What is Eurasia? - Stephen Kotkin

you [Music] beginning with someone I take special delight in introducing because once upon a time way back in the last century when Stephen Kotkin was a graduate student at UC Berkeley he once served as a TA for the survey course in modern history a survey course taught by Walter MacDougall today Steve Kotkin is the berkland professor of history and international affairs at a small school up the road from here known as Princeton University he's also the director of the Princeton Institute for international and regional studies he Co directs the program in in the history and practice of diplomacy and is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University Kotkin is the author contributor and/or the editor of about a dozen books including magnetic mountain Stalinism as a civilization Steeltown USSR Soviet society in the Gorbachev era on civil society 1989 and the implosion of the Communist establishment and a particularly elegant book which I assigned to my seminar on the rise and fall of the great powers Armageddon averted the Soviet collapse 1970 to 2000 but most of all Kotkin is the author of Stalin Volume one paradoxes of power 1878 to 1928 with two more volumes to follow the next of which I'm Alan tells me is due out on Halloween just a few weeks from now Kotkin is the definitive biographer therefore of the Soviet dictator and indeed his first volume was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize but somehow this youthful scholar youthful compared to me where are you Steve oh there you are this youthful scholar and educator has also found time to establish Princeton's global history initiative he's co-founded a series of books on Northeast Asia and he he directs the program in Russian and Eurasian studies and has served as vice Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School Wow we couldn't imagine a person more qualified to open this conference on the identity and world importance of Eurasia and we are thrilled he was willing and able to do so please join me in welcoming professor Steve Kotkin good morning everyone I thank fbri for the honor of the invitation it's a fantastic organization as you know its mission its values which I share I was Walter MacDougall's TA in the play-doh to NATO class as it used to be called to call it now play-doh to NATO is almost a thought crime because it seems to belittle others but that's what it was called back then informally and strangely enough the course was about values it was about the values of Western civilization and for many of the other TAS and they were probably almost a dozen of us it was a very large class at Berkeley the idea that you would teach a class and try to teach values was difficult to assimilate most of those TAS thought that Walter Mondale was the Republican candidate that's how far to the left they were yes I'm serious yes anyway it was quite an experience for me and I'm still grateful to this day and it feels a little weird to be the one on the stage rather than to have Walter be the one on the stage which was how it was back then and the plate on a nail so today believe it or not I'm gonna steal from Walter and give a lecture which is rooted in a sense of values just as he did that was already 35 years ago I think that class I've been at Princeton for 29 years I arrived in September 1989 to teach my first class on communism and they pull the wall down in November yeah that's the feeling I had huh what does this mean you know the old joke about how your notes are yellow and you have to rip them up this is my first class I don't have any notes yet they weren't yellow weren't any color yeah so that was quite the experience good timing as they say anyway so today I want to talk a little bit about Eurasia and I want to make three large points and then have a what I hope is a discussion with you meaning rather than give a detailed lecture I'm going to give three bullet points illustrate them a little bit and see if we can't then interact what might be useful for you my son is in high school and he is taking AP World History he's a sophomore in high school in New York City I myself am a co-author of a world history textbook and so I look at his material it's quite interesting he's got a fantastic teacher and I tried not to get too close to him on this because it's enough already that I'm living in the same house with him let along and I'm gonna look over his shoulder but I get what it is that you guys do I appreciate it very much so let's see if I can help a little bit add some value in this enterprise so the first thing about Eurasia is it seems to be a geographic term seems to be Geographic that is to say it's the area between Europe and Asia or the area that connects Europe and Asia well yeah except that you know the Europeans invented the concept of continent and of course a continent by European definition is as you know a body of land surrounded on all sides by water and of course that's not true of Europe and it's also not true of Asia but it is true of Eurasia so ironically enough Eurasia fits the definition of continent in a way that Europe and Asia don't fit the definition of continent but we don't tend to think of Eurasia as a continent or as an entity unto itself we instead think about Europe and Asia as distinct civilizations that have some meeting points somewhere in the middle and there have been an argument over the centuries about where is the boundary between Europe and Asia is it the Ural Mountains right which some people have argued is the case that's the boundary is it instead where Russian civilization begins in other words there's a kind of European civilization and then there's a Russian civilization and I could go on with other definitions about you or is there no boundary at all which some people have argue anyway so we have this Geographic concept but the geographic concept is actually difficult it doesn't really work especially because over the years we've assigned a high value to European civilisation or to Europe not just in geographic terms but in values terms and so anything which is not Europe is somehow less lesser than Europe and civilization or values terms and so therefore the struggle of the fight over the European Asian boundary should there be one is really a fight over you know who it counts in civilizational terms or who's higher on the hierarchy so we don't need to fight that fight ourselves we don't need to get involved in that take sides and that we just need to be aware that that is what's happening so the geographic conversation which seems neutral is actually not neutral it's all political and values laid right the Chinese are not worried about whether they're European or not they don't really use the term Eurasia they're not trying to compare themselves to Europe or try to be above Europe or part of Europe because they're China they have their own classical traditions they have their own ancient lineage and trajectory right they don't need Rome or Greece in other words because they have the Tong dynasty and everything else you know then if you look at some of the other options there is a Russian Eurasia or a Soviet Eurasia right that is to say those lands controlled either from Saint Petersburg in the Czarist period or from Moscow in the Soviet period that leaves out a lot of stuff it leaves out the Iranian story it leaves out the Ottoman story it and it leaves out the Chinese story all of which you'll be hearing about during the course of these couple of days so the the Eurasia category is one in which you can see the Chinese are not as worried about precisely because they don't have this complex about whether they belong to Europe or not now Russia is the hinge here because Russia is European but it's not Western because Western is of values and institutional concept not a geographical concept Japan is not European but it is Western it's Western and values and institutions and we have this conflation which gives us a lot of confusion and difficulty between European and Western people arguing you know that the Russians are not really West not really European or that they are European and this battle right well in fact they the Russians are definitely European there's no question about that not only but they are European but that's doesn't mean they're West and because Western is about what kind of institutions you have rule of law my protection of private property and civil liberties freedom of expression