Ditching the West to Join The Rest

By joining the Eurasian Economic Union, Ankara can greatly benefit as a result.

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Nine years ago I wrote a post in which I alluded to the possibility of Turkiye joining the Eurasian Economic Union: 

"As was the case between France and Germany, Turkey had been Russia's number one enemy for centuries, the two countries had fought a long series of wars with each other. Both empires - the Russian and the Turkish - disappeared, however the states that emerged from their ruins enjoy excellent economic and diplomatic relations today.

Pushing the analogy with the EU further, we find that the new Eurasian Economic union needs a nucleus formed by two strong states around which new members from Eurasia can be attracted in the future.

Thus, according to a statistic published by Geo magazine (French edition) in December 2011, between 2002 and 2011 Turkey attracted a number of 27,000 foreign companies, of which 15,000 came from Russia. This being the situation, we can consider that the integration of the two economies - Russian and Turkish - has already reached an advanced stage."

As most of us know, the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) appeared after the dissolution of the USSR and - in a way - because of it. Although headquartered in Moscow, the union was actually the brainchild of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former president of Kazakhstan. 

After 2000, Russia wished to use the EEC as the nucleus of a larger common market, hoping to enlist Ukraine as a member. That prospect greatly upset the American Secretary of State at the time Hilary Clinton, who by 2011 campaigned internationally against it. The matter was put to rest by the Maidan coup d'etat, after which Ukraine decided to join the European Union instead.

Since then, the membership of the EEC has only included states like Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

During the same period, Turkiye all but gave up on its bid to join the EU after more than 50 years of waiting for a decision from Brussels. Geographically considering the matter, Turkyie is an Eurasian country with a different religion and culture from the rest of the EU members.

Taking the analogy between France and Germany after World War II and present-day Turkiye/Russia further, it is obvious to me that both the Russians and the Turks would greatly benefit economically from joining forces within the EEC.

Furthermore, the EEC includes republics from Central Asia whose populations are of Turkic descent. Finally, both Russia and Turkyie are governed by populist authoritarian leaders who strongly support traditional family values and reject Western-style liberalism with its current corollary, the LGBTQ agenda.

But there is more. 

For such a momentous transition for Turkiye to be complete, the Erdogan government should seriously consider joining the Cooperative Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). Over the past few years there have been quite a few calls within American policymaking circles, including The Atlantic Council, for Turkiye to be evicted from NATO.

Again, given the fact that the CSTO includes among its members some of the Turkic republics from Central Asia such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Turkiye could play a vital role in helping stabilise those republics which periodically experience political turmoil. Thus, the 5th of January 2022 Russian intervention in Kazakhstan could very well have been undertaken by a Turkish contingent instead.

Another area where Turkiye would have made an essential contribution is that of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has obvious leverage in Yerevan, but very little influence in Baku where Turkiye has a big say. Clearly, with both Russia and Turkiye being part of the same security organisation, Central Asia and the rest of Eurasia could only stand to benefit as a result.

The Avoidable War

It's not that the US lacks competent experts. It's the fact that nobody in Washington heeds their advice.

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The war in Ukraine is still raging 16 months after its start. Sadly, a totally neglected aspect of the conflict is being deliberately brushed aside by mainstream American politicians and military brass alike.

I am referring to the fact that for the United States this was very clearly an avoidable war. It took Russia 8 years and two abortive Minsk agreements to decide to put a military stop to NATO's designs in Ukraine, which were perceived by Moscow as an imminent threat to its security. During all this time no major American diplomatic initiative took place to lessen the tensions in the region and to avoid the outbreak of a war. This, to be sure, is a first in the diplomatic relations between the US and Russia.

Connected to all this is the fact that for almost a decade the bureaucrats in charge of framing American foreign policy have ignored their own experts' warnings about the high probability of an outbreak of hostilities with Moscow. 

Thus, James W Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department during the Obama administration, explains in a recent article how the current impasse was reached:

 "For years, the U.S. national security establishment was warned by voices from the right, left, and center that America needed to change its policy toward Russia. It was warned that Russia could not be defeated in their near abroad. It was warned that Kiev—by launching an “anti-terrorist” campaign against its Russian speaking citizens—was recklessly antagonizing Russia. It was warned that making a semi-deity out of a corrupt tool of Ukrainian oligarchs was an obvious mistake. It was warned against conflating the interests of ethno-nationalist far-right factions in Kiev and Lviv (and their allies in Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius) with U.S. national interests. It was warned to take President Putin’s numerous protestations against NATO expansion seriously. Yet America’s bipartisan ruling elite decided to ignore these warnings, and the results speak for themselves."

This geopolitical entanglement in Europe is not only unnecessary for the US, but it has the potential, if unchecked in a timely fashion, to lead to an all-out nuclear war between America and Russia. 

The wisdom of reversing course in Ukraine and starting peace negotiations with Russia is clear for all to see. Alas, to date no one can claim that the current US administration has the required statecraft skills and political wisdom to come up with a negotiated solution.

How and Why the Democrats Botched the "Reset" with Russia

 Every American administration since Ronald Reagan has attempted to get on the Russians' good side and normalise diplomatic relations with Moscow. 

Some presidents, most notably Bill Clinton but also Donald Trump, have been more successful than others in this endeavour. The worst performer in this area -until now- has been president Obama with his ill-inspired choice of advisers and Russia policies.

The key actor responsible for Obama's failure was Stanford professor Michael McFaul, a mediocre Russia expert. In 2007 he was approached by then-senator Obama and was subsequently put in charge of the Russian Department in the National Security Council after 2008. In this capacity he initiated the ill-fated policy of the "reset" of relations between the two countries. 

McFaul's main helper was Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State at the time. Together with the neocons still lurking within the State Department's structures after the Iraq debacle, McFaul and Hillary Clinton tried to torpedo Vladimir Putin's 2012 presidential campaign through a plethora of American-backed NGOs. 

Such gross interference in Russia's internal affairs was quite unprecedented, save for the brief Yeltsin interlude during the 1990s. 

For all McFaul's multiple academic credentials, he failed to grasp a basic fact, namely that liberal democracy is totally ill-suited for a country like Russia.

All Obama's intended "reset" policy achieved in practical terms, therefore, was a near-total breakdown of relations between Washington and Moscow.

Obama's vice-president at the time, Joe Biden, took over from McFaul and since 2014 until today he oversaw the Maidan Square coup d'etat and the gradual but relentless escalation of US and Nato conflict with Russia.

As much as his political enemies would like to assign all the blame on Joe Biden's administration for the disastrous state of America's relationship with Russia, the truth is that the seeds of the discord were planted more than a decade ago by Obama's decision to appoint McFaul as his top Russia affairs adviser.