Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

In 1989, Nursultan Nazarbayev became the last communist leader of Kazakhstan, and he has remained in office since then, exchanging the symbols of Soviet socialism for secular Islam. Kazakhstan is the only post-Soviet state not to have undergone a leadership transition. With the title of Leader of the Nation, he can remain in office until 2020, and in the 2015 election he won 98 percent of the vote, albeit in a contest that the OSCE depicted as flawed. 52He has carefully constructed a Kazakh national identity based on a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state, and has moved the capital from the Soviet-era more cosmopolitan Almaty to Astana, located in the interior, a planned city with elegant boulevards and a gold-domed monument to the leader. Aware of the risks of living in a landlocked country in a dangerous neighborhood, which was part of the nineteenth-century Great Game between the British and Russian empires, he has deftly crafted productive ties to Russia, China, and the United States, positioning his country as an honest broker in a number of conflicts, a crossroads between East and West. His regime appears stable, but the threat of Islamic extremism is an abiding concern—several hundreds of Kazakhs have gone to fight with ISIS and other indigenous Central Asian terror networks. Moreover, in 2011, labor unrest in the western city of Zhanaozen led to violent clashes between disgruntled oil workers and police, resulting in more than one hundred casualties. 53As he approaches eighty, the issue of succession—and Russia’s potential role in the process—raises questions that have been exacerbated by the Ukrainian conflict. There are concerns that Russia could take advantage of any instability accompanying the succession and seek to annex Northern Kazakhstan, where most of the Russians live. In April 2018, Kazakhstan—which had a rotating seat on the UN Security Council—abstained on the Russian-originated vote to condemn the US and its allies for their air strike in Syria following a chemical weapons attack. The Russians were greatly displeased that the Kazakhs had not voted with them and made veiled threats to Astana. 54

Russia views Kazakhstan as its most reliable and useful partner in the near abroad. As early as 1994, Nazarbayev was proposing a Eurasian Union with Russia and other ex-Soviet states, and Kazakhstan is an active member of both the CSTO and the EEU. Moreover, Kazakhstan, unlike its neighbors Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, did not offer a military base to the United States after the 9/11 attacks. It has signed a series of bilateral treaties with Russia, the latest being the 2013 Treaty on Good-Neighborliness and Alliance.

Kazakhstan is also a key energy partner for Russia. The birthplace of the Russian oil industry is Baku, in Azerbaijan, but Kazakhstan has become the key Caspian oil producer, on a par with Norway, and Central Asia’s largest energy producer. As a landlocked country, it is dependent on other countries to transport the 1.8 million barrels per day of oil it produces for export. Its major export pipeline passes through Russia, but it has also built pipelines to China. Its vast energy resources have enabled the nation to become a major international player, attracting investment from western majors like Chevron and ExxonMobil and from China. But Nazarbayev has also been careful to maintain close energy relationships with Russia. The private energy company Lukoil is the largest Russian investor in Kazakhstan, participating in seven projects there. Yet, beyond energy, the bilateral Russian economic relationship with Kazakhstan is quite modest. The EU is Kazakhstan’s largest trading partner.

Despite these close ties, the annexation of Crimea and launch of the war in Ukraine have caused tensions in the Russia-Kazakhstan relationship. Although there has been significant out-migration of Russians from Kazakhstan back to Russia, roughly one-third of the population remains Slavic, largely concentrated in the north. Nazarbayev’s policy of Kazakhization means that few ethnic Slavs remain in high positions in government structures, and some Russians have complained of discrimination in the workplace.

The Kazakh leadership was disturbed by the Ukrainian events and did not support Russia’s annexation of Crimea in the UN General Assembly. Putin raised Nazarbayev’s ire at a press conference in 2014 when he paid him a distinctly backhanded compliment. “[Nazarbayev] created a state on territory where no state had ever existed. The Kazakhs had never had statehood. He created it. In this sense, he is a unique person for the former Soviet space and for Kazakhstan too.” 55

The response was swift. Kazakhstan promptly announced plans to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the Kazakh Khanate, dated to 1465. While Nazarbayev acknowledged that the khanate “may not have been a state in the modern understanding of the term,” the symbolism was impossible to miss. 56The elaborate celebrations in September 2015 included traditional costumes, dances, displays of cultural artifacts in the yurt (the nomadic dwelling), and a triumphal parade through the streets of Astana. 57Nazarbayev has also begun the process of shifting from the use of Cyrillic to Latin characters in the Kazakh language.

Since the onset of the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, Nazarbayev has provided support to Putin by seeking to broker dialogue between the warring factions. He—along with Lukashenko—was present at the Minsk II negotiations on Ukraine and is a constant voice urging reconciliation. He hosted talks in 2015 between Iran and major world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program. He offered to serve as a mediator when Russia and Turkey broke off relations after the Turks shot down a Russian aircraft on its way to Syria, flying over Turkish territory, and he visited Erdogan to show support after the 2016 attempted coup. He has hosted several rounds of peace talks in Astana with the warring factions in the Syrian conflict. All these activities enhance Kazakhstan’s international standing as a conflict mediator and strengthen Nazarbayev’s position domestically, but Nazarbayev is also generally supportive of Russian policies. Moreover, the Kazakh population receives much of its news coverage from the state-run Russian media and tends to believe the Kremlin’s version of events. Putin and Nazarbayev meet often, and even if one discounts some of the more extravagant rhetoric of their mutual praise, they remain indispensable partners. 58

The Eurasian Economic Union

Kazakhstan is Russia’s key partner in the EEU, Putin’s major project during his third term. Nazarbayev is credited with being the “godfather” of the EEU because he first floated the idea in 1994. But in reality this is Putin’s grand design to enhance economic integration of the post-Soviet area to solidify Russia’s political dominance of the region. It is also a cornerstone of Putin’s plan to create the institutions of a new, non-Western global order—and a defensive move to contain expanding Chinese and European Union influence in the near abroad. In 2011, as part of his election campaign, Putin announced his initiative building on an existing Customs Union to create a regional integration mechanism within the post-Soviet space that would mimic the European Union and bring its members into a “Greater Eurasia.” It would not be a re-creation of the Soviet Union, he wrote: “It would be naive to attempt to restore or copy something from the past. However, a stronger integration on a new political and economic basis and a new system of values is an imperative of our era.” 59At this time the EU was negotiating with Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova to sign comprehensive free trade agreements, which involved renouncing sovereignty over external tariffs.

Although Putin has portrayed the EEU as a primarily economic organization, its members—Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and (prospectively) Tajikistan—all understand that Moscow views this also as a geopolitical project. Putin has said that the EEU would offer a chance for the post-Soviet space “to become an independent center for global development, rather than remaining on the outskirts of Europe and Asia.” 60The Kremlin conceives the EEU as a counterweight to Euro-Atlantic structures—the EU and NATO—expanding their reach into Russia’s backyard but also as a way to temper the range of Chinese integration projects in Eurasia, such as the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative connecting China to Central and Southeast Asia and on to Europe. While Putin’s ultimate goal is to create a “Greater Eurasia,” including the post-Soviet space, China, India, and Pakistan, much of this remains aspirational. It is clear, however, that the non-Russian members of the EEU, while they are suspicious of Western democracy promotion and human rights advocacy, are also determined to resist Russian attempts at political integration, such as a joint parliament or common currency.