President Vladimir Putin presented his innovative vision of Eurasian Security Architecture that aims to ensure the security of all nations and states without any discrimination of their size, relative power capabilities, and economic prowess.
Introduction
History reveals that despite some states being power seekers primarily due to their strategic culture, an overwhelming majority of the states seek security and refrain from indulging in an arms race. However, whenever security is seen as divisible and some states enhance security by means of internal balancing or external balancing, the situation is dominated by a security dilemma that ultimately leads to disturbing the regional or even international security architecture. The latter phenomenon in international relations is called war.
The Eurasian Security Architecture
To address the recurrent aspect of war in international relations, the Russian President Vladimir Putin presented an innovative vision of Eurasian Security Architecture in his address to the senior officials of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 14, 2024. The main argument of the Eurasian Security Architecture is to remain within the ambit of the United Nations (UN) and to ensure the security of all the nations and states without any discrimination of their size, relative power capabilities, and economic prowess. It also calls for the removal of extra-regional powers and their forward presence in the form of military bases in the name of providing extended deterrence and security guarantees.
President Putin made it clear that “We are interested in fostering this dialogue within the UN, including on such a vital topic for all as the creation of an indivisible security system.” He added that “global affairs must be based on the principle that the security of some cannot be ensured at the expense of the security of others.” President Putin said that “the world is changing rapidly. Global politics, the economy, and technological competition will never be the same as before.”
President Putin said it quite rightly that “This new political and economic reality now serves as the foundation for the emerging multipolar and multilateral world order.” There is little doubt that the current international system is neither unipolar or bipolar anymore. Its outlook reveals that the world order has an unbalanced multipolarity where no power could dominate the entire international system.
For President Putin, the American military interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, and the subsequent toppling of regimes in these countries in a unilateral manner, were not fruitful and yielded absolutely horrible results. President Putin said that “These interventions have done nothing but worsen existing problems, ruin the lives of millions of people, destroy entire states, and create hubs of humanitarian and social disasters, as well as terrorist enclaves.”
Analysis and Examination
In July 2024, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S. think tank, argued that “Kremlin officials continue to expand the geographic scope of Russia’s proposed alternative “Eurasian security architecture.” It reported that Russia wants to expand its Eurasian Security Architecture using multilateral organizations and platforms like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). We can well assume that the researchers at ISW are fully convinced that the members of the SCO, ASEAN, GCC, and many other Eurasian nations are actively engaged with Russia in discussing the Eurasian Security Architecture to address their security concerns. Likewise, the platforms like the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) could also be used to further the vision of Eurasian Security Architecture.
The Liberal Interventionists and the Neo-Conservatives in the United States proclaimed a unipolar world in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. One Neo-Conservative named Charles Krauthammer called the era “The Unipolar Moment” and argued the U.S. to be the sole superpower for the foreseeable future. For him, the U.S. was to decide the security architecture all around the globe and also to spread liberal democracy as the sole acceptable form of government. However, such an arrangement was not acceptable for many nations and states globally. Ultimately, this deceptive ‘Unipolar Illusion’ created more problems globally. The rise of terrorism, separatism, and extremism is a direct outcome of the unipolar illusion, and the world continues to suffer from it.
Conclusions
In July 2024, President Putin said at the SCO Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, that “indivisible security and development to replace the outdated Euro-centric and Euro-Atlantic models which gave unilateral advantages to individual countries.” The bottom line is that unilateralism in international relations ought to be replaced with multilateralism.
There is little or no doubt that security should be seen as indivisible, and every nation and state has an equal right over it without any discrimination of its size, relative power capabilities, or economic prowess. The solution to this structural problem lies in the concept of indivisible security and letting nations and states decide their respective security by not compromising the security of other states. It is true that extra-regional powers and their respective forward military bases could not bring security and stability, especially in Eurasia. Now, the time has come that the Eurasian nations and states must decide the future of security architecture in their respective regions by themselves and not seek extended deterrence.
Muhammad Ali Baig is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad (ISSI), Pakistan. He is a Ph.D. candidate and a distinguished graduate of National Defence University (NDU), Islamabad, Pakistan
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