Geopolitical
Pragmatic Approach and Cultural Issues in EEU
[[ This is just a "collection" and "script" from my thoughts: I hope that I could develop these ideas further into a deeper understanding and better linguistic phrases in English. So you can send feedbacks to my email. Introduction can be found in this text below, but the full text is only in the jpg images below.]]
In
the 1990s and in the 2000s, the Eurasians began to form broad net of relying on
the leverages that as the Eurasians, discarded Atlanticism and American
dominion, opposed to liberal ethics and to sexual orientation issues – they are
able to participate in revered civilization, Christianity, and other
traditional faiths. Mostly, the Eurasian
net includes conservatives, the "right", or they just opposed to
American domination and are called the "left".
A.P. Tsygankov (“Mastering space
in Eurasia”, [71]) has argued more precisely that rather than perceiving these Eurasian
views in Russia as relatively homogenous, Eurasian thinking is highly diverse
and varies from West-friendly versions to those that are openly isolationist
and expansionist. Therefore Mr. Tsygankov invites to rethink the nature of
Russia’s spatial thinking and activities in Eurasia and to seriously consider
engaging Russia as an equal participant in a larger collective security-based
arrangement in the region.
Without saying exactly anything for or against Mr. Tsygankov’s views and
conclusions, surely everyone has recognized with Mr. Tsygankov that the
political needs and cultural motives are central in the argumentation about the
Eurasian Union (= EEU), too.
This study focuses on: what geopolitical needs and cultural motives
would be spearheading the effort to construct the EEU, if the effort is
expected (a) on the basis of argumentation of the EEU’s leading politicians and
(b) through the counter-arguments of the Western critics?
Primarily, the Eurasian leading politicians have argued plausibly that the starting point
of the EEU is to enhance economic growth; the
resurrection of the "Eurasian Imaginary" offers rather a political economic contribution
and cultural perspective on the real
yearning of the Eurasian countries than a dismantling attack or counterweight
against America’s and EU’s reach, although also the latter aspect and
superficial references to “Cold War” have already been seen before the
sharpening Ukraine crisis. Such references have been in the argumentation of
the Western agitators as well as in the hottest statements of the Eurasian
patriots.
About the problem of ‘culture’ and
‘civilization’ concepts
The
word ‘culture’ is known to be derived from the classical Latin word ‘cultura’,
which meant mainly for agriculture. In the modern world, ‘culture’ is, however,
intended for human growth process or products of this process. ‘Culture’ has
been so meant either the social conditions that are unique conditions of this
process, or the results from this process. Finally, ‘culture’ has been also
used as a synonym to the concept of ‘civilization’. In such case, the word
‘civilization’ means the operation or process, which involves social life
becoming more sophisticated, or the results of this process.
Both the ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ concepts are part of the
Eurocentric idea of the European culture’s and civilization’s superiority to
other cultures or to other civilizations. But already during 200 years, the
‘culture’ concept has also used as a tool for criticism against European
civilization. ‘Culture’ is then regarded as an independent values, spirituality
and inner orientation, which is seen to be higher than some ‘outward
civilization’. It is still there no generally accepted notion of culture in
which dualism between the material and the ideal, or between the real and the
objective dimensions would be exceeded.
About the significance of the civilization and cultural dimensions it
has been written and discussed a lot for a century, and therefore the rising of
such views as standpoint to the EEU should not be felt as inconsistent and
unique.
Mr. Norbert Elias is best known for his work Über den Prozess der
Zivilisation (1939). He took psychoanalytic theory of human image from the
early writings of Sigmund Freud. According to Elias, it is a question about
civilization process that how a man – in that case the European man – has over
times built up the strict codes of conduct. Elias drew attention to the types
of families in social and historical perspectives. He also claimed that -
during their own socialization - each individual has to meet those processes by
which his society has passed a long history. These theories are surely a part
of a European human’s self-understanding process as it is built on these
writings, and by means of speculation. After these historic memories you can
probably ask in the spirit of fair play that perhaps the cultural and
civilization dimensions of the EEU are also important and equal fair for the
self-understanding of the region’s people. Such a process is not at all
exceptional in the West, too.
