrian relations. Crimean War. There are quite a lot of myths here, many of which are dispelled by the most magnificent series of articles by a military historian Sergei Makhov. One of them is called "Crimean War, Austrian reasons", and it is not difficult to find on the Internet.
I won’t retell it - read it. Worth it: very interesting and competent. As, indeed, the entire cycle, largely due to the author’s reliance on sources and research from the other side, some of which, as far as I understand, are either not taken into account or have not been introduced into scientific circulation in our country.
The only thing I will say is that the Austrians, who were almost dying after the Hungarian uprising, were not going to threaten us with war, which was the height of stupidity for Vienna.
But Nicholas I demanded support in the confrontation with the Ottoman Empire and the unfolding conflict with England and France, based on what was known from school: “We saved you.”
Well, then a strange leitmotif followed in our literature: about the black ingratitude of Austria, which allegedly took a hostile position towards us and almost threatened war. It’s strange, also because in politics there are interests, not gratitude.
However, there was essentially no black ingratitude directed at us from the banks of the Danube either: in a dual monarchy devastated by the civil war and experiencing an acute financial crisis, there was no time for participating in a major international conflict on anyone’s side.
That is, Vienna did not act by forgiving Russia, but taking into account the most complex military-political realities: in addition to the Hungarian uprising, it had very strained relations with Prussia, difficult ones with France and an explosive situation in the part of the Apennines subordinate to Habsburg. After all, less than ten years remained before Cavour paid for the blood of Sardinian soldiers in Crimea on the map of the Kingdom of Italy.
St. Petersburg, in its global plans for the division of the Ottoman Empire, was least willing to take into account Austrian interests in the Balkans. And then he took offense at Vienna’s position during the Eastern War, accusing the young Emperor Franz Joseph of God knows what.
And this resentment, seasoned with the extrapolation of St. Petersburg ideas onto the supposedly anti-Russian motivation of the political decisions of the Viennese court, migrated to the pages of Soviet textbooks - by the way, in general they are no match for the current ones, because they were both more meaningful and interesting, despite the bias.
Some naivety and short-sightedness in the field of international relations was inherited from Nicholas I to his son: Alexander II in 1878 at the Berlin Congress was afraid of the prospects of forming a new coalition against Russia, similar to the one that had formed on the eve of the Crimean War.
I was afraid of the phantom drawn in my own imagination. Well, what kind of coalition? As part of France, recently defeated by the Prussians, only in Russia and saw the guarantor of its security?
Germany? Bismarck played a game that was in line with the interests of the Second Reich, but would never have entered into a direct armed conflict with St. Petersburg, although he expressed displeasure regarding the Tsar’s reluctance to see the Third Republic defeated - Military alert 1875.
Austria, like France, relatively recently defeated by Prussia, least of all wanted war.
Oh yes, they write in the textbooks: the English fleet was brought into the Sea of Marmara when Russian troops stood at the walls of Constantinople. AND? What threat did he pose to the ground army and how did he prevent Skobelev from capturing Constantinople?
How Alexander II didn’t notice something so obvious behind the veil of emotions is beyond me. Although he could play in Berlin on the Italian-Austrian contradictions and use weighty arguments so that France would take a pro-Russian position at the conference. Yes, and with Bismarck it was possible to play a subtle, skillful diplomatic game of an anti-English orientation, perhaps taking the first step towards the implementation of the geopolitical idea later formulated by Haushofer. Alas, Gorchakov turned out to be old and clumsy.
But what happened happened. And nothing like this could, in principle, happen either under Catherine II or under Alexander I.
No wonder they, brilliant diplomats and unsentimental politicians, brought the Russian Empire to the peak of its power.
By the way, Napoleon tried to play on the emotions of Alexander I, who during his hundred days discovered in the table of Louis XVIII a copy of a secret secret that he had forgotten in his haste and had an anti-Russian orientation. Anglo-Austro-French treaty of January 3, 1815.
However, the Russian emperor was precisely a politician. Having given the Austrian Chancellor a theatrical beating, he, of course, did not spoil the beneficial relations between St. Petersburg and Vienna.
Here, since we are talking about emperors, we like to praise Alexander III for the thirteen years of peace sent down to Russia (we are, of course, not talking about peace in general, but about peace during the reign of the tsar nicknamed the Peacemaker, although he did not create any peace with anyone) .
However, if we analyze the situation that developed in the international arena at that time, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that large-scale military conflicts are impossible in principle, although the conditions for them were quite in the form of two military-political blocs that had been put together. But in the last quarter of the 19th century, everyone was preparing for war, and not planning to fight it right now.
In a word, our current diplomacy, as well as the deputy corps, whose activities affect the sphere of foreign policy, have someone to take an example from and learn from whose relatively recent mistakes by historical standards, and not to succumb to a very bad adviser - emotions. Nobody owes us anything, not even those we actually saved.
Russia: carrot and stick instead of “you owe us”
We have geopolitical interests, including in the vastness of Central Asia, which we must defend firmly and consistently. Let's say, from India, as I already wrote in one of the articles, we are gradually being forced out, not in a rude way, but in a bearish way.
And doesn’t this harm the interests of our defense industry, the damage to which will affect the budget, jobs in production, the outflow of young specialists who suddenly become unclaimed abroad (this already happened in the nineties) and, as a result, may give rise to social tension in the future?
In relation to Kazakhstan, the only force capable of neutralizing the hidden (more precisely, not even hidden, but slightly curtained by an almost transparent curtain and clearly visible) centrifugal tendencies, the penetration of radical groups acting under the banner of their understanding of Islam, is only Russia.
And this simple idea should be conveyed to our multi-vector colleagues in Astana. If, of course, they care about their country, and not about something else that has little to do with its interests.
In the end, in January 2022, through prompt military assistance, we retained their cozy bureaucratic positions, right up to the highest, not out of the goodness of our hearts, but based on our own geopolitical interests, within which there is no place for either advisory or other pro-American Centers in Kazakhstan.
True, on the other side is not Pashinyan, a product of social networks, but an experienced diplomat of the Soviet school, Tokayev, but, as it seems to me (am I mistaken?), he still cares about the good of his country. I'd like to play on this.
And we are not against a prosperous Kazakhstan - precisely Kazakhstan, and not a bunch of officials and bourgeois lured from overseas with accounts in British banks.
Использованная литература:
Korenev E. Dangerous rapprochement: what is behind the activation of NATO in Kazakhstan
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