The Sources of Kazakhstani Conduct

Robert M. Cutler

[ page 63 ]

The Sources of Kazakhstani Conduct

Robert M. Cutler

Two things are necessary for international politics to exist: scarce resources and human disputants. Scarce resources and human population have in common the fact of being dispersed across land. The study of the dispersion of scarce resources across land is geography, and that of human population dispersed across land is demography. Demography and geography are thus the starting points for the systematic empirical study of international politics.[1] They are indispensable for grasping the evolution of the first decade of Kazakhstani domestic and foreign conduct, and its prospects.[2]

1. The Periodization of Kazakhstan’s Early Foreign Policy

The beginning of Kazakhstani foreign policy was in fact how Nazarbaev related to the USSR as the latter was dissolving. This “pre-history” actually ended with Kazakhstan’s declaration of sovereignty over the natural resources on its territory in December 1990, a full year before the Soviet Union disintegrated. Nazarbaev advocated, with Yeltsin, the autonomy of union-republic diplomacy, this also being part of the Shatalin plan for Soviet economic reform.[3] He wanted to initiate ties with countries important to Kazakhstan by using the infrastructure of the Soviet diplomatic apparatus (placing counsellors in the major Soviet embassies overseas) whilst maintaining the intra-Soviet system of inter-republican relations.[4] Thus Nazarbaev was interested very early, from the late 1980s, in developing co-operative mechanisms in Central Asia, and this tendency naturally became a part of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy after independence. The first five years of the country’s foreign policy, starting from the December 1990 sovereignty declaration through November 1995 may be divided into three periods, as follows. (See also Table 1.)

[ page 64 ]

1.1. The “Tous Azimuts” Period:[5] December 1990 through May 1992

This period stretches from the declaration of sovereignty to the publication of the “strategic program” for independent Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. Kazakhstan’s formal declaration of independence and its signature of the founding documents of the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991 splits the tous azimutsperiod into two sub-periods. During the first sub-period, Kazakhstan’s international activity began to acquire a broader profile though still limited to Asia, with restrained diplomatic initiatives extending from Turkey to South Korea.

Despite Kazakhstan’s declaration on state sovereignty, the country was not planning on independence and anticipated, as a future member of the Union of Sovereign States (what Gorbachev wanted to call a reformulated USSR), neither having its own armed forces nor being a full member of the United Nations General Assembly. However, it would have participated in the UN’s specialized agencies, particularly in economic and social fields. Thus before the August 1991 coup in Moscow, Kazakhstan strove to develop foreign-political and foreign-economic activity autonomous of Moscow whilst weakening the centralized control of the Soviet Foreign Ministry over the international activities of its still-constituent republics. It did not have a foreign policy and was not seeking to develop one per se: the most one can say is that the country had “foreign” economic relations with other Soviet republics and that it to develop these with foreign countries, particularly China (especially the Xinjiang–Uyghur Autonomous Region), the “four dragons” of East Asia, and Turkey. Almaty was more concerned with asserting control, in the name of sovereignty, over the economic resources to be found on its own territory but which were subject to All-Union control from Moscow.[6]

[ page 65 ]

The formal disappearance of the USSR in December 1991 marks the beginning of the second sub-period of the tous azimuts period. Only after the unequivocal downfall of the Soviet regime in December 1991 did the initiatives of the first sub- period become embedded in a truly international profile. The scope of Kazakhstani diplomacy greatly increased. Whereas up to the end of 1991 it had an exclusively Asian orientation, in early 1992 Nazarbaev began to receive many Western delegations and himself approached the international financial institutions with a view towards obtaining credits to underwrite the interest shown by Western corporations investing in his country. He received a great deal of international publicity personally and his foreign travels brought a great deal of attention. The need to induce Kazakhstan to participate in the creation of an international regime to govern the management of the former Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory also enhanced the country’s profile.

