At the end of last summer Almaty hosted Third summit of foreign ministers of states, taking part at so-called Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICBMA).
Despite the pathos of Kazakh information agencies about “importance” of the event, the speeches of participants and the adopted declaration do not have a reasonable content, and are not able to give an answer to urgent issues of modern development of Central-asian region and Asia as a whole.
The initiative to hold the summit as some analogue of OSCE was put forward by Nazarbaev at the 47th Session of UN GA in 1992. According to Kazakh president, the essence of the idea is “the aspiration to renew previously collapsed efforts to create effective and universal structure on providing security on Asian continent”. The declaration is sounding, but in practice it’s ineffective.
According to Kazakh part, the following countries took part in the summit: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Mongolia, Egypt, India, Jordan, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, UAE, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, South Korea. Some countries participated as observers.
Along with this, according to a number of authoritative expert opinions, the summit is “a pure political profanation”, having no appropriate geopolitical, political and many other grounds”.
One cannot, but agree with these conclusions. Given the character of the event, the states invited to it observe only a diplomatic ethics – not more than this. N.Nazarbaev, bad reputed as “ersatz-integrator” and a pure populist, does not understand the tasks which could be put before this structure, if it could become an Asian analogue of OSCE at all”.
It suffice to say that the Kazakh part does not have even conceptual vision of the CICBMA, leave alone how are they going “unite”, “reconcile” and “integrate” Asian states absolutely different from each other by their geopolitical, strategic and foreign policy targets. Leave alone the structures existing today as analogues to the CICBMA (and the same OSCE), which are no more criticizing and teaching developing communities. In practice they are counter-productive, because they not only neglect national specifics and peculiarities of historical development of these countries and peoples, but also create an atmosphere favorable for democratic fundamentalism, which is applied by West today as a vulgar political instrument.
Kazakhstan proposes the Asian countries non-committal and ridden-to-death slogans – “peace, security, stability, friendship, sustainable development”. Only lazy did not pronounce these words! Like it was 16 years ago, Kazakh president once again declared with gusto at the August summit that the “world today is experiencing hard times (I wonder when did we have easy times?)”. According to him, any of the following problems cannot be solved without united efforts of the world community - “hunger, poverty, epidemics, ecology deterioration, terrorism, drug trafficking.
And who is speaking otherwise? Isn’t it clear that all these problems taken together, metaphorically, are cry and pain of the planet? It would be a different matter if he knew how and through which instruments he was going to unite “the efforts of the world community” (at least those Asian countries, which include irreconcilable conflicting parties) in the fight against security threats and challenges. But instead of this we see senseless rhetoric, populist and non-weighted declarations, which are not binding, but are buzzwords.
Of course, the August summit wouldn’t get along without a new initiative of Nazarbaev. He proposed to create a new forum named “Common peace: Progress through diversity”. How many such forums, congresses and initiatives are we going yet to see?
Those experts who permanently study the Central Asian region, raise quite reasonable questions: why endless integration ideas, initiatives and proposals are coming from Kazakh president, why the integration, according to Nazarbaev, must be shaped under the patronage of Kazakhstan, what real motivations are pursued by Astana, except declared political targets?
A number of observers rightly presume that the main reason of fountain ideas of Nazarbaev is to satisfy his own ambitions and excessive political appetite, irrespective the fact that his ideas having no weight and any clear picture of concrete instruments of integration. Leave alone a clear understanding of how to move towards declared, but practically unreachable targets.
The idea of the CICBMA, as well as other similar proposals of Nazarbaev like Eurasian Union, Central Asian Union and other unions are based on hyperbolized vision of both his personality and the role of Kazakhstan in the region. No doubt that these phony ambitions of Astana serve as a basis for grounding its super-ambitious projects, which in general are not supported neither in the region nor in the world. For Astana the participants of the CICBMA are merely a “statistical matter”, “raw material”, which only create the appearance of moving towards the declared goals.
In practice not a single event held within this forum, “unique” by its senselessness and absurdity, did not succeed. There is no need to consider seriously the “integration scenario” of Nazarbaev, because his “peacemaking potential” is aimed not at promoting stability and cooperation, but at exclusively satisfying more and more ridiculous caprices of the aging head of state.
Let alone a rather unpleasant for the initiators fact: since the creation of CICBMA no practically viable decision was taken. For example, how to solve Palestinian problem, regulate situation in Afghanistan, reconcile conflicting parties in Iraq, cut down nuclear claims of so-called threshold countries – Pakistan, India, Iran, North Korea etc.?
Another reasonable question arises: what is principal for the activities of CICBMA – discussion of problems existing in Asia what is done within other, more authoritative forums, or their constructive solution? In current situation this task seems unreal, because of at least “asymmetry” of existing and potential conflicts and plurality of problems existing between extremely opposed communities. It’s quite clear, that Astana with its dead-born CICBMA is not able to give well-analyzed and well-grounded answers to these and other questions, make up real forecasts, work out step-by-step measures on the path of establishing peace and stability in the Asian part of the planet.
Aleksandr Prudnikov
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