freedom of movement all the things that EU members today are supposed to have Russia doesn't have those things that's why it's not Western this is not a prejudice against Russia this is a description ok so a little bit of self-consciousness about the terminology even the geographical stuff as I said is not neutral so that's my point number one once again I'm going to do three bullet points and then we're going to have a conversation on whatever issues you think I fail to clarify you'd like more information on now there are obviously rival conceptions of Eurasia at play here in the Geographic sense right today's Turkey has an understanding of Eurasia which has to do with the glories of the Ottoman past and the potential glories of Turkey today and going forward they don't see this place as Russian or yet right they see this place Eurasia this Geographic term as part of a Turkish or ottoman pest the Iranians as well now once again the Chinese don't use the expression but they're the ones building an actual Eurasia a grand Eurasia China they have this one belt one road initiative that you've heard about which involves nearly a hundred countries on paper and is about building infrastructure and connecting this vast landmass you know all the way to the channel connecting all of that to China through oil and gas pipelines through roads through railroads especially ports and so the Chinese are less obsessed with Eurasia because for them the cultural stuff they have their own but in fact in practical terms they're the ones building a grand Eurasia right now now the one belt one road initiative is a economic boondoggle most authoritarian regimes will not fully adhere to market principles when they invest capital or they allocate capital and so you get a political allocation of capital which doesn't always work well in the end because the stuff is not built or it's not though properly or it's not built in a cost-effective fashion and that comes back to bite you the lack of cost-effectiveness right bridges to nowhere we all know that phenomenon when money gets allocated for political reasons or political lobbying sometimes it pans out economically and sometimes it does so I don't expect the one belt one road initiative to be fully successful I expect it to produce a lot of waste and a lot of fraud and corruption and also a lot of bridges to nowhere at the same time it is a grand geopolitical project about Chinese power in the world going forward and therefore will have significant consequences and is already having significant consequence so just to finish up on the geographic piece here the bullet point one if you look at a map I'm sorry I didn't bring maps this morning but then again this is a room that I don't have to teach geography to unlike most rooms where I give a speech or a lecture right if you look at a map the most important geopolitical geographical geo-economic fact about China is that it has no California no California right the United States is a superpower that has chosen as it were a really advantageous geography to the north is Canada to the south is Mexico to the east fish and to the west fish again that's a very easy environment to be in and the west coast of the United States opens up into what we call the Pacific Rim it couldn't be more advantageous it is a very significant military buffer the Pacific Ocean and at the same time it's a highway of for commerce to an extremely rich dynamic region where all the people live so it couldn't be better China however has a very different geography they have land and sea borders with 20 countries that's the most of any country in the world today so they and they have a lot of disputes territorial disputes with many of their neighbors because the Chinese are ambitious and because it passed settlements of geographical disputes weren't always accepted they were imposed but the main thing about China is if you move to the west what you find that is with your internal China and you're moving to the west of the country what you find is gigantic desert and that desert is expanding for ecological reasons right the Chinese if if every person in China drinks one or two extra glasses of water a day over the next ten years that does it'll hit Beijing that's how fast that desert is moving so they have ecological challenge in the Western regions it's not propitious geography and then they also have kind of ethnic political challenges there because that's where their Muslim population still lives and that's where Tibet is and the regions that are bordering shinjang new province is the translation of Xinjiang Western China as well as the Tibetan Plateau now of course many Han Chinese are moving in as migrants but nonetheless there is continued unrest there that's political problems so that's their California desert and unrest and so what the Chinese are doing is they're building a California through Pakistan and Burma that is to say they're gaining access to the ocean the Indian Ocean by building infrastructure railroads pipelines and through Pakistan and Burma and then building ports on the sea in Pakistan and Burma this gives them an outlet this gives them a California of course it's much more difficult to build a California through Pakistan and Burma which are not actually stable places than it is to build a California through California which everything you can say about California it's nonetheless integral part of the the same country the United States right and so to the Chinese right if they want to expand their influence and power globally land is one way there's greater Eurasia through the one belt one road but a big part of that is the sea and the sea it is blocked from them in the West and so Pakistan and Burma are their main outlets this is why Pakistan and Burma are central to China's geopolitical ambitions and of course the United States has a fraught relation with Pakistan but refuses to abandon Pakistan entirely even though we suspect and more than suspected Pakistan is supporting the Taliban for example in Afghanistan who are killing American soldiers and also we don't want to abandon Burma or Myanmar there now they've expelled as you know several hundred thousand Muslim Rohingya from Burma from Myanmar nonetheless if we abandon them entirely or we criticize them to the point where they abandon us this plays into Chinese hands so this is why in part not wholly no not alone but in part that we cannot really quote give up not really take to harder line on Pakistan and Burma because of their strategic significance as China's potential California anyway so this is the number one point the the big geographical point you can see that it's really fraught it's not a neutral concept it's got its value Laden it's politics laden and its competitive rival risks in a great power sense and all of this is going to be true going forward right Russia considers itself an ancient civilization Iran an ancient civilization Turkey an ottoman empire an ancient civilization and China an ancient civilization they all have claims that compete with each other's claims that are rooted in a sense of grand history very grand history now they can cooperate to a certain extent and they do cooperate because this is now going to bring me to point number two and this is what I'm going to take the values discussion a little bit deeper and that's that Eurasia is an illiberal concept it's not always anti Western for example kazakhstan kazakhstan uses the term Eurasia to try to balance west and east because their neighbors with Russia and China and could potentially be swallowed up by one or both as has happened in the past so they need friendly relations with the west and they call themselves Eurasia in terms a bridge between east and west so they're not anti-western by any means Kazakhstan however Eurasia and also if you throw in the Turkish case for a long time Turkey felt it was the bridge right between the west and the East a member of NATO still not a member of the EU and no prospect of entering the EU but nonetheless important partner in the NATO alliance for a long time Turkey was not anti Western because it was once again the bridge between the west and the East now as you know that shifting but nonetheless Eurasia is not ipso facto anti Western but it can be an important platform for anti Western isn't more and more going forward but it is illiberal so I'm gonna take you back to 1921 right after the Russian Revolution this is point number two bullet