1.2. The “Pentagonal” Period: May 1992 through July 1994

In May 1992 an authoritative programmatic document was published that enumerated five international regions of special interest to Kazakhstani diplomacy and identified countries in those regions on which Kazakhstan wished to focus attention.[7] The five international regions enumerated were the territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Asia–Pacific Region, Asia, Europe, and America. In the CIS region Russia was especially mentioned (but not Ukraine, which is also important to Kazakhstan). In the APR China is mentioned (but neither Japan nor South Korea, which are important sources of capital and technology). In Asia, the document gives special attention to Turkey (but omits Iran). In Europe, it mentions Germany (but ignores the United Kingdom and France). Finally, in the Americas, the United States of course receives special mention.

This “pentagonal” period lasted until summer 1994. It is split in two by Kazakhstan’s forced exit from the ruble zone in autumn 1993. It is extremely difficult to detect consistent patterns in the country’s international behaviour before that forced exit. There are three main reasons for this. First, despite the existence of the holdover national Supreme Soviet and other domestic political formations, there was an absence of political structures in Almaty capable of taking decisions in respect of foreign policy, as well as a lack of trained diplomats in the foreign ministry itself. Second, the immediate international environment was itself extremely fluid. Third, during this time—after the collapse of the Soviet Union and before the consolidation of the Russian State—Russia was attempting to find the instruments through which

[ page 66 ]

to assert its interest in Central Asia, including the re-appropriation of the Soviet army by Russia (as opposed to the alternative of the time, its transformation into a CIS army).

The country’s economic performance was gloomy. In early 1993, total output was down by one-seventh in comparison with the same period in 1992, including a significant decline in the agricultural sector, and national income was down by one-sixth in comparison with the comparable period in 1992. Prices for food and industrial goods rose between 2.5 and three times whilst wages rose by only 1.5 times. Reformist figures in the government began calling for “shock therapy” on the Polish model. In July 1993, the IMF approved US$86 million dollars in credit for Kazakhstan from its “systemic transformation facility” as a reward for improved tax collection, lower state spending and reduced state subsidies. Small- scale and medium-scale privatization accelerated by the autumn of 1993, but total production was still down by one-quarter in comparison with 1991. The disastrous decline of 70 per cent in capital investment resulted principally from the creation of trade barriers within the former USSR and consequent loss of principal export markets.[8]

After being pushed out of the ruble zone in autumn 1993, Kazakhstan introduced its own currency and made yet another approach for help to the international financial institutions of the West. These institutions made encouraging noises and undertook policy studies oriented towards the mid-term future, but they did not yet offer whole- hearted support. The winter of early 1994 was extremely harsh and drove home to the Almaty leadership the degree of their dependence upon Russia. That spring, therefore, they began preparations for the decision, taken in summer, to enhance economic co-ordination within the CIS, not only inter- governmentally but also at the multilateral level of the CIS’s newly founded co-ordinating institutions. The failure to meet the 1993 budget deficit target of 6 per cent of GDP (in the event, the performance was double this), followed by a further 27 per cent decline in GDP for the first half of the year with monthly inflation over 40 per cent, led to adoption of the “fifteen- month anti-crisis program” in mid-1994. The need to resolve the economic crisis had become the driving force behind Kazakhstani foreign policy.

1.3. The “Crisis Program” Period: August 1994 through October 1995

This period is the crucible out of which the current trends of Kazakhstani foreign policy emerged. It represents the first sorting-through of the five possible directions established during the pentagonal period. Although a turn towards Russia and China is especially marked since the late 1990s, this tendency can be seen to be in evidence earlier in the decade. Indeed, after one

[ page 67 ]

last unsuccessful push in the direction of the Arab countries in a search for investment capital, Kazakhstani diplomacy began a reorientation towards Central and East Asia as from the end of 1994. The Japanese–Chinese summit meeting in 1994 symbolized Chinese approval of Japanese investment in Central Asia, on the back of which Chinese political influence was intended to follow, and has indeed followed.

