The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (29 page)

The successor to the tsarist and communist empires is a civilizational bloc, paralleling in many respects that of the West in Europe. At the core, Russia, the equivalent of France and Germany, is closely linked to an inner circle including the two predominantly Slavic Orthodox republics of Belarus and Moldova, Kazakhstan, 40 percent of whose population is Russian, and Armenia, historically a close ally of Russia. In the mid-1990s all these countries had pro-Russian governments which had generally come to power through elections. Close but more tenuous relations exist between Russia and Georgia
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(overwhelmingly Orthodox) and Ukraine (in large part Orthodox); but both of which also have strong senses of national identity and past independence. In the Orthodox Balkans, Russia has close relations with Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Cyprus, and somewhat less close ones with Romania. The Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union remain highly dependent on Russia both economically and in the security area. The Baltic republics, in contrast, responding to the gravitational pull of Europe effectively removed themselves from the Russian sphere of influence.

Overall Russia is creating a bloc with an Orthodox heartland under its leadership and a surrounding buffer of relatively weak Islamic states which it will in varying degrees dominate and from which it will attempt to exclude the influence of other powers. Russia also expects the world to accept and to approve this system. Foreign governments and international organizations, as Yeltsin said in February 1993, need to “grant Russia special powers as a guarantor of peace and stability in the former regions of the USSR.” While the Soviet Union was a superpower with global interests, Russia is a major power with regional and civilizational interests.

The Orthodox countries of the former Soviet Union are central to the development of a coherent Russian bloc in Eurasian and world affairs. During the breakup of the Soviet Union, all five of these countries initially moved in a highly nationalist direction, emphasizing their new independence and distance from Moscow. Subsequently, recognition of economic, geopolitical, and cultural realities led the voters in four of them to elect pro-Russian governments and to back pro-Russian policies. The people in these countries look to Russia for support and protection. In the fifth, Georgia, Russian military intervention compelled a similar shift in the stance of the government.

Armenia has historically identified its interests with Russia and Russia has prided itself as Armenia’s defender against its Muslim neighbors. This relationship has been reinvigorated in the post-Soviet years. The Armenians have been dependent upon Russian economic and military support and have backed Russia on issues concerning relations among the former Soviet republics. The two countries have converging strategic interests.

Unlike Armenia, Belarus has little sense of national identity. It is also even more dependent on Russian support. Many of its residents seem to identify as much with Russia as with their own country. In January 1994 the legislature replaced the centrist and moderate nationalist who was head of state with a conservative pro-Russian. In July 1994, 80 percent of the voters elected as president an extreme pro-Russian ally of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Belarus early joined the Commonwealth of Independent States, was a charter member of the economic union created in 1993 with Russia and Ukraine, agreed to a monetary union with Russia, surrendered its nuclear weapons to Russia, and agreed to the stationing of Russian troops on its soil for the rest of this century. In 1995 Belarus was, in effect, part of Russia in all but name.

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After Moldova became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union, many looked forward to its eventual reintegration with Romania. The fear that this would happen, in turn, stimulated a secessionist movement in the Russified east, which had the tacit support of Moscow and the active support of the Russian 14th Army and led to the creation of the Trans-Dniester Republic. Moldovan sentiment for union with Romania, however, declined in response to the economic problems of both countries and Russian economic pressure. Moldova joined the CIS and trade with Russia expanded. In February 1994 pro-Russian parties were overwhelmingly successful in the parliamentary elections.

In these three states public opinion responding to some combination of strategic and economic interests produced governments favoring close alignment with Russia. A somewhat similar pattern eventually occurred in Ukraine. In Georgia the course of events was different. Georgia was an independent country until 1801 when its ruler, King George XIII, asked for Russian protection against the Turks. For three years after the Russian Revolution, 1918-1921, Georgia was again independent, but the Bolsheviks forcibly incorporated it into the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union ended, Georgia once again declared independence. A nationalist coalition won the elections, but its leader engaged in self-destructive repression and was violently overthrown. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who had been foreign minister of the Soviet Union, returned to lead the country and was confirmed in power by presidential elections in 1992 and 1995. He was, however, confronted by a separatist movement in Abkhazia, which became the recipient of substantial Russian support, and also by an insurrection led by the ousted Gamsakhurdia. Emulating King George, he concluded that “We do not have a great choice,” and turned to Moscow for help. Russian troops intervened to support him at the price of Georgia joining the CIS. In 1994 the Georgians agreed to let the Russians keep three military bases in Georgia for an indefinite period of time. Russian military intervention first to weaken the Georgian government and then to sustain it thus brought independence-minded Georgia into the Russian camp.

Apart from Russia the most populous and most important former Soviet republic is Ukraine. At various times in history Ukraine has been independent. Yet during most of the modern era it has been part of a political entity governed from Moscow. The decisive event occurred in 1654 when Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Cossack leader of an uprising against Polish rule, agreed to swear allegiance to the tsar in return for help against the Poles. From then until 1991, except for a briefly independent republic between 1917 and 1920, what is now Ukraine was controlled politically from Moscow. Ukraine, however, is a cleft country with two distinct cultures. The civilizational fault line between the West and Orthodoxy runs through its heart and has done so for centuries. At times in the past, western Ukraine was part of Poland, Lithuania, and the Austro-Hungarian empire. A large portion of its population have been adherents of the Uniate Church which practices Orthodox rites but acknowledges
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the authority of the Pope. Historically, western Ukrainians have spoken Ukrainian and have been strongly nationalist in their outlook. The people of eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, have been overwhelmingly Orthodox and have in large part spoken Russian. In the early 1990s Russians made up 22 percent and native Russian speakers 31 percent of the total Ukrainian population. A majority of the elementary and secondary school students were taught in Russian.
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The Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian and was part of the Russian Federation until 1954, when Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine ostensibly in recognition of Khmelnytsky’s decision 300 years earlier.