point number two and there was a very substantial emigration from the former Russian Empire as a result of the Revolution and civil war more than two million people left and these were often the educated people this is a much greater Exodus than in the case of the French Revolution and moreover in the case of the French Revolution many of the AME clay went back once the revolutionary process settled out in the Russian Imperial Russian Eurasia sense the return was very slight and this emigration so trying to figure out what happened anti Soviet or anti-bolshevik or anti communist regime immigration for the most part but patriotic Russian Imperial patriotic right many of them were still monarchists not all of them but they certainly believed in Russia great power and so a few had ambivalent sense reasonably the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union revived great power status right now under a communist regime but they held out hope that the communist regime could evolve into thing more Russian nationals anyway in 1921 a very small group of these people put out a book called Exodus to the east it was an émigré publication in sofia and their argument was that Russia was not European and not Asian but Eurasian and that this was a civilization unto itself it was self-sufficient economically or autarkic it was also what they called demotic which was a form of democracy without rule of law or what we would call a liberal democracy demotic from demos from of the people right in liberal democracy so they celebrated they celebrated the fact that Russia was not a Western rule of law constitutional order to them this was a positive they also said you know it's not really an empire it's a civilization unto itself it's a symphony of people's Symphony from the eastern orthodox concept right and so there's a kind of apologia for empire autarky or self-sufficiency and illiberal ism built into this ideology known as eurasian ism introduced almost imperceptibly in this book that nobody read in 1921 called exodus to the east this now this now will grow in stature over time and this eurasian ism is extremely popular in russia today and not only in russia today you'll hear right after me professor Mike Reynolds talked about some of these issues right the interface between the Slavic and the Turkic world and part of the interface is the concept that the shared concept of Eurasian ism and it's a liberal quality and so we have to be careful when we use the term Eurasia because it's not neutral even in Geographic terms and it's associated with a political project with a political project now I'm not talking about academia here there is an academic version of the political project which is called central Eurasian Studies and central Eurasian Studies is sort of what we use to call inner Asia and it's flourishing predominantly at Indiana University if you go on the website the central Eurasian Studies department there on Indiana University website is full of amazing scholarship in very difficult languages right and their argument is that central Eurasia is a civilization right that you know nomads grasslands horses the steppes shamanism but this is not the absence of civilization which is what the Chinese sources say and the Russian sources say right that nomadic not just sedentary people can have civilization that they can produce a culture that their culture is valuable but they're not a pre civilizational entity right this is the argument in academia of central Eurasian studies this is a very self-conscious attempt on their part to elevate central Eurasian Studies the civilizational status to impart a sense of civilization to the nomads to let the nomads have the kind of let's say stature that accrues to those real civilizations previously that we would call Europe Asia or China right Byzantium Rome okay so that's the academic version of the project central Eurasian Studies instead of inner Asia and there are great examples of it is very difficult scholarship in these multiple languages right because the place is full of languages and they have a point that we have condescended to the nomads we have condescended to the shamans right will you celebrate religion shamanism is paganism and on it goes if they have a point I'm not adopting their point I'm just pointing out that there is a project in academia central Eurasian Studies but I'm talking about a political project in the world that takes your Asian ism Eurasia to justify write authoritarian regimes to justify imperial conquest to justify what's happening in Russia today in Turkey today in Iran today and in China today and so as we ourselves try to think about how to use the terminology how to employ the concepts we want to be careful not necessarily to validate the political projects that are associated with them I don't know about you but I would not prefer to live under an authoritarian regime that didn't have respect for civil liberties and property rights so I'm very cautious in using the term Eurasia okay so point number two is that there's a political project associated with Eurasian and this political project is one which is unfree and it's unfree by design and it celebrates on freedom as an achievement it celebrates a liberal democracy as they call it demotic power it celebrates its authoritarian regimes it celebrates its Imperial conquests by talking about a new civilization that's not really a conquest or a subordination but it's a symphony of people's okay now point number three how do I teach the region what is it that I tell students I'll just check for time here there's no clock on the wall I think I'm okay with time all right thanks al point number three is spin it but not very much time on and then as I said we'll open up the floor at this point point number three is the way to conceptualize for me this place is to talk about Imperial exchange imperial exchange what do I mean by imperial exchange well what we've discovered retrospectively now with better scholarship about the Mongol Empire is that they facilitated not just destruction and conquest but also massive Imperial exchange if you look at the courts the Mongol courts under Chinggis Khaan his sons and grandsons what you see is the whole world congregated in the courts whether it's the yuan Court in China the ill haunted court in Persia right to a certain extent the Golden Horde or the steppe configurations Confederations it's hard to know exactly how to describe them because they they weren't States in the same way that the Chinese or the Persian one was but nonetheless you see there that they have astronomers and physicians and mapmakers astrologers they have all talent from all over regardless night of its origin and they bring it together as a form of war booty but they nonetheless allow that talent to flourish within their court system one of the most fantastic things about the Mongol Court in China was that Persian was the main language that they spoke to each other the lingua franca as it were was Persian in the mongol court in china and so we have this model of imperial exchange which the mongols don't originate you know to talk about the mongols is not to start at the beginning it's starting in the middle somewhere but it's just a nice example that one can teach one can teach Eurasia through Imperial exchange by taking the Mongols seriously as facilitators right once again they're destructive they have conquests this is not a whitewashing Imperial exchange can co-exist or be alongside the destructive elements to morale exchange is not always equal we know that right you know they came and there was an exchange from Manhattan where I live now about $24 the cliche is $24 worth of beads and jewelry exchange from Manhattan and so was that an equal exchange was that a fair exchange was that the kind of bargaining where you know both sides understood what they were doing and if one didn't agree they could just walk away and be obviously exchange is not never equal or rarely equal and the bargaining process entails some coercion so when we use vocab really like Imperial exchange we are not whitewashing the history but it is an interesting and important model because what we ended up with in world history in the global history stuff is a civilizational approach you get the chapter on Africa you get the chapter on Europe you get the chapter on South America right and the reason you get it that way is because it's a lot easier to teach that way but the textbook