Nazarbaev adopted the IMF’s recommendation for a variety of shock therapy, but government corruption blocked his plans for reform. In autumn 1994, when one part of this scandal was revealed, he forced the resignation of the entire Cabinet of Ministers. However, many of the old ministers insinuated themselves into other bureaucracies. During 1994 small-scale and even medium-scale privatization proceeded fairly well, but bureaucratic obstacles blocked large-scale privatization. This produced further economic decline throughout 1995 as well as 1994, although the inflation that had galloped at a monthly rate of 20 to 40 per cent a month in the first half of 1994 declined to 10 to 12 per cent by the start of 1995. Yet even a decline in the inflation rate in 1995 and a rallying of the tenge’s rate of exchange against the dollar that summer were not enough to reverse the country’s new diplomatic course.

The country had followed Western prescriptions concerning the country’s nuclear policy as well as economic reform, but the result was nothing but the aggravation of the country’s economic downturn and a recipe for further austerity. After Western diplomacy had signalled approval of President Yeltsin’s shelling of the Russian parliament and failed to register any objection to Karimov’s referendum in Uzbekistan on extending his term of office, Nazarbaev found no reason to hesitate to dissolve parliament in Almaty, rewrite the constitution, and hold a referendum on extending his own term of office. His disdainful remarks about the inapplicability of the Western of models to the political development of Kazakhstan date from early 1995. As the period of the fifteen-month crisis program began to come to an end, official statements in Almaty made clear that the eastward re-orientation of Kazakhstani diplomacy was by then well established.

2. Geography and Demography: Essential Sources of Kazakhstani Foreign Policy

To situate the conduct of Kazakhstani diplomacy since 1995, it is necessary to situate the country in time and space, not only internationally but also nationally. Figure 1 depicts the administrative divisions within the country at independence, with reference to the following description and analysis.

[ page 68 ]

2.1. Description

Kazakhstan’s foreign policy is shaped by geographical and demographic circumstances. Although it is the seventh-largest country in the world by surface area (slightly less than four times the size of Texas), it had at independence a population of only about 17 million, concentrated on its periphery. Nearly all major cities, including the Caspian Sea ports, are within 150 miles of an international border, and the total land border is 7,500 miles. Slightly over half of it is with Russia, one-sixth is with Uzbekistan, and one-eighth with China. With the exception of the Tien Shan mountains in the southeast, virtually none of the land border is defined by naturally occurring boundaries. The country’s border on the Aral Sea is about 600 miles, and on the Caspian Sea nearly twice that. It is landlocked.

Slightly over half the country is composed of meadows and pastures, one-sixth is arable land, and the remainder is largely desert and marsh.

[ page 69 ]

Agricultural production traditionally accounted for about two-fifths of the domestic product, employing one-quarter of the labour force largely in grain production (mostly spring wheat) but also in animal husbandry (meat, cotton, and wool). Beyond its huge natural energy resources (not limited to petroleum but also including coal and natural gas), its other resources—including metal ores and also agriculture—are likewise formidable. In the early 1990s, industry accounted for one-third of domestic product, concentrated in extractive industries (oil, coal, iron ore, manganese, chromite, lead, zinc, copper, titanium, bauxite, gold, silver, phosphates, sulphur), iron and steel, nonferrous metal, tractors and other agricultural machinery, electric motors, construction materials.[9]

Communication and transport—the constraints which have historically conditioned human settlement—still govern Kazakhstan’s economic geography. Patterns of human settlement in Kazakhstan consequently follow waterways and railroads. With a slight degree of imagination, the shape of Kazakhstan can be construed as a goldfish in profile, facing toward the right, with a truncated dorsal fin. It comprises three great macro-regions. The bifurcated tail comprises western Kazakhstan; the gills and ventral fin, southern Kazakhstan; the body of goldfish, northern and central Kazakhstan.[10]

Large areas of the western macro-region of Kazakhstan are desert or marsh. Over a third of the population resides in the provincial capitals, which in turn represent more than two- thirds of the region’s total urban population. The general population density is less than 1.4 per square kilometre. In these far-flung reaches, it is not difficult for local elites to pursue policies divergent from those preferred by the centre. These regional governments have sought economic autonomy and a larger share of the oil revenue. Clan structures in the west of the country have also sought greater political autonomy. This complex of circumstances can threaten to destabilize Kazakhstan’s delicate equilibrium and its relations with Russia, as well as co-opt any political prefects sent from Almaty.

