TERRITORY, OPULATION, ETHNOSES, ND SECURITIZATION: ON THE ENDOGENOUS FACTORS OF SECURITY IN THE REGIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
Abstract
This is an attempt to assess the endogenous security factors of the regional political systems of the Caucasus and Central Asia in order to find out, in particular, how the region’s territorial-demographic and ethnic factors affect the basic perceptions of security, as well as the securitization1 processes occurring in this context. I do not claim to provide exhaustive answers here to all the questions relating to the problems I in end to investigate. At the same time, the specifics of the territorial, demographic, and ethnic structures, especially in the regions in which “modern states”2 predominate (Central Asia and the Caucasus belong precisely to this category), directly affect the perceptions of the threats and vulnerabilities created by the foreign political environment and domestic sub-national groups. This approach might clarify the reasons for the post-Soviet conflict dynamics in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
This assessment is based on certain specific conceptual-categorial provisions calling for preliminary explanation. First, this article looks at the regional political systems of the Caucasus and Central Asia as Regional Security Complexes (RSC).3 Second, I do not intend to operate using the fairly limited traditional spatial political division of the Caucasus into two segments— the Northern and the Southern Caucasus. I am proceeding from a relatively recent, yet much more adequate structure (the Northern, Central, and Southern Caucasus) better suited to objectively reflect the region’s most important geopolitical and ethnocultural specifics.
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References
The securitization phenomenon originally interpret-ed as a process of comprehension by society/the state of certain phenomena as an existential security threat was theoretically substantiated by the Copenhagen School. For more detail, see: B. Buzan,O. Weaver, J. De Wilde, Security. A New Framework for Analysis, Rienner Publishers Boulder, London, 1998; O. Weaver, B. Buzan, M. Kelstrup, P. Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, Pinter, London, 1993, and also B. Buzan, O. Weaver, Regions and Powers. The Structure of International Security, Cam-bridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, etc.
By way of assessment of the states’ sociopolitical development, B. Buzan and O. Weaver have identified three types (levels): pre-modern states (with a very low level of internal sociopolitical cohesion and state organization; weak government control over the territory and population); mod-ern states (strong government control over society, limited openness, sanctity of sovereignty and independence and related attributes, including territory and borders, and stakes placed on self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and nation-al identity), and post-modern states (relatively moderate treatment of the sovereignty, independence, and national identity issues, openness in economic, political, and cultural contacts with the outside world) (for more detail, see: B. Bu-zan, O. Weaver, op. cit., pp. 22-24).
B. Buzan’s model of the regional security complex is based on the interdependence of the national security in-terests of a geographically close group of states. The origi-nal interpretation speaks of RSC as “a group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be consid-ered apart from one another” (B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Second edition, Lynne Rienner Publish-ers Boulder, Colorado, 1991, p. 190).
This conception divided the Caucasus into three parts: the Northern (the autonomous entities of the South-ern Federal District of the Russian Federation); the Central (the independent republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ar-menia) and the Southern (the Northeastern ils of Turkey, or the Southwestern Caucasus, and Northwestern ostans of Iran, or Southeastern Caucasus) (see: E. Ismailov, Z. Ken-gerli, “The Caucasus in the Globalizing World: A New Inte-gration Model,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 2 (20),2003; E. Ismailov, V. Papava, The Central Caucasus: Es-says on Geopolitical Economy, CA&CC Press® AB,Stockholm, 2006.
See also: B. Coppieters, “Conclusions: The Caucasus as a Security Complex,” in: Contested Borders in the Cau-casus, Ed. by B. Coppieters, Brussels, Vubpress, 1996, pp. 194-195; S.E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers. A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, Curzon Press, 2001, p. 24.
See: B. Buzan, op. cit., pp. 219-221.
It should be said that in the wake of the Russian Empire’s disintegration, several more republics appeared in the Caucasus, including the Gorskaia (Mountain) Republic in the north (1917-1919); the Southwestern Caucasian (Kars) Dem-ocratic Republic (1918-1919), and the Araz-Turkic Republic (1918-1919) in the southwest; the Republic of Azadistan (1920)and the Gilian Republic (1920-1921) in the southeast.
For more details about the Central Asian borders, see: S. Golunov, “The Post-Soviet Borders of Central Asia: Se-curity and Cooperation,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 5 (11), 2001, pp. 141-152.
See: The CIA World Factbook 2006—Kazakhstan, available at [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/
z.html], 3 December, 2006.
Ibidem.
See: The CIA World Factbook 2006 — Uzbekistan, available at [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/
z.html], 3 December, 2006.
The figures for Central Asia and the Caucasus are based on information taken from The CIA World Factbook 2006.
he figures (2002) are based on calculations for the sub-regional divisions of the Caucasus (Northern, Southwestern and Southeastern) found in E. Ismailov, V. Papava, op. cit., pp. 67, 73.
See: N. Ziadullaev, “Central Asia in a Globalizing World: Current Trends and Prospects,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, pp. 125-126.
The table does not contain data relating to the ethnic situation in the Northern, Southeastern and Southwestern Caucasus, even though the heterogeneous nature of the Caucasus is associated more with these three sub-regions (particu-larly with the Northern Caucasus) than with the three Central Caucasian states. I explain this by the fact that it is very dif-ficult to identify the titular or the non-titular status of the ethnoses in the three parts of the Caucasus. The sub-regions are not politically independent parts of the Russian Federation, Iran or Turkey. Under these conditions, the titular/non-titular label is meaningless. The figures are based on data taken from The CIA World Factbook 2006, as well as on the data of the U.S.S.R. population census of 1989 (see: “Rasselenie narodov SSSR po soiuznym respublikam po perepisi 1989 g.,”Soyuz, No. 32, August 1990).
They are the Lachin (1,835 sq km), Kelbajar (3,054 sq km), Agdam (1,154 sq km), Fizuli (1,386 sq km), Jebrail (1,050 sq km), Gubadla (802 sq km), and Zangilan (707 sq km) districts.
According to the calculations made in Azerbaijan, there are 23,000 Armenians illegally residing in the occupied districts (see: Republic of Azerbaijan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs [http://www.mfa.gov.az/img/map_eng.gif], 2 August,2007).
See: G. Hewitt, “Abkhazia, Georgia and the Circassians (NW Caucasus),” Central Asian Survey, No. 18 (4), 1999,p. 463.
Ibidem.
Ibidem.
See: Georgia: Society, Language and Culture, Population, available at [http://webzone.imer.mah.se/projects/geor-gianV04/DEMO/GeoLINK/Intro2.html], 2 August, 2007.
In this respect, Uzbekistan comes second after Turkmenistan (see Table 2).
See: A. Yunusov, Meskhetinskie Turki: Dvazhdy deportirovanniy narod, Zaman Publishers, Baku, 2000, p. 95.
In this respect, Turkmenistan comes second after Kazakhstan.
For example, the demographic differences in the two regions suggest very interesting ideas. According to UNDP Human Development Report 2006, an annual population increase in the Central Caucasian republics in 2004-2015 will be:
n Azerbaijan (+0.8), in Armenia—(–0.2), in Georgia—(–0.7); in the republics of Central Asia: in Kazakhstan—(0.0), in Kyrgyzstan—(+1.1), in Tajikistan—(+1.5), in Turkmenistan—(+1.3), and in Uzbekistan—(+1.4) (see: UNDP Human De-velopment Report 2006, Demographic Trend, Annual Population Growth Rate (%), available at [http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/
tatistics/indicators/39.html], 11 June, 2007).
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