that I was privileged to be a part of we have all the world regions in the same chapter because each world region helped produce the other European civilization is a product of South America is a product of Asia it's not a product on its own unto itself and so this model of Imperial exchange or this model of borrowing interaction in mutual influence is accepted more and more today it's just very hard to teach if you're trying to teach world history with five world regions in a single chapter right the students are like you know which end is up here and we get that and it is much harder but it is the challenge I believe that we have to rise to right so this Imperial exchange model there are some really excellent examples of this that have been pulled off that are not famous there's this book by Nikolai orga IO RGA called Byzantium after Byzantium and it's about the Imperial legacies of the Byzantine Empire that live on in the territories of the former Byzantine Empire after they become nation-states and it's very interesting to see that despite the National cultures and the national differences that institutions have a lot in common across those new national borders because there was this creation Byzantium right that like the EU was an rating project it had integrating aspirations and to a certain extent not wholly not a hundred percent it achieved a lot of this integration and moreover you then press back to the origins of the Ottoman Empire and you can see that they pull the entire Byzantine elite into the Ottoman elite and they changed their native names of the elite family sometimes but nonetheless it didn't displace or wipe out Byzantium the Ottoman Empire it incorporated because that's what empires do right they incorporate empires do two things they empower locals they take sides in local battles they don't grant local autonomy they empower one local group against another local group right those who bargain well with the center rise up in the localities so empires provide the kind of scaffolding or decision decisive power in the local struggles they pick one side or the other that's going to be loyal to the center and they give that one side quote autonomy locally but it's an autonomy chief against the aims of the various other groups that are in the locality that's one thing Empire does and the other thing Empire does it's a highway both out and in it absorbs the local stuff into the center and it pushes out this new version of the local stuff which it brings together right in the melting pot of the metropolis and so the Empire can take the local influences recombine them kind of like recombinant DNA and then send them out project them out so an imperial culture is produced which then has local qualities in it but also influences the local this is the key concept in my view of how to teach the Eurasian stuff you can see the Tatar elite when Ivan the Terrible conquers Kazan in 1550s and you get that confection on red square st. Basil's which is built in order to celebrate Ivan the terrible's conquest of Kazan the Tatar khanates on the Volga River right the Tatar Nobles get folded in to the Russian nobility they bring in almost the entire nobility of the conquered Tatars inside the Russian nobility in the Russian state this is typical as I said this is what happens in the ottoman case visa fees Byzantium and what happens in all of these cases so we need to see this layering we need to see this exchange this efflorescence right we need to take that as our point of departure and show the students teach the students how you know Asia help create Europe how South America helped this could be in commodities this could be in the food that they began to eat right the Portuguese are the ones that spread those peppers and that gives you that Korean spicy food right etc so these are things that you know but we need to take this now and make it into our major point of departure rather than fight battles about you know whose civilization is higher and who belongs to Europe and who doesn't really belong to Europe and rather than take up the banner of Eurasian ISM which as I say is an illiberal anti-democratic project ultimately because it's version of democracy as the people don't have power rather than take up that we need to take up this call which the Mongols really crystallized didn't begin but crystallized them which others follow so I wrote an article that's now 10 years ago which Alan will be able to distribute to you in a journal called Kritika and the articles name is Mongol Commonwealth Mongol where they laid out the analysis that I'm giving you today including how to teach this Imperial exchange approach and so if you look at this Byzantium after Byzantium the Nikolai Yorga book once again it's a book that it's not nobody's syllabus it's completely forgotten it's buried under the dust in the off-site storage sites never to be called by anybody there's a there's a version of that for Eurasia by Christopher Beckwith B ec k WI th and his is called empires of the Silk Road empires of the Silk Road the problem with Beckwith is not that he's forgotten the way your gets forgotten is that Beckwith is a polemicist he's kind of angry at the world he's angry at post-modernism he's angry at those people who are in Chinese Studies or Russian Studies who condescend about the nomads and his anger is not persuasive right if you're going to try to persuade people that you got a new idea that they can use it helps not to call everybody an idiot but that's what he does so you got to get beyond Beckwith a chip on the shoulder beyond his poll Emma sighs ik beyond his apocalyptic you know post-modernism has taken over the world their post-modernism what I call Popo mo potpourri is not taking over the world it's there and in fact it's produced some insights even though as a whole I don't think it's very incisive but it's not a big threat but so Beckwith has a few bees in his bonnet you'll have to get beyond that but he's got a layering of what makes this region a region having to do with political structures that are rooted in ancient times and carried up through the present and he knows a dozen or so the languages of the region so he's got source materials from just every nook and cranny right there were things that we don't know about Islam and Buddhism for a war for a massive inner Asian war in the early modern period ended up producing the Dalai Lama in Tibet and the Muslims won the war but there was this retreat to the Tibetan Plateau and that's where you get Lama ISM and this thing called the Dalai Lama so there are these fantastic stories that are buried that need to be excavated and that can be taught within this region which can be taught in a way as to say that doesn't validate the contemporary you know anti-liberal anti-constitutional political projects anyway maybe that was enough to launch a discussion maybe it wasn't but we're launching the discussion now anyway all right thank you for your attention over here you got two hints on this side very front row and then your next I saw his hand first and then Judy you're next okay I hope this is not too far off topic but you said it you can you are I'm Krystal sorry right I'm Christopher Calvin where do you teach I teach at Saint Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin Texas okay and I was I'm curious about the contrast you set up between for example Russia for lack of a better term and Ottomans in contrast to the Chinese that the Chinese that the Chinese are settled in their center of the world view but that the Russians and the Ottomans have this wobbling between east and west I don't know China well enough to know if they really are that stable in their own identity but I would if you have care to comment further on both those regions the Russian Imperial region in the Ottoman Imperial region have always had a rather strong internal debate about that ambiguous or ambivalent identity yes so let's start with the Russian story first what you've got in the Russian case is a kind of envy desire to emulate and fear of Europe at the same time right Europe is an example and it's a threat Europe is more powerful Europe has better technology at the same time Europe is successful and so you get this how do we borrow from Europe how do we take the things from Europe that we want to protect our own identity from being swallowed up by Europe right and so this debate which we usually translate into westernizers and Slava files there's