The southern macro-region has nearly two-fifths of the entire country’s population. Four-fifths of the region’s 6.5 million inhabitants reside in its three main provinces (plus the city of Almaty). Huge tracts of all five of these provinces are desert, but there is also rich agricultural land and farming. Human settlement follows the main waterways (the Syr-Darya, Talas and Ili Rivers, and adjacent Lake Balkhash) and rail lines (parallel to the Syr-

[ page 70 ]

Darya, diverging eastward to Shymkent, Zhambyl, Chu, and Taldy-Kurgan). Social and economic life in this macro-region is organized around collective agricultural production and the management of irrigation, the Syr-Darya and Ili Rivers in particular. Wittfogel’s classic category of “Oriental despotism” is therefore a proper characterization of it.[11] The accentuation of this modality of authority in Nazarbaev’s rule is evident in his disparaging remarks about the applicability of western democratic forms to his country, and in his turning toward East Asia as a model for development after dissolving parliament.

The provinces in central and northern Kazakhstan represent the main body of the goldfish, including its nose and truncated dorsal fin. Here the patterns are more complex. The entire northern tier of Kazakhstan, above the fiftieth or fifty- first parallel, represents a distinct sub-region: this is where Russian interest was historically directed from the Tsarist period on. Three rivers and three rail lines determined almost exclusively the pattern of human settlement. Moreover, the cities near the border always had and still have significant trade with nearby cities in Russia itself. Yet even this Russian region has a differentiated history. In fact there are two areas of historical Russian concentration, one greater than the other and including it.

The smaller is a wide strip shadowing the border and principally including the industrial concentrations connected with natural resource exploitation and heavy industry. On this “shadow” of the border between Russia and Kazakhstan, a larger area is superimposed that includes those agricultural lands historically settled by Russians. These are not limited to the Virgin Lands of Khrushchevian fame; they stretch down almost to the central part of the country.[12] (Only the latter is shown in the map in Figure 1.) This area in fact largely coincides with the area historically occupied by the northern Kazakh zhuz. The dates of foundation of the provincial capitals even indicate the three waves of Russian settlement in Kazakhstan: in the extreme east and extreme north during the mid-eighteenth century; in the northeast and the north-centre, in the early and mid- nineteenth century; and further in north and centre, in the mid-twentieth century. The province in eastern Kazakhstan was settled even earlier, and is historically and demographically linked with the northern part of the Virgin Lands area, although economically distinct from it. The other major sub-region of north-central Kazakhstan is known as the “Polygon”. This “polygon” is the area exposed to radioactive fallout from the nuclear test range at Semei (Semipalatinsk). It

[ page 71 ]

formed the political base of the People’s Congress Party, which Nazarbaev co-opted on his way to power.

The Polygon intersects with the region of the Virgin Lands campaign and the historical area of Russian agricultural and industrial settlement, mainly in the Pavlodar, Aqmola, and part of Qaragandy provinces. This area of intersection is crucial to maintaining of economic integration and political cohesion northern Kazakhstan with the central part of the country. Maintaining that cohesion of north-central Kazakhstan is in turn necessary to assure the existence of unified political and economic entity on the entire country’s territory. These three provinces are a key for maintaining the demographic and economic unity of the north-central macro-region of the country. That north-central macro-region is in turn the largest of the three geographic macro- regions in the country and represents the only “pole of attraction” that can hold the west and the south together. Qaragandy province indeed represents the southern limit of the traditional northern zhuz habitation and the northern limit and is the geographic transition between the northern and central parts of contemporary Kazakhstan. (It also happens to include the city of Temirtau where Nazarbaev begin his political career three

[ page 72 ]

decades ago, as well as the new capital Aqmola, recently renamed Astana.)

