Russia Abroad: Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond

229 Pages·2018·1.635 MB·English

by  Anna Ohanyan

R U S S I A
A B R O A D
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R U S S I A
A B R O A D
DRIVING
REGIONAL FRACTURE

in
POST-C OMMUNIST
EURASIA

and
BEYOND
ANNA OHANYAN
Editor
Georgetown University Press / Washington, DC
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Ohanyan, Anna, editor.
Title: Russia abroad : driving regional fracture in post-Communist Eurasia and beyond / Anna
Ohanyan, editor.
Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018016702 (print) | LCCN 2018033284 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626166219
(ebook) | ISBN 9781626166202 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781626166196 (hardcover : alk.
paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Russia (Federation)—Foreign relations. | Russia (Federation)—Foreign
relations—Former Soviet republics. | Former Soviet republics—Foreign relations—Russia
(Federation) | Regionalism. | Geopolitics.
Classification: LCC JZ1616 (ebook) | LCC JZ1616 .R86 2018 (print) | DDC 327.47—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016702
♾ This book is printed on acid- free paper meeting the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
19 18 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Jeremy John Parker.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Margins Matter 1
Anna Ohanyan
PART I THEORY OF REGIONAL FRACTURE
1 Theory of Regional Fracture in International Relations:
Beyond Russia 19
Anna Ohanyan
2 From Donbass to Damascus: Russia on the Move 41
Robert Nalbandov
PART II LENIN’S REVENGE: REGIONAL FRACTURE IN
THE POST-S OVIET SPACE
3 Fractured Eurasian Borderlands: The Case of Ukraine 59
Vsevolod Samokhvalov
4 The South Caucasus: Fracture without End? 81
Laurence Broers
5 Small States and the Large Costs of Regional Fracture:
The Case of Armenia 103
Richard Giragosian
6 Central Asia: Fractured Region, Illiberal Regionalism 119
David G. Lewis
vi Contents
PART III POSTCOLONIAL ROOTS OF REGIONAL
FRACTURE BEYOND THE POST- SOVIET SPACE
7 Stuck in Between: The Western Balkans as a
Fractured Region 137
Dimitar Bechev
8 Syria and the Middle East: Fracture Meets Fracture 153
Mark N. Katz
Conclusion: Overcoming Regional Fracture 167
Anna Ohanyan
References 181
List of Contributors 205
Index 209
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea of regional fracture as a process, and fractured regions as systems, arose in
the course of several conversations with academics at International Studies Associ-
ation conferences and with civil society leaders and scholars in the South Cauca-
sus. In 2015, at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in New
Orleans, I presented the findings of my then recently published book, Networked
Regionalism as Conflict Management (Stanford University Press, 2015). In that
work, I focused on the networked dimension of regionalism in conflict areas and
argued for the significance of regionalism in cultivating structures and processes in
conflict management. The discussant for that panel, Fen Osler Hampson, pointed
out that part of the argument seemed to involve the costs of regional fragmentation
rather than only the benefits of regional integration. This observation turned out
to be immensely helpful. It was the push I needed to start thinking about regional
fragmentation as a distinct analytical category.
Still, my struggles with conceptualizing these rather broad ideas at the time
persisted, as I started thinking about the costs of missing regional ties in a more sys-
tematic manner and quickly realized that as international relations scholars we know
more about the value of regional integration than the costs of missing links. Later in
the year, this observation from Hampson at ISA 2015 was echoed in a conversation
I had with Gevorg Ter-G abrielyan, the country director of the Eurasia Partnership
Foundation in Armenia. Ter- Gabrielyan pointed out how often existing regional ties
in the South Caucasus are being strategically undone by Moscow to achieve specific
foreign policy goals. Drawing from his expertise as a peacebuilding practitioner,
Ter- Gabrielyan proceeded to provide numerous valuable cases of contacts between
people in conflict regions being disrupted by governmental establishments from
regional powers and national states.
As I proceeded to develop the framework of regional fracture, I moved to
identify additional empirical observations beyond the South Caucasus. Hence, the
initiative of an edited volume was born. Without the insightful contributions from
a team of highly accomplished scholars and analysts, our theory of regional fracture
vii
viii Acknowledgments
would not be where it is today. I am thankful for invitations to present this book