something to that dichotomy those people who want institutionally to emulate the West those are westernizers slava files those people who do not want at all to emulate the West and have this more Eurasian anti-western anti-liberal you know anti-constitutional order pro Empire or apologia for Empire pro dictatorship of Pearl authoritarian so that's the debate that we normally see the problem with that debate is that it doesn't understand as well that the political regime is not westernized or Slava file the political regime is borrow from the West to compete with the West not become the West but protect Russia's own self imagined identity so Peter the Great goes to the west and he doesn't bring back things like separation of powers or constitutionalism right he brings back now how to build a better Navy and how to build a better bureaucracy to rule over people he brings back those techniques those mechanisms which empower the state in order for the state to compete in the international system that's going to be true of Peter the Great successors in the Romanoff dynasty it's going to be true of the Stalin regime and it's true of the Putin regime today and so the Westerners or Slava file debate is useful there's value in discussing that and people align one way or the other inside the the culture over centuries but the bigger framework the framework that sometimes missing is the geopolitical one which is borrow from the West emulate the West in order not to emulate the West in order not to become like the West politically in order to retain our demotic Eurasian illiberal anti Western identity that's the principle dynamic now there are nuances in there right there's a very big Pro Western intelligencia westernizers they tend to be a small minority in the country but they tend to be the people that Americans talk to when they go over there so we get a very skewed sense right these people speak English they travel a lot to the United States and to Western Europe and they seem to think like us and they seem to want the same things we want and they're the people we talk to because they're the ones who speak English and then there's this gigantic conservative population that's socially conservative right that believes for example that the family unit has to be a man and a woman now you can argue whether that's true or not I'm not taking a stand on whether that's a good or a bad thing I'm just saying that there's a huge population of people who are social conservative that we don't talk to as much because they're not westernizing Intelligencia they're not urban westernized they live in small towns rural communities they don't necessarily speak English right but they are in fact the majority of the people are and so there's this the way we get of the understanding of these places is we look for those things that we validate and we find them and there is a smaller sliver the westernizing intelligence you the urban liberal pro-gay rights etc right those people exist and many of them are very courageous they risk their lives or their livelihoods at least but but then there's this other piece and this other piece fits more into the regime and the geopolitics which is a competitive understanding of the Western Russian relationship and that competitive understanding is rooted in a sense that the West is a threat it's an opportunity but it's also mostly a threat and that threat needs to be countered by borrowing from the West importing Western technology right every single technology of the Stalin first and second year five-year plan every single one is imported from the West everything that Stalin builds with one exception synthetic rubber that's it they invent synthetic rubber themselves but everything else they're buying and they're buying it because the West is in depression and no one else is buying it and the Soviets are good customers right so that's the Russia piece in my view right in terms of what you just spent now now I hesitate to go to the Turkish piece because this to talk right after me I think is going to cover it by Professor Mike Reynolds much better than I will cover it but what's interesting about the Turkish piece now is that Russia is an example that is working superficially and that the Turkish leader looks like he's emulating now he's got his own domestic dynamic going on and there are things which are he himself thought of before Putin thought of and he himself tried we don't want to make him just an emulator of the Putin stuff he's a creator of some of the things he's doing now as well so I don't mean to set this up as you know turkeys trailing Russia and then copying Russia but nonetheless Russia is enhancing the dynamic that was at play inside Turkey itself as an example but Russia is not a success it's not winning right it's a failure today's Russia is a complete failure I could give you all sorts of details and stats about this right the Soviet economy at peak was one-third the US economy so 1980s reached about one third it was hard to know because they don't have real prices you know it's a planned economy so the measurement is is not the same but best yes best estimates are about one third the Russian economy today is one fifteenth the size of the American economy so you went from one third to 115 what's that tell you in relative power terms american defense budget is over six hundred billion and you know like it or not we can afford that that's a small percentage of gdp and we can increase the defense budget whether that's a good idea or a bad idea we can do that the russian defense budget is sixty billion one tenth so their economy is one fifteenth and the defense budget is one tenth so that tells you they're spending more on defense than we are relative their economy but they can't grow their defense budget very easily because their economy is not growing right they began to stagnate when oil was $100 a barrel oil and gas are not the Russian economy they're 30% of the Russian economy hydrocarbons 30% right this is not Saudi Arabia this is not Kuwait this is not Qatar you know this Russia's got an economy that is bigger than oil and gas but other than gas are the principal revenue for the regime so the price of oil and gas declines that means that the regime has less money so at $50 a barrel or worse the Russian regime is hard-pressed to compete with the United States especially since they're already only 1/10 the size of our defense budget I could go on and I could go on Russia had an ally called Syria which was a phony which was a whole country it was highly educated and had a dynamic economy and what does Russia have now they own part of a civil war in that place so is that a victory is the Russian intervention in Syria a geostrategic gain they went from an ally of a stable country with a nice military base and good exchange to owning a civil war and a regime that's a sliver of that former country right so I don't see that's a game Ukraine Ukraine was split between pro-west and pro-russian now it's the most Pro Western it's ever been is that a game show me how that's a game Russia had a military base in Crimea before now they got it again and Crimea is this bad economic basket case that they're hard-pressed to afford because the tourist industry was destroyed which was the only real piece of the economy that worked out so I could go on down the list of how Russia is massive failure in strategic terms tactically nimble tactically able to steal the headlines and poke the eye in America how they stole Hillary Clinton's emails and embarrassed her so what's the long-term strategic game who's the democracy who's the dynamic society who's the wealthy rich country they stole the emails right and the joke of course is that you know she had the private server and made herself vulnerable as if the Russians are not in the State Department servers right so yeah I mean we get hysterical over this thrush and stuff for all the obvious reasons that you know because you go back unlike most of my students you go back to a time when there was the Soviet menace and the Cold War and everything else right so that's a long-winded answer to your question but the Russian thing to me is a version of a longer standing story I wrote about this in foreign affairs last year about Russian geopolitics and Alan will also I think be able to point you to that article explaining that the in with more depth the answer to the question I'm giving you now anyway thank you Judy you where do you teach