The differences between eastern and western Ukraine are manifest in the attitudes of their peoples. In late 1992, for instance, one-third of the Russians in western Ukraine as compared with only 10 percent in Kiev said they suffered from anti-Russian animosity.
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The east-west split was dramatically evident in the July 1994 presidential elections. The incumbent, Leonid Kravchuk, who despite working closely with Russia’s leaders identified himself as a nationalist, carried the thirteen provinces of the western Ukraine with majorities ranging up to over 90 percent. His opponent, Leonid Kuchma, who took Ukrainian speech lessons during the campaign, carried the thirteen eastern provinces by comparable majorities. Kuchma won with 52 percent of the vote. In effect, a slim majority of the Ukrainian public in 1994 confirmed Khmelnytsky’s choice in 1654. The election, as one American expert observed, “reflected, even crystallized, the split between Europeanized Slavs in western Ukraine and the Russo-Slav vision of what Ukraine should be. It’s not ethnic polarization so much as different cultures.”
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Map 7.2 – Ukraine: A Cleft Country

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As a result of this division, the relations between Ukraine and Russia could develop in one of three ways. In the early 1990s, critically important issues existed between the two countries concerning nuclear weapons, Crimea, the rights of Russians in Ukraine, the Black Sea fleet, and economic relations. Many people thought armed conflict was likely, which led some Western analysts to argue that the West should support Ukraine’s having a nuclear arsenal to deter Russian aggression.
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If civilization is what counts, however, violence between Ukrainians and Russians is unlikely. These are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships for centuries and between whom intermarriage is common. Despite highly contentious issues and the pressure of extreme nationalists on both sides, the leaders of both countries worked hard and largely successfully to moderate these disputes. The election of an explicitly Russian-oriented president in Ukraine in mid-1994 further reduced the probability of exacerbated conflict between the two countries. While serious fighting occurred between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and much tension and some fighting between Russians and Baltic peoples, as of 1995 virtually no violence had occurred between Russians and Ukrainians.

A second and somewhat more likely possibility is that Ukraine could split along its fault line into two separate entities, the eastern of which would merge with Russia. The issue of secession first came up with respect to Crimea. The Crimean public, which is 70 percent Russian, substantially supported Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in a referendum in December 1991. In May 1992 the Crimean parliament also voted to declare independence from Ukraine and then, under Ukrainian pressure, rescinded that vote. The Russian parliament, however, voted to cancel the 1954 cession of Crimea to Ukraine. In January 1994 Crimeans elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of “unity with Russia.” This stimulated some people to raise the question: “Will Crimea Be the Next Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia?”
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The answer was a resounding “No!” as the new Crimean president backed away from his commitment to hold a referendum on independence and instead negotiated with the Kiev government. In May 1994 the situation heated up again when the Crimean parliament voted to restore the 1992 constitution which made it virtually independent of Ukraine. Once again, however, the restraint of Russian and Ukrainian leaders prevented this issue from generating violence, and the election two months later of the pro-Russian Kuchma as Ukrainian president undermined the Crimean thrust for secession.

That election did, however, raise the possibility of the western part of the country seceding from a Ukraine that was drawing closer and closer to Russia. Some Russians might welcome this. As one Russian general put it, “Ukraine or rather Eastern Ukraine will come back in five, ten or fifteen years. Western Ukraine can go to hell!”
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Such a rump Uniate and Western-oriented Ukraine, however, would only be viable if it had strong and effective Western support. Such support is, in turn, likely to be forthcoming only if relations between
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the West and Russia deteriorated seriously and came to resemble those of the Cold War.

The third and more likely scenario is that Ukraine will remain united, remain cleft, remain independent, and generally cooperate closely with Russia. Once the transition questions concerning nuclear weapons and military forces are resolved, the most serious longer term issues will be economic, the resolution of which will be facilitated by a partially shared culture and close personal ties. The Russian-Ukrainian relationship is to eastern Europe, John Morrison has pointed out, what the Franco-German relationship is to western Europe.
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Just as the latter provides the core of the European Union, the former is the core essential to unity in the Orthodox world.

China historically conceived itself as encompassing: a “Sinic Zone” including Korea, Vietnam, the Liu Chiu Islands, and at times Japan; an “Inner Asian Zone” of non-Chinese Manchus, Mongols, Uighurs, Turks, and Tibetans, who had to be controlled for security reasons; and then an “Outer Zone” of barbarians, who were nonetheless “expected to pay tribute and acknowledge China’s superiority.”
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Contemporary Sinic civilization is becoming structured in a similar fashion: the central core of Han China, outlying provinces that are part of China but possess considerable autonomy, provinces legally part of China but heavily populated by non-Chinese people from other civilizations (Tibet, Xinjiang), Chinese societies which will or are likely to become part of Beijing-centered China on defined conditions (Hong Kong, Taiwan), one predominantly Chinese state increasingly oriented toward Beijing (Singapore), highly influential Chinese populations in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and non-Chinese societies (North and South Korea, Vietnam) which nonetheless share much of China’s Confucian culture.