It is impossible to fully understand what is going on in Nagorno-Karabakh without taking into the account the wider context, which is not that of a mere Azeri-Armenian dispute but is that of the new Russo-Turkish wars and, to an even greater extent, that of the geopolitical chess game for control over the Heartland.

Great Powers in Nagorno-Karabakh

This conflict is not the mere result of decades-old never-solved misunderstandings between two countries and there is a very simple and easy way to prove it: today’s great powers are deeply involved in it.

Russia, Iran and their satellites are backing Armenia, whereas much of the West as well as Turkey and Israel are supporting Azerbaijan. Each player has its own reason for explaining their choice and sometimes there is no dialogue among them, the only thing in common is their positioning in the conflict: this is the case of Turkey and Israel, with the former backing Baku to expand its influence in the region and in accordance with its Pan-Turkic agenda and the latter driven by the goal of countering Iranian influence.

The European Union is siding with Baku for reasons other than Pan-Turkism, Russia or Iran: energy security. In recent years Azeri gas has proven to be a valid alternative to Russian gas and both Brussels and Ankara see in Baku a strategic partner with which to decrease their over-reliance on Gazprom.

Then there is the United States, which turned into the Western bloc’s core state in the aftermath of World War Two. Concurrent with its new role, Washington inherited from the United Kingdom the burden of keeping Eurasia fragmented and pervaded by a controlled and productive chaos.

The South Caucasus Is a Keystone

In the 1980s it would have proven impossible and unimaginable for the West to enter South Caucasus and give rise to a game-changing anti-Russian movement, whose strength is such that it has been redrawing Georgia’s and Azerbaijan’s national identities. In fact, Georgia is slowly heading towards the EU and NATO whereas the latter is more and more part of the Turkic world.

It comes as no surprise that at the outbreak of the new season of fire in the Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed that Ankara is ready to support Baku both diplomatically and militarily because they are “two countries, one nation”.

Why the West is so interested in the epoque-making dynamics in the post-Soviet Caucasus is easy to understand: the ultimate goal of Washington in the contemporary era is the same that drove London’s moves between the late 18th century and the early 20th century: to prevent any Eurasian power from taking full control over the so-called Heartland.

Hegemony over the South Caucasus — a region from which Russia has been almost completely ousted over the years due to the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity offered by the USSR’s collapse — is a mandatory step in this context due to its pivotal role in linking the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, namely to connecting Europe to Central Asia: that’s why the US sponsored a color revolution in Georgia, then in Armenia and now is backing Azerbaijan.

Brzezinski’s Grand Strategy to Resize Russia

Zbigniew Brzezinski had the historical merit of understanding the evergreen truth exposed in the pages of Sir Halford Mackinder’s The Geographical Pivot of History. Mackinder, which is considered the founding father of modern geopolitics, argued that if the United Kingdom wanted to maintain its global hegemony, it had to shift the focus from maritime supremacy to the terrestrial dimension, more specifically to Eurasia.

Three were the powers that scared Mackinder the most: Germany, Russia, and China. Accordingly, he set the guidelines for a grand strategy aimed at avoiding a Russo-German axis and at keeping the Heartland out of control of any one great Eurasian power.

But what is the Heartland? It’s the very core of Eurasia, ranging from Central Asia to the Siberian steppes. Destiny and geography wanted it to be ruled by Russia. According to Mackinder, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world”.

The USSR hegemonized the Heartland for almost a century but it didn’t get to achieve a globally-extended hegemony: the West managed to keep Eurasia fragmented and impossible to control for any Asian power at first with the containment doctrine and then by playing Moscow and Beijing against one another. In any case it was only matter of containing the Kremlin’s expansion, because then the Heartland couldn’t be touched in any way.

But the end of the Cold War paved the way for a historical and dramatic ground-breaking change: the Heartland-dominating Soviet Union imploded in fifteen states. Shortly after the event, Brzezinski, former counselor to President Lyndon Johnson and President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, elaborated a very detailed grand strategy for Eurasia aimed at exploiting to the fullest the disappearance of the Soviet empire.