yes hi I'm Judy Okun I teach at Camden County College in Cherry Hill New Jersey right across the river my question relates to the one road initiative that you mentioned yeah and that's fascinating because I teach geography so I hadn't heard of that but I'm wondering who is working to possibly formulate that and the other thing that I'm wondering is what is the main way that China ships goods to Europe now is it through the trans-siberian railroad yes so the one belt one road initiative is a large idea that was imposed on many individual projects that have now been galvanized into a bigger story and Xi Jingping is taking credit for this you know he's a very ambitious guy right now we're sitting through the Party Congress which is seems to be further enhancing his power you never know in authoritarian regimes because she can't see the inside and sometimes when they could when they get up on a soapbox and they tell you oh he's the core leader oh he's more powerful than the other leaders before him always on the same level as mal and Don when you got to yell that on the soapbox it's sometimes because it's not true behind the scenes and behind the scenes I don't know nobody knows except those few on the inside behind the scenes it could be that he's still trying to build the power that he's claiming in practice or he could be exercising that power already but in any case he's ambitious to have that kind of power and the one belt one road initiative as they now call it embellish is that kind of burnish 'as his image that he's responsible for this it's a grandiose infrastructure project it's all about ports railroads canals pipelines you know oil and gas pipelines it's about connecting Eurasian economies 97 countries to the Chinese economy one of the things you hear and it's euro Africa in addition which I should mention one of the things you hear a lot is you know the u.s. provides aid but then it demands conditions you have to respect human rights you can't put people in jail for political reasons or we cut off the aid right China supposedly provides aid without any strings attached oh you know you want a telephone network we'll give you the telephone network and you can jail as many people as you want no strings attached right and therefore countries are saying well Jesus China is the better deal we can get what we need in infrastructure terms and we don't have to pretend to release a few dissidents from prison every time there's a visit from the US Secretary of State or whatever well this is a lie because it's not no strings attached from the Chinese side when the Chinese build the African countries telephone network they own the communication system and if the African country then starts to have internet criticisms of China guess what happens to those internet criticisms of China somebody at the top pushes the button and and wipes that stuff out so the idea of no strings attached once again we can't accept the China story at face value it's very easy to criticize America especially under the current situation we have in DC and the Chinese are very successfully maneuvering into this position right the Chinese are mercantilist they don't play by the same rules they steal intellectual property and yet because of our current president the Chinese grandstand and say jeez you know we're for free trade this guy's for tariffs and protectionism but the Chinese version of free trade is mercantilist it's advantageous to China its will let you into our market but you have to give us your secret technology which then we can use to become competitors for you right this is the definition of mercantilism so I'm not saying that the Chinese are bad the Chinese are evil the Chinese are incredible civilization and what they've achieved is astonishing in my lifetime right Park capita GDP in China was about $200 a person under Mao it's now 14 thousand plus at purchasing power parity right at least 400 million Chinese been lifted out of poverty this is an unbelievable story and the Chinese deserve credit for this they did this so this is not an anti Chinese story but nonetheless they play the game their way and this one belt in one Road initiative is an attempted subordination of Eurasia to Chinese interests there's a little bit of bargaining once again there's not everybody in China doesn't get everything it wants not everybody concedes because some have greater leverage in the system but it is an attempt to expand Chinese power and influence abroad strings attached in other words now as I say the economic calculations don't always make sense in some of the big infrastructure investments right this is why we have the term white elephant or a bridge to nowhere not everything is that way many of the things do make sense economically and so that stuff is getting built too but some of the other stuff will then have to be paid for in the sense that they'll have to write down the loans they'll have to take a loss a lot of people are going to lose significant money because it doesn't have the economic rationale as the one belt one road please so it's very exciting from the Chinese point of view it's an organizing principle it's a grand strategy it's something the leader can take credit for and it's having real-world effects as we sit in this room so it's really important to watch the United States answer to this was the trade deal the trans-pacific partnership TPP which was negotiated under President Obama and was one of the first things that President Trump repudiated because he argued that it didn't take the interests sufficiently of American workers and that globalization is a swindle and the workers pay the price and these other things there's something to that argument but TPP was in fact a better version of previous trade deals the provisions that had been negotiated were better including for workers than previously not always better but but often better and in any case it was twelve different countries that had made concessions and it was pretty remarkable I don't know if the Senate would have ratified it even had Trump not canceled it so we can't blame the fall of TPP entirely on the Trump administration because the Senate was a little bit squishy now on free trade because of the climate in the country and because of the protectionism that's rising in the population especially in the Republican primaries Republican primary voters so but nonetheless that was our answer to China's one belt in one row the TPP which to me was a very good answer and should be revived but I don't see the revival easy in the current political context either because of trumps administration or because of the sentiment in the country as a whole and after all we are a real democracy and sent them in in the country as a whole matters and you got to be able to sell something like TPP to the larger population you have to have the American people behind things otherwise the Senate is just not going to ratify it or the next Senate is not going to live up to it if even if this one were out of it's you know democracy has to have a strong powerful popular support for any major effort like that and we don't have that right now so we're now as it were without a strategy in East Asian region visa vie the Chinese and visa vie others and it's that's worrying once again not because China is evil or China is bad but because there's a competition and we're not really in that competition the same way we were before so it's very troubling okay we got next who's next yes sir do you have a microphone or no let's wait for the mic I am Tyler Miller from Brooklyn New York teacher at Poly Prep Country Day School there I wondered if you could comment on the kind of shifting power in the Middle East toward Iran Iran finds itself may be pursuing great power status at least regionally it's you know situated between a very strong military Russian state and China and I wonder you know in the the changes since the sort of collapse of the Hussein regime in Iraq and the ongoing wars in Syria and Iraq where does Iran sort of fit into this kind of kind of new present situation yeah that's a thank you for that that's a really big question I'll do my best to try to be a little bit briefer than then I have been so far with these questions because we could talk the rest of the conference on that one so the Middle East is divided as you know between Shia and Sunni Muslim populations that division is not quite 50/50 but there is a balance a kind of counterbalance of