JOURNAL OF CENTRAL EURASIA STUDIES
Year:2018 | Volume:10 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:15

To the Caucasus Armenian, the duration between the third to the fifteenth centuries A. D is an age of relentless invasion and aggression by neighboring powers. Accordingly, from the forth to the seventh the same was a Sasanid-Roman battleground; then, from later in the seventh to the eleventh a Caliphate-Byzantium conflict emerged. Afterward, for two centuries Turko-Byzantium tensions trampled the region. Eventually, it was succumbed to the Mongol-Turkmen ravage. The key question here is how one should approach and comprehend the politicization of a minor ethnicity so inferior to its neighbors in terms of both allocative and authoritative resources and entangled in a tough geography. Utilizing the prism of Structuration Theory sets forth the dissemination across time and space as an answer. In this view, the precedencies of Armenian policy signify a historical and non-evolutionary development from an allocative-based, and, as such, time-space bounded policy (erected upon kinship and castle-holding, landownership, armed force) toward a policy constituted of authoritative (legislation, divinity, mediatory and lobbying, translation, interpretation and archiving, paying or renegading homage, alien powers) and highly-aptitude-to-disseminate allocative resources (endowment, money, commerce) the two elements of which the main characteristics was unleashing the Armenian policy from any time-space restriction. Into three historical phases the present survey may divide the subject to depict the historical development; the age of the allocative-based policy, 330 to 420 A. D.; the age of generation of the authoritative-based policy, 420 to 1220; the age of maturation of the authoritative-based policy, 1220 to 1501.

Regional order can be defined as organizing behavior patterns between units and actors in a region, as a result of which, the objectives of the regional system will be realized. Unlike the old order in which geopolitical features play a major role, the new order has a multi-dimensional status. In fact, by increasing the level of communication between actors in the international system, a new kind of order is formed based on cultural, political, security and economic commonality, Unlike the old type of order, the international system does not have a geographic status, and communications and sharing values play a major role in it. In the new order, regions are considered as loops that connect the nodes. The research question is: What are the characteristics of this type of order with focusing on the Middle East and Central Asia? The results show that, in the context of a new conception of order, the Middle East and Central Asia are not considered to be separate regions but they are considered to be in a region and has common economic characteristics such as the production of raw materials in the international system, marginalization in the international economic order, fragility and vulnerability in its strategic links with the central regions, the political-military affiliation to central areas and being under the control of the central sector policy system. The purpose of this study is to explain the geo-economical characteristics of the Middle East and Central Asian linkage system. The research method used will be descriptive and analytical.

The following article seeks to answer the question of the policy and strategy and the goals of the United States in its military presence in the Central Asian region after September 11th and the obstacles and challenges that this strategy is faced with in the region. Briefly, it can be said that the Central Asian region has a high geopolitical significance for the United States. So that the deployment of the United States in Central Asia can, on the one hand, directly combat terrorism and the use of regional energy resources on the expansion of its influence and, on the other hand, to control and counteract the influence of its traditional rivals, such as Russia and China. Of course, the success rate of the strategy and its objectives depends on how the United States faces challenges such as the geographic situation of the region, Islamic extremism and terrorism and rivals in the region, namely, Russia and China. America’ s main and permanent strategy is presence in the strategic areas of the world and preventing the domination of rival powers such as Russia and China. In the context of the Central Asian region, the presence of the United States in the Bush and Obama periods have been examined. The grand strategy of both presidents was important for the same enduring goal of the United States, namely, presence in the regions, but tactics differed according to the timescales. In the Bush period, and after September 11th, direct threats to the United States have been a formidable tactic and military tactic, but Obama has changed the tactics to soft tactics and intelligence.