project at various venues, such as the “End of Transition” conference organized by
the University of Southern California Institute of Armenian Studies, in Los Angeles
in April 2017, and at the “The End of the Region: Future of Spatial Constructs in
the Populist Era” conference held in Belgium and jointly organized by Université
de Liège, Columbia University, and Cambridge University.
I am deeply appreciative of scholars and practitioners on both sides of the Atlan-
tic. The generosity and insight of my respondents in Armenia, Georgia, Russia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the US have been essential for adding much- needed
detail to this study. Research grants from Stonehill College and the University
of Southern California Institute of Armenian Studies, supported in part by the
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, allowed me to conduct fieldwork in the South
Caucasus and in Russia. I am thankful to my research assistants, Erica Cordatos
and Daniel Lavigne, for valuable support and dedication throughout various stages
of the research, particularly in conducting the fieldwork in Armenia in 2017. I am
grateful to the students in my Russia, the West, and the Rest course for spirited
and stimulating discussions on current politics in post- Communist Eurasia. The
feedback from anonymous reviewers at Georgetown University Press has been
instrumental in structuring the argument of the book and for thinking more broadly
about its implications for international relations theory. Susan Allen, Richard Fin-
negan, Todd Gernes, and David Matz have added greatly to the project with their
thoughtful suggestions on structure and content of the book. I am thankful to
Donald Jacobs, the senior acquisitions editor at Georgetown University Press, for
his early support of this project, his wise counsel, and his professionalism in guiding
this project throughout the various stages of the process. Importantly, I credit him
with the title of this book.
As always, it is my family that is a constant source of inspiration for my work.
They are my toughest critics and the support system for which I am thankful. My
twelve- year-old daughter, Elise, challenged me not to hide behind the books about
peace that I write and to “actually get out and do something for peace.” She has a
point. And I dedicate this book to peacebuilders, practitioners, and diplomats that
are tasked with the daily work of building connections and ties that will ultimately
transform conflict- ravaged and fractured neighborhoods for the better.
Introduction: Margins Matter
Anna Ohanyan
The year 2016 appears to have marked the dawn of a new, centrifugal era in world
politics. Britain’s departure from the European Union (EU), known as “Brexit,”
has unsettled the decades- old regional fabric of the European Union while, across
the Atlantic, a new American administration has challenged the fundamentals of
free trade arrangements from the North American Free Trade Agreement to the
aborted Trans-Pacific Partnership. Populist politics is seemingly on the rise wher-
ever one looks. With this as a backdrop, it may appear difficult to remain sanguine
about the prospects of regionalism,1 especially as two of its long- time champions,
the US and the UK, pull away from their respective regional groupings.
Ironically, contemporary support for regionalism of sorts comes from an
unlikely place: the Kremlin. While seeking to undermine the regional social con-
tract within the EU over the past decade (Contessi 2016), the Kremlin has been
working diligently to create its own regional groupings in both the economic and
security spheres (see chapters 2 and 7, this volume). In 2015, largely inspired by the
European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) was created to replace its
predecessor, the Customs Union (International Crisis Group 2016a). The Krem-
lin’s critics see these Russia- led regional groupings as an attempt to reconstruct the
Soviet Union, while Vladimir Putin has described them as initiatives to promote
economic integration and modernization toward a “Greater Europe” (International
Crisis Group 2016a). In the case of the EEU, imitation, as Oscar Wilde noted over
a century ago, may indeed be the sincerest form of flattery.
Still, Russia is no stranger to regionalism. After all, the Russian Empire as well as
the Soviet Union served to maintain Russian hegemony in its peripheries by tying
these regions closely to Moscow (Smith 1995; Sussex 2012). As such, these projects
repeated a practice of building regional groupings (albeit coercive and centralized)
for political purposes by many other (post)colonial powers of their time. Central
and South American countries came together in the nineteenth and twentieth
1