one or the other Saudi Arabia is the now the great power that feels it represents the Sunni Muslim population and Iran of course is the great power that represents the Shia Muslim population and Iraq had a Sunni leader on the Saddam Hussein and now has a very much Shia influenced coalition government which has close relations in Iran because the Shia are a greater number than the Sunnis inside Iraq and then you look at Yemen and you look at Lebanon and you look at Syria and you can see all this Sunni Shia pushing back and forth the saudi-iranian proxy war so if you think about this in geostrategic terms not in moral terms in geostrategic terms there's a built-in structural limitation to Iran's power in the Middle East which is Sunni Muslims now Iran can and does cause a lot of grief all right they've destroyed helped destroy Syria they didn't start that but they've contributed egregiously to that destruction they wreaked havoc in Lebanon and now we have the Yemen proxy war where it's just a humanitarian catastrophe so in moral terms in human terms it's very disheartening but in geostrategic terms as is this counterbalance Iran cannot take over the whole Middle East and moreover most of what their influence is is civil war I mean how would you would you call Syria a success now we've had that conversation would you call Lebanon a success would you call Yemen is success so in a long-term strategic gain calculation Iran hasn't gained anything in the Middle East they have additionally destabilized already destabilized areas and they've increased the mayhem in those areas and they're able to do that going forward and they would have been able to do that going forward whether or not whatever our policy might have been that doesn't mean that the degree can't be regulated and there can't be some pushback on our side but if you're a geostrategic thinker with opportunity costs and you know America can't do everything and there are many problems in the world where should we invest our time energy and resources and you look at the Middle East with this balance between the Sunni and the Shia that puts a structural limit on Iran's influence and you look at what's happening in East Asia where all the marbles are and you say you know we have to figure out how not to get deeper into Middle Eastern issues for opportunity cost reasons alone the problem is is that the Iranians stuff keeps drawing us back in and of course the humanitarian stuff is horrific and we can now see that in real time with cable in a way that we couldn't see it you know way back when Vietnam was the sort of beginning of seeing the world when when it went to mayhem and that had just tremendous influence as you know in a sort of American domestic politics and what was possible geo-strategically and in foreign policy right the television the televising of the war it was on tape back then it was in live but nonetheless I and so we have that issue to deal with and if you're a humanitarian and you believe in the responsibility to protect and stuff then the Middle East draws you in for sure but if you're a geostrategic thinker who thinks that humanitarianism is important but we can't fix everything then you're then you're thinking the Middle East is a place you don't want to be more deeply involved I could go on on this subject right the only thing that could really change the balance of power would be if Iran got nukes and so you think to yourself well geez I don't like everything they're doing but if I can stop their nuclear program even for a certain period of time then I'll have achieved more for US interests than any other thing I could do and so I'm not saying that the Iranian nuclear deal was the right deal or a good deal I'm not taking sides you can see the whole lecture I'm not taking sides on any of these issues but I'm just saying you can understand the logic behind that type of policy the sunni-shia kind of balance of terror and therefore as long as there are no nukes it's gonna be horrible but it's gonna be manageable right no once again you can argue that the nuclear deal wasn't a good idea you know like aspects of it whatever that's not what I'm saying I'm saying that I can understand the logic behind entering into that so therefore I'm not gonna get any concessions on all the other stuff I'm not gonna get the missile program concessions I'm not going to get the proxy war concessions I want those but I'm not going to be able to stop them but I'm going to be able to stop the nuclearization at least for now and of course the war plan for Iran I had was basically a joke before the nuclear deal because we couldn't get in there and see anything and now they won't talk about this at a Pentagon but now we have inspectors on the ground there so the war plan is improving a lot from the nuclear deal we got eyes and ears there we know where their stuff is much better than we knew before and the more inspection we have even if it's not a full inspection even if you're on cheats a little bit on the inspection even if they try to hide stuff right the more inspection we have the more capability we have to do the thing that people are saying we should have done instead of going into the nuclear deal so that's the irony is the Pentagon likes the deal for the time being they like it a lot and so that should tell you something but once again I'm not taking a side there because many people are against that deal and I'm not saying I'm for it or against it okay but much more could be said this is a deep question right and I mean you have this massive arc of instability as Brzezinski once called it having been a major contributor to it himself right in fighting the Soviet proxy war you know sort of no-holds-barred fashion and empowering the Islamists in the way that he did I wouldn't say that he's innocent of the arc of instability right which was still living with we have we have American families with family members in Afghanistan still family members in Iraq still the Libya thing how you want to come down on that so we haven't gotten a lot out of our policies in the Middle East think maybe you can argue they've been poorly executed that they were the right policies but weren't properly executed once again I'm not taking sides but the strategic bang for the buck in the Middle East has been negative not even minimal but negative and so this would then caution you about Iran now we fought three ground wars in East Asia and each one was seemed less necessary than the previous one Japan world war two I don't think very many people in this room would argue that that was the wrong war or that we didn't need to fight that war right they attacked Pearl Harbor and we fought the Japanese and it was a very difficult war was amazing what we did the Pacific island hopping war it's just breathtaking it's a much bigger story than d-day in Normandy and all that other stuff although that stuff is important too don't get me wrong then we fought the Korean War and the Korean War looked necessary and felt necessary it didn't end well and it still hasn't ended well we're still living with it and we can argue in this room about whether it was a necessary war enough but it doesn't have the same feeling of necessity as the fight against Japan has already you're diminishing the sense of necessity and then you get to the Vietnam War and that same dynamic of you know we can argue whether it was necessary or not we can argue whether we fought it properly or not but it doesn't have that same necessity as the Japanese war so with the three land wars in Asia there's been a diminishing sense of the necessity of each one and a diminishing of feel that we got something positive out of them right I mean we lost the war in Vietnam and now Vietnam is one of the most Pro American countries in East Asia so that's taught us a lot about you know retrospectively about policy now we're in the Middle East and we're doing these land wars in the Middle East so we're learning as a nation we're kind of repeating the learning curve that we had in East Asia the scale has been much smaller because the East Asian wars were really big Wars I mean they will whole society wars we don't fight whole society wars anyone you know military families are just a small part of our country now we don't have the draft etc but nonetheless we're on this learning curve and we're not learning very quickly and we had the first Iraq war the second Iraq war we had the Libya episode now we're dealing with Iran