The 1990s is the beginning of oil exports for the economic development of newly independent States in Central Asia. Due to the lack of access to international waterways and the unprofitable export of crude oil to the airplane or its transit through land routes, these countries have inevitably resorted to a swap of oil, due to the cost-effectiveness of the route of transportation of oil from Iran for the purpose of sea communication through the Oman Sea and the Persian Gulf with the oceans. This experiment began oil operations in Iran, from 1996, with the continuation of the oil contract, Swap has played an important role in economic relations between Iran and the countries of Central Asia. However, Iran has stopped swap in 2010 as well as the disproportion of the level of crude oil production in Central Asian countries relative to the high capacity of its transfer to consumer markets, and, in addition, reducing its global prices and mutually increasing gas production capacity, has had a negative impact on the growing trend of swap economic relations. However, Swap is a cross-selling tool for switching goods and it is also used in oil operations and has led to a saving on the cost of transferring oil and products inside the country and reduces transport and road and rail transport costs. By importing oil products or petroleum products produced by the Caspian littoral countries in one of the border areas of Iran and consuming them internally and exporting oil or its products with the same specifications from the other exit frontier in non-sanctioned conditions of Iran’ s oil trade, Swap will expand trade relations, strengthen economic and political relations, and promote the national security of these countries.

This article seeks to recognize the “ other’ s” position in Russian civilizational thoughts. For centuries, Russia has participated in intense interactions among European, Asian and Middle Eastern regions, and it has developed a language and theories for relating to its various others. Studying Russian debates can help us in the task of reflecting on problematic epistemological assumptions behind the western dominant theories in political science studies, as well as clarifying their inefficiency in explaining the Self/Other dialectic. To understand both continuity and change in Russian civilizational debates, I draw some cases of Intellectual currents from imperial and post-soviet historical periods for analyzing their approaches toward Russian Other. The Russian Intellectual currents that have been studied in this framework include the following: Eurocentrism (both westernizers and Slavophilies), Easterners, Eurasianists and Euro-Easterners. Although moving beyond viewing East/West interaction as a challenge to Russian thinkers, some of them have found ways to conceptualize the two cultural entities as in dialogue with one another and to Redefine Russian identity. The research findings show that Russian civilizational thoughts is transforming to less-essentialism and to recognition of the others as dialogue counterpart. East has responded positively to this preparation, and on this basis constructive dialogues and partnerships have been formed in the form of bilateral or multilateral unions and agreements. On the other hand, the West has not shown a readiness for dialogue with Russia. Since, according to the theoretical framework of research, identity is continuously redefined in relation to others, the negative attitude of the West towards Russia can transform Russia's perception of the West and so disrupt dialogue process between the West and Russia.

Karabakh Events in 1988 led to the destruction of towns and villages and killing and displacing hundreds of Azerbaijanis from their native land. On 25 and 26 February 1992, following artillery bombardment of Khojaly, the town was captured by Armenian forces and Armenia launched a military operation in Karabakh. The main question is that, whether, according to the records, the deliberate destruction of those who were in Khojaly city, was done because of their nationality and ethnicity? Also, if according to international law, can we term this incident as “ genocide” ? If so, whether a court has jurisdiction to prosecute the perpetrators of this crime? Furthermore what will be the responsibility of the state of Armenia on this issue? This massacre is one of the international crimes for which no international criminal court has been formed to investigation about until now. This paper examines the Khojaly event from the perspective of international criminal law as an international crime, condemned by various international organizations and countries and it endeavors to examine the legal aspects of this event. Thus, after describing the events and the reaction of countries and organizations to it, legal characteristics of that as an international crime according to international documents and laws to specify the applicable punishments and international responsibility of Armenia government.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) development opened a new chapter in the Middle Eastern policy of trans-regional players, namely Russia between 2011 (inception of the Arab Spring) to 2015 (climax of the Syrian Crisis). Deep-rooted linkage of Russia to the region and its intention in taking a more active role in the international equations leads to a new policy serving Kremlin’ s interests. Inactive presence in Tunisia and Egypt led to Russia accompanying the West in Libya. Despite the fact that Libya’ s developments were taken Russia by Surprise at the time, the continuation of this trend to the Middle East concerned Russia from upcoming trends and its spillover to the security environment of Russia in the post-Soviet Republics. This concern provides a basis for taking a more active role by Moscow in the region, although before the Arab Spring, Russia tried to secure its interests in MENA by appropriate distance from the regional developments. Indeed, Russia was not willing to interfere the affairs of regional actors. The article addresses the importance of Russia’ s presence in the Middle East, especially after the public uprising, based on the “ offensive realism” theory and using descriptive-analytical method. It is worth mentioning that findings suggest Russia’ s policy is based on preventing the spillover of uprisings to Eurasia and taking a more decisive role in the international equation with the absence of a U. S. presence in the region.