2.2. Analysis

Nazarbaev is faced with the task of guaranteeing the integrity of the country as against the multitudinous forces threatening to tear it apart. He must literally hold together the three key, far-flung regions of the country. The oil-rich regions of the west look to export to western markets and already draw western capital. The provinces in the north-central region are indissolubly tied with the corresponding trans-frontier regions in southern Siberia. China has been stepping into the vacuum in Central Asia whilst Western powers were preoccupied with the false image of Turkish–Iranian competition for influence.[13]

The need to assure the unity of these separate regional centres, complicated by the relative absence of communications links, is one major explanation of the multifaceted decision to relocate the capital of the country to Astana (recently renamed from Aqmola). Also this city lies less than one hundred miles from Temirtau, where Nazarbaev (a member of the southern zhuz but only one of its smaller and less influential families) began his career three decades ago. It is a means to draw East Asian investment into the centre of the country, where he began his political career in the late 1960s. Japanese (and until the recent Asian financial crisis, Korean) investment is already playing a role in carrying out the construction program necessary to transform Astana into a real national capital, thus reinforcing its politically integrative potential and accelerating its economic development. Nazarbaev has at the same time been working to rationalize the absurd flows of goods inherited from the Soviet period. Kazakhstan produces electricity in the northeast, for example, but exports it to Russia and therefore must import electricity from Uzbekistan. It also produces natural gas in the central-west part of the country but exports this to Russia and therefore has been building gas pipelines to Almaty so as not to have to import natural gas from Turkmenistan. Recent discoveries of gas deposits in the south of the country will further decrease that dependence.

The economy of the western region is based mainly on oil, that of the southern mainly on agriculture, and that of the northern and central mainly on extractive industry with some agriculture. The hearts of these three macro-regions are respectively the two oil-rich provinces on the Caspian Sea, the three most heavily populated provinces in the south (plus Almaty city) and the three provinces representing the overlap between the “polygon” and the Virgin Lands region. These provinces comprise barely one-third of the land area of the country but nearly two- thirds of the population as well as two-thirds of the country’s economic product. It is no exaggeration to say that the nexus of the national-unity problem in Kazakhstan is to knit together these diverse regions of these countries, whilst promoting each of them to develop its own propensities and developing the centre of the country as a political, economic, nexus uniting the diverse parts.

3. Kazakhstani Foreign Policy since the End of 1995

The period since the end has been one of sorting through, and choosing amongst, the five strategic directions laid out in the 1992 programmatic document. The preliminary choices made during the “Crisis Program” period, in favour of the priority of Russia and China, have only been underlined since then.[13a] Here I wish to stress that Kazakhstan, due to its international profile including the geographic and demographic situation here described, and also for reasons of domestic institutional weakness and ethnic pluralism, has favoured multilateral approaches wherever possible.

As early as the failed coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, whilst the Soviet Union still formally existed, Nazarbaev saw a danger of the USSR breaking apart into Slavic and Turkic camps. Since it would have had very detrimental effects upon Kazakhstan’s prospects for the stable development if the CIS had turned into an exclusively Slavic union, he motivated the convocation of the Central Asian republics where they announced their desire to be founding members of the CIS.

