By Victoria Panfilova, Astana-Moscow, a columnist of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The “Eurasian Security Concept” was presented at the 7th Astana Economic Forum and the 2nd World Anti-Crisis Conference in Kazakhstan last week. The authors of the concept say that the CSTO should become the core institute for Eurasian security. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan will become the basis for Eurasian integration.
The Eurasian Economic Union Treaty will be signed in Astana on May 29. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at a plenary session of the 7th Astana Economic Forum: “In it, we see a competitive association of countries, besides about 200 regional structures all over the world. What is happening in our region is relevant to us. Growing by separation from neighbours, at the expense of their “lapsing” into chaos and disorder, in the end, makes us all weaker – as a region and as a world in general. We need a new, more efficient and fairer architecture of global economic integration. We do not want integration associations, economic unions formed and under formation to be set against each other. On the contrary, they need to cooperate with each other fruitfully and constructively.”
Yulia Yakusheva, the executive director of the North-South Center for Political Analysis, said “the Asian region is becoming the key center of attracting global interests. Meanwhile, Western structures are still trying to dictate the agenda of international relations, but the format proposed is largely outdated. The inability of the UN and the OSCE to resolve local and global conflicts, which was especially evident in the political crisis of Ukraine, requires the formation of new methods and approaches to security. The Asian Region as a whole and Central Asia in particular, face a whole complex of security challenges. This includes withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, drug trafficking, manifestation of radical Islam. The latest events in Afghanistan and the terrorist attacks in Urumchi confirm that stability in the region is very delicate. And the “Eurasian Security Concept” in this case sounds quite timely. To a large degree, the concept corresponds to Nursultan Nazarbayev’s proposal to create a new format of Asian security – the Asian OSCE.”
Kazakhstan is concerned about signs of the inability of the OSCE to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. The Kazakh president stated: “One of the reasons for that is the lack of political will to reform the organization, demonstrated by its authorities even after the historic OSCE Astana Summit in 2010.” He added that Kazakhstan “is deeply disappointed that some countries are cloning the worst heritage of the past century today. Backslides of incontinence and justification of forceful methods of conflict-settlement, create dangerous precedents for the rest of the world and encourage a form of bias in settlement of interstate disputes. Kazakhstan expresses concerns that use of sanctioned policy disregards the principles of free trade and the free market on a global scale. I note that such a practice has never been effective in international relations, it obviously limits global economic growth, creates barriers to the formation of a fair global economic system.”
He is confident that now “is not the time to throw sanctions around, they will be a painful blow to those they target and they may harm the ones imposing them.” “We need to be aware that economic growth will be even slower than demure expectations. The U.S. cramming their economy with paper dollars should not distance itself from common problems,” said the president.
Politicians, in Nazarbayev’s opinion, should learn to live in a global world, stop using attributes of the “Cold War” and trust each other more. “Reduction of the trust line in world policy is a dangerous process because global trust in the 21st century is an exclusively economic category. The higher it is, the more chances for fast restoration of mass economic growth there are,” added the president. Nursultan Nazarbayev considered poverty to be the main problem. In his words, failure to resolve it would push the world towards “a new Mediaeval age” instead of a bright economic future.