Russia has tried to conceptualize its buffer zone as near abroad in the post-Soviet era. Ukraine has an important position among the countries of this region because of numerous cultural and historical affinities. Therefore, the security and political issues of this scope are important for the Russian Federation. In 2013, Ukraine was faced with an erosive crisis and this issue has incited Russia to react harshly in order to manage the crisis automatically and immediately. The article intends to answer this question that how and by which tools and technics, Russia has managed the Ukraine crisis. The hypothesis is based on Russia’ s approach to international crisis management, crisis occurrence in near abroad usually followed by Russian military reaction. The results indicates that due to the geo-economics, geostrategic and geopolitical importance of Ukraine, Russia managed the Ukraine crisis by using hardware tools collection including military invasion of Crimea, dispatching army troops to the east of Ukraine, delivery loads of super heavy war equipment to oppositions and supplementary software tools such as holding political-diplomatic meetings, imposing energy sanctions against European competitors and adopting advertising actions.

The fall of the Soviet Union as one of the world’ s two superpowers, caused the absence of the main competitor of the US in the global competition. The world’ s geopolitical balance has been broken and provided an opportunity for the United States to construct its favorite new world order. So, many theorists have called this stage the era of the formation of a monopoly system in the international system. From the total number of US military bases in the world, Washington has more than 50 military bases in the Central Asia and the Middle East. Therefore, the Recognition of America’ s military bases in these areas due to the growing threat of this country is very important and the use the tools of spatial statistical analysis can be useful to identify this bases. The aim of this study is the understanding of the pattern of spatial distribution of U. S military bases in the Central Asia and the Middle East. Some of the results show: the bases that have the distance less than 620 km from the Iranian border, mainly have been created to cover direct control over the territory of the Iran and the bases that have the distance more than 620 kilometers from the border of Iran, mainly have been created to supported operations.

In the fall of 1930, the Iranian police divulged an extensive network of Soviet spies in Iran. The dimension of the intelligence network was increased to the extent that caused considerable consternation among Iran’ s cabinet. Most of the members of this network were consisted of ministries personnel such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Post and War and other government departments. Even prominent people like Teymū rtā sh were charged with membership in the Intelligence network. The relations between the two countries bore a brunt due to the discovery of this organization. The Iranian government considered this behavior hostile, and until the end of the Reza Shah era, the Iranian government always looked suspiciously to his northern neighbor. The main player of this organization was the Agabekov from Turkestan in Soviet Union, who had previously played an important role in the Basmachi movement in the Central Asia. He finally put an end to the struggles by eliminating Enver Pasha. Agabekov’ s rank was promoted in favor of this success and was deployed to Afghanistan. The result of this study is that the Soviet main objective of espionage in Iran was to hurt British interests in Iran, Iraq, and India. But the aftermath of the Intelligence Operation divulgence was sumptuous for the Soviet and the Iranian government. The present paper uses the method of historical research and explanatory method-analysis to analyze the presence of Agabekov in Iran, his espionage operation, the divulgence of the Soviet Intelligence network in Iran and its impact upon the history of relations between the two countries.