His ideas took the form of a book, The Grand Chessboard, dated 1997, whose suggestions and predictions are all coming true: from NATO and the EU’s eastward expansion to the instrumental use of Poland to form an anti-Russian cordone sanitaire incorporating Eastern European post-Communist and post-Soviet states, from Euromaidan to the promotion of an Islamic and pan-Turkic revival in post-Soviet Central Asia.

If the keyword throughout the Cold War was “containment”, Brzezinski changed it in “encirclement”, which implies also “resizing.” However, not everything went as planned because the decision to turn “Russia from an Eurasian empire to an Asian empire” by promoting a bloody color revolution in Ukraine prompted the Kremlin to build an anti-Western strategic partnership with China, and in minor part with Iran as well.

Why the South Caucasus Matters Geopolitically

Brzezinski, as previously said, elaborated his vision by re-reading and updating Mackinder’s thought. It was precisely Mackinder who suggested the removal of the South Caucasus from Russia’s orbit. He did so in the aftermath of the Communist revolution hopefully to convince the United Kingdom to fund anti-Bolshevik separatist movements in the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Dagestan – the last one included Chechnya and Ingushetia at the time of his writings.

From the Baltics to Chechnya it is impossible not to note how Mackinder’s post-World War One ambitions have been resumed by the West in the post-Cold War, perfectly condensed in Brzezinski’s master plan and later turned into reality. Now, 23 years after the start of the chess game, the Stalin-built buffer-zone system has been almost completely incorporated into the EU-NATO system and, as a natural consequence of this, the West is increasing the pressure over the remaining Russian-influenced areas in Europe and South Caucasus: Serbia, Moldova, Belarus and Armenia.

Both Mackinder and Brzezinski were very interested in the dynamics taking place in the South Caucasus because, as previously written, it represents a linking point the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, that is between Europe and Asia. According to Mackinder, “the Heartland for the purposes of strategic thinking, includes the Baltic Sea, the navigable Middle and Lower Danube, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Tibet and Mongolia.”

Brzezinski’s vision differs from that of his predecessor only for one fact: it has been deepened and perfected by the addition of new elements. The pages of The Grand Chessboard explain the reason for Western involvement in the Azeri-Armenian dispute on Baku’s side: “Azerbaijan is […] geopolitically critical. […] It can serve as a corridor for Western access to the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia”.

Actually, modern-day Azerbaijan has become what Brzezinski predicted: a vital energy provider for the West. But Baku, in order to be truly useful and fully exploitable to the ends of the chess game, had to also fall into Ankara’s sphere of influence because “an independent, Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, with pipelines running from it to the ethnically related and politically supportive Turkey, would prevent Russia from exercising a monopoly on access to the region and would thus also deprive Russia of decisive political leverage over the policies of the new Central Asian states.”

Russia’s Mistakes

The US is close to checkmating Russia, not because of Brzezinski’s infallibility but due to the Kremlin’s underestimation of the West’s purposes and capacity in the post-Soviet space. It should have been very clear in 1999 and 2004, with the NATO enlargement to Baltic states and Warsaw pact former members that a new cold war was secretly underway.

This myopia worked in favor of the West, which got to  silently expand its influence in the post-Soviet space over the years: from Eastern Europe to South Caucasus, and even to Central Asia, where the West is skillfully making use of Turkey as a fifth column to weaken Russia’s power position. Now, only a few of countries are left in the Kremlin’s backyard and all of them are experiencing extraordinary pressure.

Another severe mistake was to increase reliance on the West — in particular the EU — from trade and energy exports to tech acquisition. Such dependency proved harmful in the aftermath of the Ukraine-related sanctions regime and has been obligating Russia to elaborate a China-based contingency plan that, again, may prove successful or extremely detrimental.

Such a situation was forecast by Brzezinski, who strongly believed that an eventual Moscow-Beijing axis would be Chinese-led and would accelerate Russia’s run to demotion from a world-leading power to an ever-declining regional power belonging to China’s sphere of influence.