[ page 73 ]

Another multilateral initiative from the early and mid-1990s was Nazarbaev’s proposal for the creation of a Euro–Asiatic Union (EAU). This falls in line with the importance of managing relations with Russia. The idea behind this initiative was that the CIS was moribund and bogged down in peace and security matters, and that another organization “naturally developing” from out of the CIS was required to promote deeper financial integration and economic co-operation. The EAU was stillborn when Uzbekistan declined to participate, in part because of differences with Russia (notably over Tajikistan) and in part out of competition with Kazakhstan for priority in Central Asian diplomacy. Eventually this initiative was transformed into the “Union of the Four” of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan, because Russia needed a political cover for managing its relations with Belarus at a time when these bilateral relations were complicated Russian unwillingness to institute a talked-about currency union.

The Union of the Four, known as the CIS Customs Union after the March 1996 document they subsequently adopted, became five when Tajikistan joined in December 1998. Following this, in February 1999, a new customs agreement was adopted, which formed the basis for the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), created in October 2000. The new institution will be recognized as a regional international organization within the UN system and will represent its members as a body in certain negotiations. Nazarbaev became Chairman of new organization’s Inter-state Council at the end of May 2001, with the ambitious agenda of harmonizing its members’ policies in the areas of tax law, customs regulations and foreign trade as well as labour migration.

The “Shanghai Five” grouping was originally set up in 1996 in order to delimit and demilitarize the border between China and CIS countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan). As the eruption of Islamic militancy in the region altered the participating countries’ threat perceptions, the focus of co-operation has shifted to assuring political stability. At the August 1999 summit in Bishkek, an agreement on combating terrorism was reached. At the 2000 summit in Tajikistan, the participating countries’ defence ministers agreed to carry out joint military exercises and discuss improvements to the earlier military agreements. It was also decided at the 2000 summit that it was desirable to convert the multilateral mechanism into a more formal regional institution. President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan attended the 2000 summit in Dushanbe as an observer, and his country joined in 2001. This is a natural development of the consolidation of regional international systems after the end of the transition from the post–Cold War period.

It was in 2001 that the co-operation was institutionalized as the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) with a permanent secretariat and wide-ranging inter-ministerial conferences. For example, an SCO meeting scheduled in Kazakhstan for September, the organization’s first

[ page 74 ]

conference at the prime-ministerial level, to focus on economic co-operation. Other co-operation initiatives endorsed in Shanghai include a Chinese proposal for the six ministers of culture to meet in Beijing later this year and a Russian proposal that their disaster relief departments meet in Russia in the spring of 2002. There is also an intention to hold regular meetings of national ministers of education as an axis for developing co-operation in the humanitarian field.

The creation of a joint rapid deployment force at an “anti-terrorism centre” in Bishkek raises the spectre, in the minds of some observers, of Chinese and Russian troops eventually stationed together in Central Asia at the core of a military and political bloc. It is noteworthy that the anti-terrorist centre to be established in Bishkek will function as such a centre for both the SCO and the CIS.

Importantly, the SCO will have working relations with another regional diplomatic initiative, the also recently institutionalized Conference on Interactions and Measures of Trust [i.e., Confidence-Building] in Asia (CIMTA), which Kazakhstan has promoted for the last decade. CIMTA is not a collective security regime or an “Asian CSCE/OSCE” because collective security regime and the CSCE/OSCE both emerged from specific historical European circumstances.[14] After a decade of work, it has proven possible to establish the geographical scope of the participating countries, establish what would and would not duplicate the activities of other organizations and structures, overcome (at least in principle) cultural differences, and adopt a common statement of principles that bears interesting comparison with the Final Document of the 1975 Helsinki Conference.

The prospect for development of economic co- operation in SCO and the EEC appear as the death-knell for the moribund Central Asian Union (CAU) and its trilateral development bank. The principal roadblock to the CAU’s development during the 1990s was the insistence by Uzbekistan’s President Karimov on maintaining multiple exchange rates for the som and restrictions on foreign exchange, which complicated even the implementation of a payments union.[15] The recent apparent modification of these policies is “too little, too late” to revive the CAU.