We have witnessed serious developments in the Iranian foreign policy, particularly towards Israel after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, in a way that the Iranian relations with Israel from a strategic alliance suddenly turned into hostility and confrontation with Israel’ s existence. However, this development could not be explained in the framework of materialistic paradigms and it could merely be analyzed through constructivist approach by emphasizing on the concept of identity. By applying a constructivist perspective, we may find out that identity clash after three decades has led to the entrance of new actors in this confrontational front, in which the state of Azerbaijan is one of the most important players because of especial geopolitical characteristics and other potentials such as ethnic nationalism and secular political system which is favorite for Israeli politicians. As long as the factors for the closeness of Israel to Azerbaijan are concerned, there are various views. However, the present research attempts to address this major question as to how the identity and interests differences between Iran and Israel have affected the expansion of Israel and Azerbaijan political-security relations? In answering this question, one has to state that in spite of common identity elements between Iran and Azerbaijan, there are certain challenges which have caused aloofness in their relations such as Karabakh crisis, Azerbaijan ethnic incitements and Iran’ s religious policies, led the Iran-Israel confrontation as a significant and influential factor to be considered for the expansion of Israel and Azerbaijan political-security relations that Israel plan to use against Iran.

After the collapse of the USSR and independence of Central Asian and South Caucasus republics as Iran’ s northern neighbors, the ground for establishing relations was provided. The newly independent states have lots of civilizational, historical and cultural commonalities with Iran. Therefore, after the Islamic Revolution, Iran has had a cultural perspective toward these northern neighbors, and hence, tried to increase its influence upon the regional states through cultural diplomacy as a part of its foreign policy. Regarding the capabilities and potentials, Iran has not been successful enough in balancing hardware and software elements in its foreign policy. Compared to the official and clear forms, cultural diplomacy is much more effective due to the indirect and hidden nature of its goals. In this paper, we have tried to explain the opportunities and challenges of Iran toward South Caucasus and Central Asian states based on the conceptual framework of cultural diplomacy. The main question in this paper is that what are the Iranian cultural diplomacy opportunities and challenges in Central Asia and Caucasus? In response, the hypothesis to this question is that Iran’ s cultural diplomacy has confronted challenges in the field of foreign intervention and ideology, and at the same time, in the fields of religion, civilization and linguistics, there seems to have been some fruitful opportunities.

In the 21st century, convergence is one of the requirements of the countries’ globalization and establishment of global and regional lasting peace. Due to some barriers related to the convergence of Iran with Central Asian Countries and the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, it is necessary to study and design suitable strategies about the establishment of convergence. Therefore, using the mixed method (descriptive-analytical and survey methods) and multiple criteria decision making techniques, the purpose of the present research is to answer the question as to which strategies are the best to improve Iran’ s role in its convergence with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan according to the regional and international conditions in the 21st century. For this purpose and for presenting an applied strategic model using library and field studies and SWOT techniques, 4 strengths, 4 weaknesses, 5 opportunities and 3 threats of Iran’ s convergence with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan were identified and 8 applied strategies were formulated and the strategies finally were prioritized using MCDM technique through questionnaire and interviews. The results of the questionnaire of the pairwise comparisons show that the strategy of “ establishment of geo-economic links” has the first rank, followed by other strategies.

In the last decade the world and regional great powers have started taking more notice of Central Asia. Interests and actions of these international actors have led to the formation of a competitive environment that is referred to as the new great game. The competitive environment results from the performance of internal and external mechanisms in Central Asia. In this competitive environment, Kazakhstan is among the countries that could by use of balanced approach, gain benefits from this competitive environment. Given the importance of Kazakhstan in Central Asia, other countries who play a role in Central Asia should cooperate with Kazakhstan. The aim of this study is to analyze the characteristics of Kazakhstan’ s foreign policy and the platforms that this foreign policy can provide to further cooperation between Iran and China in Central Asia. The main question of study is: What are the main features of Kazakhstan’ s foreign policy and how can these features affect the expansion of relations between Iran and China in Central Asia? Findings of study show that, realism, non-ideological, and the priority of economy are the main features of Kazakhstan foreign policy since Independence in central Asia. Due to these factors, security, energy and transportation are the three contexts that Kazakhstan could improve in order to further cooperation between Iran and china in central Asia. The research method is descriptive-analytic.