From the Puritan Reformation to the idea of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of
History”, the theories about global history have been of great importance in
the U.S., even more than in Europe. Among the U.S. political elite,
particularly debate about the concept “civilization” has been a central place
in the conceptualization of America’s political role in the world. (Kuokkanen
2003. Prophets of Decline [72]). According to the U.S. liberal point of view,
“modernization”, based on the Enlightenment ideas, must carry out under the
leadership of the U.S. and under the principles of the “American civilization”
so that such principles would dominate all over the world. Mr. Brooks Adams,
Boston patrician and influential background to President Theodore Roosevelt,
outlined in the early 1900s that the American superpower will create new world
order: American corporations and the hard sciences will dominated all over the
world.(Kuokkanen 2003 [72])
During the First World War, the concepts “civilization” and “culture”
were re-evaluated in the U.S. After the Second World War, an English historian
and international politics, influential Arnold Toynbee’s wide religious
civilization history and his own person rose to fame and position, which no one
historian had in the U.S. “Toynbee phenomenon” was connected with the
threatening situation of the Cold War, but also with Henry L. Luce’s enthusiasm
to Toynbee’s explanation about the spiritual history and about America as the
champion of “Christian civilization”. (Kuokkanen 2003. Prophets of Decline
[72]). The Eurasian “anti-Atlanticism” can also be understood as Eurasian
civilization’s exit attempt from these conventional illusions of the American
superiority, as a fight for freedom from American foreign civilization.
In 1993, Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington published an
article entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs magazine.
(Huntington, 1993 “The Clash of Civilizations?”, [73]) In it, he placed the
question about the nature of post-Cold War world and opposed to Professor
Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about “from the end of history to the victory of
democracy”. According to Huntington, after the Cold War blocs, the world has
been grouped through old civilizations and cultural areas, in which case there
are risks to wars in the border areas.
According to Huntington, in the time of Cold War world, the two power
blocs – the U.S.-led West and the Soviet Union on the other hand, were
fundamentally Western cultural areas, and Post-Cold War world would be
gradually formed through old civilizations (the major cultural areas).
It was perhaps most important to Huntington’s view to say that if
cultural differences are not taken sufficiently into account in practical
politics, as a result it will be a “clash of civilizations” or other serious
problems. Of course, Huntington’s theses were met with fierce criticism,
including accusation of excessive simplification and determinism. As for the
Russian and Eurasian area, so certainly, it is not the most accurate to
classify the whole Soviet Union belonging to the same the western cultural
sphere with the U.S.; for examples, the Caucasus and Far Eastern regions are
quite different and unique, very different from the atmosphere of American
Protestantism or post-modern Western atheism. Even the Russian Orthodox
religion is different from the Protestant culture and Anglo-Saxon political
“proselytism”. (Manoilo 2005 [77], 2008a [78], 2008b [79], 2008c [80])
Professor Huntington stated his
claims by saying that this was not inevitable collision prediction, but rather
a reminder of the importance of cultural factors. (Huntington, 1997, The Clash
of Civilizations, [74], Huntington 2002, “The Age of Muslim Wars”, [75])
Religions are not necessarily the basis of ethnic groups, but religions are
strongly influenced to the cultures and institutions of the different regions
and different ethnic groups. Therefore
the world should not be forced into any homogenous view, because it evokes
strong resistance. In particular, on this cultural analytical basis, Russian
scholars have strongly criticized certain types of the Anglo-Saxon political
“proselytism” and “imperialism” (cf. Manoilo 2005 [77], 2008a [78], 2008b [79],
2008c [80]).