Twenty-three years after the publication of the Grand Chessboard, Asia’s New Great Game seems close to the end and it’s the US who is going to make checkmate. Russia has only one opportunity to win the game: to let itself be guided by Brzezinski, that is to read carefully the content of his prophecy-empowered book and to study in-depth his thought, because the US is basing its Russia-focused foreign agenda on that thought.

The first step is to convert the partnership with China into an alliance, but in such a way not to play a junior role. The second is to use Iran to counter Turkey’s ever-growing influence in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and even within Russia itself. Brzezinski’s nightmare was the birth of an anti-hegemonic coalition formed by this powerful trio of Germany, Russia and China: Russia’s defense of the Heartland, and of their own very existence, depends on them forming a world-overturning alliance.

L'articolo Brzezinski’s Shadow Over Nagorno-Karabakh proviene da InsideOver.

Turkey is more and more present in Mongolia, the land in between Russia and China, and its presence is set to work against the Kremlin’s national interests in the region since the two countries have recently resumed their centuries-old rivalry for hegemony over Eurasia. In 2020 as in 1853, Turkey is not alone since its agenda is backed by the Western powers, that’s why Russia needs to carefully plan every move in this all-against-one geopolitical game.

Understanding Turkey’s Vision for Mongolia

Mongolia and Turkey are tied by a millennia-old spiritual relationship since the former is one of the places where the modern-day Turkic peoples used to live long before moving westward. It comes as no surprise that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to dedicate some space to Ulaanbaatar in its very rich and complex foreign agenda based on the combination of Neo-Ottomanism, Islamic nationalism, Pan-Turkism and Turanism. In Mongolia’s case, Erdogan’s strategists are playing the turanist and pan-Turkic cards, trying to make fascinating and attracting the memory of an ancient and related past.

Pan-Turkism is the ideology whose aim is to make Turkey appear as the legitimate defender of the Turkic peoples wherever they live: China’s Xinjiang, Moldova’s Gagauzia, Russia’s Crimea, Central Asia, and so on. This claim has prompted Ankara to try to fund a pan-Turkic cultural and political revival by means of charities, NGOs, government-linked agencies, schools, cultural centres and mosques.

As of today, Turkey’s strategy is paying back since it is more and more hegemonizing Central Asian dynamics via the Turkic Council and the International Organization of Turkic Culture, it is one of the most important reference points and international sponsors of the Uyghur insurgency and it is attracting into its orbit several Russian republics via their incorporation in pan-Turkic entities, like the World Turks Qurultai.

What is Turanism?

Turanism is a less known but very captivating school of thought believed to originate in tge early 1900s, until Hungary and Turkey decided to bring new life to it in the 2000s. That choice proved savvy, because turanism is now showing up its game-changing potential. Turanism was born out of the minds of Central European thinkers in the late 19th century with the purpose of building a continent-wide alliance made up by the peoples of Ural-Altaic origin so that to counter the unification processes started by the pan-Slavists and the pan-Germanists. These peoples were and are Hungary’s Magyars, Finland’s and Baltics’ Finns, Russia’s Tatars and Anatolia’s Turks, but neo-Turanists tend to extend the spiritual connection to some Asian peoples like the Mongols, Turkestani Turks, the Koreans and the Japanese.

Nineteenth century’s turanism didn’t work out and eventually crashed against the revolution-powered pan-Slavist and pan-Germanist sentiments but Viktor Orban and Erdogan got to make it appealing and, above all, to make it work. The two countries formed a very solid strategic partnership and are expanding throughout Asia. Budapest, for instance, took advantage of the turanist momentum to develop strong ties with the -stan countries and Tokyo.

Turkey’s interest for Mongolia has to be contextualized in this ideological framework and, just like in Central Asia and the Balkans, the task of increasing its own influence to the detriment of Russia is not proving very hard.

What are the Turkish Doing in Mongolia?

The relations between Mongolia and Turkey didn’t start in the post-Cold War but date back to the Ottoman era, that is when the High Porte supported the “Turkic Mongol brothers”‘s military campaigns against the Russians. The later fall of the Gengis Khan-built empire and the turning of the Russian reality into a strong and well-defended empire against the background of the consolidation of the Chinese empire, led to the disappearance of Mongolia as an independent entity until 1911.