right and you know many people would argue today that the idea of a land war in East Asia is the last thing you want to start talking about and contemplating we're not yet there on the Middle East and stuff the learning curve is still slow painful and costly so what do you do instead of a land war well that's where you got to invest in diplomacy in allies in economic leverage and all the other stuff you know we to do really well mobilization of the country for the space race thus the stuff after Sputnik the Russians puts Putin a cup as you know in 1957 and what happened our whole country mobilized and had an answer for massive investment in studies of regions of the world in science and technology education putting a man on a moon which threw off massive scientific benefits in all directions right so these are the kinds of things that we learned that we're not learning or we've unlearned right now these are venus bigger Ronnie and story this is not to say that Iran is a country that is is not to be worried about or anything right now I'm not trying to diminish any sense that Iran is against US interests in many ways but the issue is how we do smartly a Middle Eastern policy we're very far from that right now very very far unfortunately our learning I mean FP FP ah right does a really good job on Middle East and stuff they have a lot of events that I see you know you probably see these two if you're on a mailing list but the the larger country is still in thrall to the so-called terrorism problem the Iranian proxy war thing and all the other stuff anyway we've got so many more questions we're at 10:06 al Walton we have 10 ok sorry my answers are not economically we got these guys in the front have patiently been waiting all right okay all right I'm Kimberly kirstine from northern New Jersey there was an op-ed in eurasia review at the beginning of September and it was talking about um should um sonsoo keep you blamed for the rowing crisis and my question was when you were talking about the hierarchy within your region do you feel that the blame that she has been receiving or not do you think that that is based on the wealth of her of her nation like do you feel that she's being treated in the same way as she would if she was from a wealthier nation what is your take on the blame that she's receiving she's the leader of that country she carries responsibility what's happening there is wrong she's got to step up and say that I don't care wealthy country poor country now if it's politically delicate if it's difficult okay we're counting on her to figure out how to master that delicacy how to say it in a way that's not destabilizing that doesn't push the whole country back to a worse place than it is now I feel she's capable enough intelligent enough to figure out the delicacy part and to get it done the fact that she hasn't I think is a big problem I think this is not just about her there are other leaders in that country who also said nothing we happen to know her better she won big prize and she's a world figure which adds even additional responsibility to her in my view right now in her shoes it's not as easy as it is in our shoes right we can sit in a room here in a hotel in Philadelphia and we can say what we want and nobody with ski masks and riot gear are gonna burst through those doors and that's a really big difference and if you've ever lived in a police state or you've ever lived in a state where the military or the secret police are a dominant force even if there's elements of democracy in Burma today if you've ever lived under a situation like that you don't take lightly the difficulty of this so I'm not making it look like you know she's got it easy but I do believe the disappointment is understandable okay who's next I'm Brenda bowler I teach in Tucson Arizona I guess I was a little surprised to hear you say Empire empowers locals yes and that kind of um to me goes against how the presentation of imperialism as an oppressive force culturally politically and economically to local populations yes so imperialism is opportunity I could give you many examples of the opportunity that imperialism gives you so the Japanese in oppressed the Koreans in Korea on the Korean Peninsula right they forced them to learn Japanese take Japanese names they prohibited Korean culture etc then what happened the Japanese needed to rule Manchuria and guess who went to rule Manchuria on behalf of the Japanese Empire ethnic Koreans Korean nationals so the Korean nationals were oppressed on the peninsula and then empowered to run Manchuria on behalf of the Japanese so that's empowerment that's opportunity we could talk about the Scots and the Irish how they're oppressed in the British Isles and then they go run India there's massive opportunity inside imperialism I could give example after example the point I was making about empowering locals is there are local differences of opinion struggles for power different factions different families different tribes and we aren't a thing of empire is that they divide and rule they go in there and then arrange everything so that everybody hates each other well that's one way to look at it I think that's mostly a fantasy that Empire was that sophisticated Empire is not that sophisticated and it doesn't have that kind of reach into localities what empire does is it sends an emissary out to a locality that emissary says you know who's gonna be the most loyal to us figures out who's gonna be the most loyal or guesses who's gonna be the most loyal and then empowers that one group against all the other groups and that one group then rises up and exercises tremendous power because the Empire is far away and that group is right there yeah and though we call those people copper Dori leads or collaborators we have all sorts of negative vocabulary for them I'm not trying to make this a positive story once again you know I'm not political I'm not ideological but you then see in many cases these groups exercising day to day power on a vast scale in their region locally that's what Empire is that's the part of Empire we don't see there are many parts of Empire there's the nookie part right what you what I mean is that the imperial official goes in and doesn't know the local language organizes a harem has liaison with women produces mestizo children and that woman and those children become the cultural brokers between the imperial power and the local population and it's not just a family story but because they're the ones that speak both languages and they're the ones who have access to power and access to the local culture so you see these women who are you know in harems as concubines in imperial settings exercising very significant power locally because they're the ones who can talk to the governor the governor-general whoever it might be that they had the liaison and the mestizo kids with right so you can say well the jeez that's very unequal the woman may have been forced into that relationship all of which is true in some cases it was involuntary right I get that but then look it's not just involuntary it's not just oppression it's not all the understanding of imperialism that we have that's all I'm saying there's also moments of opportunity and some people can seize that opportunity and exercise power that's what happens locally empires have direct rule on paper but then you look at the archives who made the decisions who controls the resources who banished this family and banished that family right who took over the property its local officials empowered in the Imperial structure in exchange for their loyalty they get to exercise a lot of power and sometimes their minorities this is what the British did a lot right this is what the Iraq story is right Saddam Hussein was part of a minority the ala White's right in Syria a minority regime the Jordanian monarchy right this is not a majoritarian group so a lot of cases in Empire the locals on the bottom end of the totem pole are the ones who rise up in the Imperial setting anyway I could give more detail on that but I'm afraid I'm already eating up everybody's time I got 10 14 yeah I think we're out of time so let me thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Foreign Policy Research Institute

Views: 165,871

Rating: 4.7077951 out of 5

Keywords: history, Eurasia

Id: _ghn1X7sRFs

Length: 83min 38sec (5018 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Yacuruna]

the enemy of Oceania and Eastasia