On April 26, 2012 within a framework of the conference “The First Yeltsin Readings. Russia and Central Asia: Strategies of Cooperation” conducted jointly with the B. Yeltsin Fund from April 23 to 26 in Yekaterinburg the Day of RIAC took place. The event included the presentation about the Council’s activities, major projects and big events, the roundtable on Central Asian problems and the presentation of the Summer School “The situation in Central Asia: Security, Economy and Humanitarian Development”.
On April 26, 2012 within a framework of the conference “The First Yeltsin Readings. Russia and Central Asia: Strategies of Cooperation” conducted jointly with the B. Yeltsin Fund from April 23 to 26 in Yekaterinburg the Day of RIAC took place. The event included the presentation about the Council’s activities, major projects and big events, the roundtable on Central Asian problems and the presentation of the Summer School “The situation in Central Asia: Security, Economy and Humanitarian Development”.
The presentation of RIAC
I. Timofeev, RIAC Program Director and T. Makhmutov, Deputy Program Director familiarized the participants to the conference with the main lines of activity along which Russian International Relations Council develops its projects.
In his presentation I. Timofeev underscored close cooperation of Russian International Relations Council with Russian Federal universities in the field of scientific research and enlightenment. RIAC cooperates with the Ural Federal University (UrFU) on Central Asian problems. In 2012 the university will become the platform for holding Summer School, workshops and presentations made by RIAC members.
Joint RIAC and UFU roundtable on Central Asia
The participants of the roundtable – among them were RIAC experts, members of the staff and also the representatives of the University – discussed the situation in Central Asia in the aftermath of possible coalition forces withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s interests in the context of Central Asian countries’ security and development problems. In his intervention A. Kazantsev, the Director of the MGIMO Analytical Center gave an insight into Russian and the West’s visions of Afghanistan’s future and post-Soviet Central Asia after the withdrawal of NATO forces. The clash of opinions leads to value- ideological confrontation similar to those of the Cold War times or Russian-British standoff in the East in 1920-30s. The West holds the view that liberal systems are more sustainable and resilient to security threats and therefore they actively promote the ideas of democracy in the region. However, in reality Western countries are often faced with a “value vs. interest” dilemma which makes them collaborate with authoritarian regimes for the sake of attaining their political goals. Russia, on the contrary, believes that democratic transformations are doomed to bring about even graver security threats entailing the destabilization of the situation in Russia proper. “This value-ideological stand-off between Russia and the West in the region exacerbated by objectively existing divergence of interests will inevitably have a negative effect on the resolution of Afghan problems thus, in fact, undermining any cooperation on Afghanistan”,- said A. Kazantsev.
According to A. Vlasov, Director of the Lomonosov Moscow State University Center for Post-Soviet Studies, the withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan will impact, above all, internal political processes in the Republic of Kazakhstan because of its possible coincidence with the reshuffling of the Kazakh political elite. The aggravation of the Afghan problem might act as a catalyst for acute contradictions inside the elite and trigger off fierce fight for power. Besides, in the wake of the deteriorated internal situation manifesting itself in bigger volumes of drug-trafficking and greater flows of refugees a new political leader might be deprived of the opportunity to keep on pursuing multi-vector foreign policy and will have to agree to a political proposal of an external player who try to benefit from the situation in Afghanistan and use it as “an instrument of influencing the balance of power inside the political elite”. The participation of Kazakhstan in Euro-Asian integration process could prevent it from facing this challenge.
E. Kuzmina, Head of Post-Soviet countries economic development department at the RAS Institute of Economics, paid attention in her presentation to the post-crisis economic development trends in the region. Central-Asian countries differ significantly from each other not only in terms of their resource and production capacity but rather in terms of the nature and the depth of economic reforms they carry out, of the development and modernization that industrial sector is undergoing, and of foreign policy line. All post-Soviet economies of the region ended the crisis year of 2009 in the black and maintained sustainable growth in subsequent years. With the current trend keeping momentum, the prospects for Central-Asian states economic development in mid-term perspective remain high, however the change of the status quo in the aftermath of the coalition forces withdrawal may lead to breaking off multiple economic ties that will have a negative effect on the economic development.
A. Zulkharneev, Educational Program Director, Coordinator of the PIR-Center “Security in Central Asia and Russia” project analyzed various aspects of the region’s water and energy problem – transition to a different water and energy exchange system, the partition of the Central-Asian Unified Energy Grid, inefficient use of water and electric power, climate change and glaciers’ melting implications. As possible instruments for the problem solution there were proposed integration mechanisms such as ICWC, International Fund of Saving the Aral Sea and the UES, harmonization of Central-Asia states’ interests, and joint electric power supply to the external markets. Members of the UrFU faculty – V. Kuzmin, Head of Oriental Studies Chair of the ISPS International Relations department, K. Mutarshina, assistant at the History and Theory of International Relations Chair and Oriental Studies Chair of ISPS and A Burnasov, Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of International Relations Chair of ISPS – also spoke at the roundtable and outlined their positions.
Presentation of the joint RIAC and UFU Summer School
Summer School “The situation in Central Asia: security, economy and humanitarian development” is organized by Russian International Relations Council jointly with the Ural Federal University. The school will be held from August 20 through 27, 2012 in Yekaterinburg.
I.Timofeev, RIAC Program Director and T. Makhmutov, RIAC Deputy Program Director presented to the participants the School’s agenda and demonstrated a video about the RIAC Winter School which took place from January 31 to February 7, 2012. The agenda of the August School will include a series of trainings and the discussion of Central-Asian regional problems in the format of lectures and roundtables.
The Day of RIAC in the Ural Federal University