In the post-World War I, the Communist revolution spread from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar and the historically deep-rooted hostility between Mongols and Chinese have been wisely exploited by the Soviets to give rise to a decades-long conflict-free partnership whose soundness hasn’t been affected by the political turmoil of the 1990s.

It’s in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse that Turkey enters Mongolia again in the expectation to take advantage of the power vacuum. Although the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1969, it was only from the late 1990s that Ankara started using its own proxies to raise its influence over Ulaanbaatar and it has been recording quite a success.

Avalanche of Turkey-Mongolia Agreements and Projects

As of today, the two countries are tied by more than hundred agreements and from 2011 Turkey has been included in the “Third Neighbor” list, that is the list where are mentioned the nations (beyond Russia and China) recognized by Mongolia as important for the regional stability and, thus, with which is recommended to strengthen the bilateral cooperation. The Third Neighbor’s list speaks for itself since it includes a series of Western or Western-aligned powers: Turkey, the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and India.

Erdogan is known to be a skillful and pragmatic statesman and, indeed, is missing no chance. So far, his strategy has been based on the projection of soft power, more in detail on culture and humanitarian cooperation. The government-linked Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is present in the country since 1994 and it has proven to be Ankara’s main instrumentum regni.

From 1994 to 2019, the Tika completed 661 humanitarian projects in Mongolia, and 67 new ones were launched last year, and its range of action knows no borders. In fact, the Tika is being engaged in the delivery of tons of food and basic goods to the Northern Mongolia-based Duhka Turks, in the building of capacity underground vegetable warehouses in Henti province (which has been carefully selected for the fact of hosting a small Muslim community), and it is also funding projects in the fields of education, health, work, welfare, social infrastructure and culture.

The latter field is probably the most important due to its potential repercussions. Indeed, the Tika is trying to foster a cultural revival by means of initiatives aimed at helping vanishing Turkic tribes preserve their identity, rituals, language, and religion. Accordingly, the agency is funding the publication of local dictionaries and grammar guides, the establishment of cultural centers, and is entering universities and high schools to “provide consultation for students who want to pursue studies in Turkey”.

Turkey Helps Mongolia with COVID-19

The outcomes are yet to be seen but something is undoubtedly beyond the horizon. Recently, a school in Ulaanbaatar which was renovated by the Tika has been symbolically renamed after Kemal Ataturk. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected Mongolia only marginally, Turkey was in the front line to help national companies to make masks and other medical goods. Equally important is to remember the role played by Ankara in convincing Ulaanbaatar to join NATO missions across the globe, to adopt the alliance’s operational and training standards, and to sign, in 2012, the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program.

In any case, the most important events took place last year, in the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The Turkish government sent a delegation to Ulaanbaatar and got several results, including the promise to “take out bilateral relations in every field to the highest level”, concrete support in the fight against Fetullah Gulen’s network, and the participation in the forthcoming establishment of an Ankara-run “parliamentary assembly composed of Turkish-speaking countries and countries which have common roots.”

The Russians in Mongolia

Russia and Turkey are in Mongolia for the same reason, that is to create a bridgehead with which to keep a foot in Central Asia. The former is facilitated by the anti-Chinese hostility displayed by both the Mongol political class and public opinion, whereas the latter is helped by the identity factor.

As of today, Mongolia is far from becoming a Chinese or Turkish satellite since the Kremlin is betting hard on the country and has been increasing its presence since the 2010s. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the mastermind of the Russo-Mongol revival and skillfully posed himself as a mediator between Ulaanbaatar and Beijing with the double result of making Moscow appear the country’s guardian and of monitoring Chinese moves.

Last September, Putin and his Mongol counterpart launched an eloquent message to the world by signing a milestone perpetual friendship treaty. That document is important but needs to be complemented by concrete actions otherwise it will remain a mere piece of paper and the country might well fall in someone else’s hands. Indeed, Turkey got to become a “Third Neighbor” in less than a decade of operations with no need for friendship treaties, showing just how quickly the situation can change.

L'articolo Russia is Eyeing Mongolia and the Reason is Not (Only) China proviene da InsideOver.