4. Conclusion

The western region of Kazakhstan, where the developed industrial democracies have concentrated their investment mainly in the energy sector, brings out, in terms introduced by the German sociologist Max Weber, the

[ page 75 ]

‘charismatic’ component of Nazarbaev’s authority.[16] What focused western attention upon resource development in Kazakhstan, originally giving confidence that such foreign direct investment would ultimately be rewarding, was the international publicity and profile given to the person of Nazarbaev, and the impressive manner of his representation of his country abroad.

In response to the growing demographic and political weight of the southern region, Nazarbaev has turned towards traditionalist and authoritarian modes of exercising authority. This conforms to the cultural inheritance of the ethno-nationalist Kazakhs in the south. This region populated by the southern zhuz, the largest of the three historical Hordes, still organizes its economy around fertile agricultural exploitation, despite industrial concentrations such as Shymkent inherited from the Soviet period.[17] The traditional social organization of this region of the country was not wholly destroyed by the Soviet regime but rather adapted and transformed itself into the institutions of Soviet rule.

The north-central region is marked by heavy concentrations of mono- industrial, mono-functional settlements such as the coal pits in Ekibastuz and elsewhere, including heavy industrial plants historically consuming the output of these mining industries. He thus has a natural affinity for this region, where the former Soviet bureaucracy was most heavily implanted under the Soviet regime due to the strong concentration of ethnic Russians and the importance of natural resource extraction in that region of the national economy of the USSR. This, then, is the cultural and historical basis for the Nazarbaev’s exercise of, in Weberian terms, the bureaucratic modality of authority in independent Kazakhstan.

To summarize, in the western region of Kazakhstan, where foreign direct investment from the industrial democracies is greatly concentrated because of the petrochemical reserves, Nazarbaev’s exercise of authority is animated by the modality that Weber identified as charismatic. The region of the south, heavily Kazakh, has marked his management of domestic as well as foreign relations with an imprint of the traditional mode of authority. The north-central region, oriented towards Russia, carries the bureaucratic mode authority into Nazarbaev’s governance and foreign conduct. The three provinces in the north-central macro- region are even more problematic than the hearts of the two other macro-regions, because these provinces are not the nucleus of a relatively homogenous macro-region but rather intersection of two distinct sub-

[ page 76 ]

regions. This multiplicity of domestic geo-cultural bases for Kazakhstani foreign conduct provides an explanation of the multifarious, sometimes contradictory, policies and discourses that Nazarbaev has deployed to internal and external audiences since independence. These domestic geo-cultural bases are each associated with one principal geopolitical direction, and they account not only for the high profile of multilateralist initiatives in the country’s foreign policy but also, and in a consistent manner, for the variety and combination of leadership styles that Nazarbaev has evinced over the last decade.

Notes

[ page 63 ]

[Note 1]. If justification of this is needed, see inter alia, A.F.K. Organski, World Politics, 2nd ed. rev. (New York: Knopf, 1968), chap. 7; Klaus Knorr (ed.), Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1976); Klaus Knorr and Frank H. Trager (eds.), Economic Issues and National Security (Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977).

[Note 2]. For background, see the various chapters in Robert A. Lewis (ed.), Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia (London: Routledge, 1992).

[Note 3]. Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1996), pp. 418–427.

[Note 4]. U. Kasenov, “Kazakhstan—sub″ekt federatsii: Obsuzhdaem pro″ekt Soiuznogo dogovora: III. Suverenitet Kazakhstana: vneshnepoliticheskie aspekty,” Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 1 February 1991, p. 5.

[ page 64 ]

[Note 5]. “Tous azimuts” is taken from Charles DeGaulle’s description of French nuclear policy in the 1960s, and roughly translated means “omni-directional.”

[Note 6]. This was a general Central Asian tendency at the time; for an Uzbek view, see M. Mirsaidov, “Za ekonomicheskii suverenitet: Mnenie uchenogo,” Pravda vostoka, 25 September 1990, p. 5.

