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Summary

Not long ago the Presidents of Uzbekistan and Russia met in Moscow and decided to create what President Islam Karimov has called an anti-Wahhabist "trilateral" alliance (of Moscow, Tashkent and Dushanbe). Karimov, who heads a secular state, has been prompted to proclaim such a narrow aim of the alliance by events in Ferghana where legal proceedings have been launched against a group of Wahhabis. But the problem actually is much wider. It includes such matters as Eurasia's independence, which is now under attack from the US, including with the use of the Islamic fundamentalist forces. Whether consciously or not, this attack is aimed, first and foremost, against Russia, which is a system-forming territory of the region. Judging by many things, the US is making a big mistake by counting on Islam in its Eurasian expansion. Even if the turning of Russia into a confederation of separate entities were the only aim of the escalation of inter-civilisation differences in the region, it would be, nonetheless, fraught with dangerous aftermaths for the US and the Euro-American civilisation as a whole. As the Koran reads, "prepare arms against them (gaurs) as best as you can." It sometimes seems that the US anti-Russian policy is being conducted by some people who do not regard themselves as gaurs and do not feel any threat to themselves in the pulsating Islamic factor. Is it possible to hope that the Islamic elite can check the fire kindled by the US in all the Islamic parts of the globe? The Russian leadership's policy with regard to the conflicts, which began in Chechnya and Tajikistan before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, is a vivid example of a "careless attitude" in regard to the Islamic world. When the conflicts only started fermenting, the RSFSR leadership in "a state of democratic hysteria" assigned these republics the role of springboards of struggle against the hateful union centre, failing to realise what a genie it had let out of the bottle. Three years later Russia had to bring troops to Chechnya and sustained a shameful defeat there.

1. By building up its presence in Eurasia every way it can, Washington is breeding far-going contradictions in that region, which eventually make the US weaker. After the collapse of the USSR, the US leadership started romantically seeing itself as the "supreme judge" of the modern world and succeeded in persuading a part of the American public of it. Meanwhile, unlike the Cold War times, when the US assumed responsibility for the West, no one has asked it to play such a role today.

2. The US attack from the west is manifested in NATO's enlargement. But this enhances the positions of Germany, first and foremost, and not only in Europe. Suffice it to recall that in both world wars Moslem Turkey fought on Germany's side, and not on the side of either the Entente or the anti-Hitler coalition. Such a stand is not a chance coincidence during global catastrophes. NATO enlargement is being accompanied by the processes of European integration in the economic and political spheres alike. During financial wars, which break out in different parts of the globe from time to time, the common European currency creates a direct threat to the US dollar. Americans are sure for some reason that "Europe likes" them. This is a sheer delusion. Helmut Kohl once said that when the Berlin Wall was falling and crowds of East Germans were rushing towards him, he had the urge to sing "Deutchland, Deutchland uber alles!" The ex-Chancellor restrained himself, fearing that he "may be misunderstood." Americans are not liked in Europe. They are tolerated there till Europe needs them. West European countries (France, for one) are currying favours with Russia in a bid to enhance their own influence in European affairs. It is a kind of game: European countries keep inviting Russia to Europe but stubbornly refuse to let it in. And they will not let it in. What is more, a "sanitary cordon" is being created around Russia.

3. After the collapse of the British and French colonial empires the US successfully replaced them in the Near and Middle East, by gradually installing a chain of dependent regimes there, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. In the Far East the US is expanding its influence through a system of military treaties with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. In the 90s it began its expansion into the territory of what used to be the Soviet Union, above all, the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. In pursing its expansion Washington uses such "weapons" as so-called special relations with NATO and the Partnership for Peace programme. Today, the US is a political guarantor of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. According to some information, it may soon play the same role with regard to Georgia. The Clinton Administration openly says that it has strategic stakes in the Trans-Caucasian region. Suffice it to mention such a stake as Caspian oil production and transportation.

4. The London-based Economist has published its forecast of a line-up of forces on the global political scene in the beginning of the 21st century. (See Za Rubezhom No. 4, 1998.) The British analysts have clearly underrated the importance of Islamic countries. They claim that none of the Islamic countries will be able to claim the role of a superpower in the year 2030. It is quite possible. But these analysts do not say anything about the character of conflicts in the 21st century. If they presume that there will be conflicts between countries, then the prediction of a relative weakness of each of the Islamic states, if taken separately, is legitimate. However, if the issue at hand will be supranational and ethnic-confessional, or, as they are now called, inter-civilisations conflicts, it is rather imprudent, to put it mildly, to underrate the importance of the Islamic factor. The Moslem world presents a certain entity with its own standards of civilisation and political and economic interests on a global and a regional scale. As a matter of fact, the Islamic factor emerges in the contact of that civilisation with others. The interests and methods of promoting them are laid bare precisely in that contact. Depending on the organisation of this inter-civilisation contact, the Islamic factor can acquire the clear features of Fundamentalism.

5. As it has already been said, the US is using the Islamic factor to weaken Russia and assert its own domination in Eurasia. That is why Russian politicians should not forget who is behind the events in Chechnya or Tajikistan and with which forces it is really necessary to wage a war or to hold negotiations. The Islamic factor exists because there are peoples who profess the world religion of Islam and who enter into contact with other civilisations. But the appearance of Islamic Fundamentalism requires certain conditions, as has already been said above. The West and Russia alike have contributed to their creation.

June 22, 1998