“The West” has no rights to
declare own cultural values into universal throughout the world. Such aim would
be fundamentally wrong, immoral and dangerous. In turn, it is possible to use the defense or
promotion for the values also as a curtain or other means to cover economic and
military strategic factors. From this perspective, it is also possible to
understand President Vladimir Putin’s strong words at Valdai discussion forum
about U.S. domination: ”United States, having declared itself the winner of the
Cold War. - - - the so-called ‘victors’
in the Cold War had decided to pressure events and reshape the world to suit
their own needs and interests. - - - In a situation where you had domination by
one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global
solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes. ”
(Putin 24.10.2014, “Valdai” [97])
In the Eurasian Area, it has been often criticized that the U.S. and
Western allies seemed to maintain – contrary to Huntington’s warnings – a
self-defined world order as “world police”. (Lieven, 2002 “The Secret
Policemen’s Ball [76]) During the Cold War times, opposing block avoided
interfering to each other’s internal affairs, but during the post-Cold War
decade, the traditional power struggle, which operates within the framework of ethnic
or other political groups, uses the religious and other cultural factors quite
openly in order to ensure unity and solidarity, as well as to cover power quest
or political and economic interests.
Yet in year 2011, Mr. Sabina Ayazbekova, the professor at the Moscow
State Lomonosov University, has described thoroughly on it, how Russian
historians and philosophers have shaped the geopolitical and
socio-philosophical doctrine of “Eurasianism” and presented it as a special
ethnographic world – cultural-historical type. (Ayazbekova 2011 [102]) And
considering the Eurasian space as a scientific problem, you can find many
interpretations of the territorial concept. In the context of the continental
Eurasian space it appears “multicivilization space”, comprising a number of
ethnic groups, countries, religions, languages, different social, political and
economic systems: “You can find Western European, Arab, East Slavic, Chinese,
Turkish, Far East, South Asia, the Central Asian and other cultural communities
there”(Ayazbekova 2011 [102]). Professor Ayazbekova determinates that “Eurasian
culture” is the “interaction and coexistence within the formation of the
geographically diverse cultures: European – on the one hand, and Asia – on the
other”. “The polyphony of the cultures of Asian and European is the essential
foundation of the Eurasian biculture” in which each unique culture naturally
goes into the formation of the “deep communication with another culture”
(Ayazbekova 2011 [102]).
Increased pushing to more tapered and less tolerant cultural interaction
has become visible soon after the Maidan and Ukraine crisis, if and when, for
example, we check the later definitions amongst the Eurasian Youth Union. It is
already less often possible to hear so much stylish and flexible concepts about
“interaction and coexistence” or “deep communication”, but rather in
Evrazia-portal Mr. Anton Brykov, the leader of the Eurasian Youth Union, argues
with increasingly patriotic aplomb that “the powerful army” is not only a part
of Russian national idea, but it is also central part in Eurasian idea, and it
is especially necessary in the world’s geopolitical instability. It is not
question of Western media about “Russian militarism”, but “literally reborn
from the ashes”. “If we want peace, we must prepare for war and be ready to win
it”. (Bryukov 18.11.2015 [103]) According to the Eurasian youth leader, from
the period of President Gorbachev the Russian leaders would have lived under
the “national masochism” and “the destruction of the army continued” to
mid-2000s. The improvement of the army started unfortunately only 2-3 years
ago. Russia could retain its identity and the future of their people “only
through strong military power”; and moreover “conservative and traditional
values should be combined with the scientific and technical development”. In
addition, the leader of the Eurasian Youth Union argues laconically and with
enthusiasm that “unfortunately, for many years a large number of figures of
Russian culture inflected with liberalism, pacifism and Westernism”, therefore
“we need films, books, plays, paintings, representing the Russian history and
its military aspect of the battles in a truthful patriotic light” (Bryukov
18.11.2015 [103]). The Eurasian process, which began with a serious accent of
deep communication, has turned to more closed climate in the time of the
geopolitical tensions.
Kuvassa allekirjoittanut:
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Juha Molari, D.Th, BBA.
osa-aikainen siivooja
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