[ page 65 ]

[Note 7]. First published as N.A. Nazarbaev, “Strategiia stanovleniia i razvitiia Kazakhstana kak suverennogo gosudarstva,” Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 16 May 1992, Special Supplement; subsequently widely translated and republished.

[ page 66 ]

[Note 8]. “Sotsial′no-ekonomicheskoe polozheniie Kazakhstana v 1993 godu,” in Gosudarstvennyi komitet respubliki Kazakhstan po statistike i analizu [hereafter Goskomstat RK], Kratkii statisticheskii ezhegodnik Kazakhstana (Almaty: Kazinformtsentr, 1994), pp. 7–30.

[ page 69 ]

[Note 9]. Goskomstat RK, Regional′nyi statisticheskii ezhegodnik Kazakhstana (Almaty: Kazinformtsentr, 1993), passim.

[Note 10]. On the cultural origins of these geographic divisions, from the standpoint of domestic Kazakhstani political development, see Zhanylzhan Dzhunusova, “Democratic Traditions in Kazakh Nomadic Society,” paper presented to the Central Asia Research Seminar (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, Islamic Area Studies Project, 4 December 2000), accessed at <http://www.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/IAS/HP- e2/papers/U1dzhunusova.html> on 31 July 2001.

[ page 70 ]

[Note 11]. Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Hydraulic Civilizations,” in William L. Thomas, Jr. (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 152–164; Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959).

[Note 12]. For excellent background, see Philip S. Gillette, “Ethnic Balance and Imbalance in Kazakhstan’s Regions,” Central Asia Monitor, 1993, no. 3, pp. 17–23.

[ page 71 ]

[Note 13]. Typical of the Turkey/Iran emphasis of the time are: Paul-Marie de la Gorce, “L’avenir des anciennes républiques musulmanes de l’URSS: La modernité d’Ankara contre le pétrole de Téhéran,” Jeune Afrique, 32 (5–11 March 1992), pp. 5–11; Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson, “Ambitious Iran, Troubled Neighbors,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 1 (January–February 1993): 124–141; and Oles M. Smolansky, “Turkish and Iranian Policies in Central Asia,” in Hafeez Malik (ed.), Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), chap. 15.

[Note 13a]. [This sentence was written before September 11, 2001. Compare Robert M. Cutler, “The Shattering of the Sino-Russian Entente over the Shape of Central Asia?” Central Asia–Caucasus Analyst, vol. 3, no. 24 (21 November 2001): 7–8.]

[ page 74 ]

[Note 14]. T. Suleimenov, “O nekotorykh aktual′nykh napravleniiakh vneshnei politiki Kazakhstana,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn′, 1994, no. 1, pp. 32–38.

[Note 15]. Author’s interviews with diplomatic representatives from Central Asia and the West, New York, June 1997.

[ page 75 ]

[Note 16]. Max Weber, “Legitimate Order and Types of Authority” (excerpt from The Theory of Social and Economic Organization), in Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils, Kaspar D. Naegele, and Jesse R. Pitts (eds.), Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, 2 vols. in 1 (New York: The Free Press, 1961), pp. 229–35.

[Note 17]. This is also reflected in programmatic statements of the ethnic Kazakh political movements in the early 1990s: see “Kontseptsiiia ekonomicheskogo razvitiia Kazakhstana,” Jeltoqsan (Almaty), 1992, no. 2, p. 4; Qazaqstannynh ulttyq demokratiialyq partiiasynyng, “Baghdarlamasy,” Elim-ai (Taldyqorghan), 1993, no. 5, pp. 1–2.

 
Text: Copyright © Robert M. Cutler <rmc@alum.mit.edu>
First Web- published: 20 July 2007
Content last modified: 20 July 2007
For individual, non-commerical use only.
This Web-based compilation: Copyright © Robert M. Cutler
See reprint info if you want to reproduce anything in any medium.
This document address (URL): http://www.robertcutler.org/download/html/ch02mg.html
Format last tweaked: 23 October 2014
You accessed this page: 16 December 2024