Alexander Dugin's Views on the Middle East

Abstract

Alexander Dugin, influential Russian geo-politician and proponent of Eurasianism, regards Russia as a heartland state that should engage in a web of alliances with various Eurasian powers to confront Russia's natural enemy, the US. While Eurasianism has been quite popular in the late Yeltsin era and Putin regime, it is important for other reasons as well. It demonstrates that, in the wake of the Cold War, the most unexpected combinations could happen.

Notes

1. Kennedy was addressing the USSR, but with the wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq, the theory is increasingly applied to US foreign policy (see Kennedy, 1987; Burbach and Tarbell, 2004).

2. One should remember that Jews were among those who joined Italian fascism in its early stage.

3. Dugin's view of China reflects broad segments of the Russian élite and populace, but is controversial. On the one hand, he saw China and south Asia as an important counterbalance to the US and praised Putin's participation in the ASEAB summit (see Dugin, 2005b; also Lavelle, 2005; Reuters, 2005a). But Dugin and others were apprehensive about China as a potential threat, from demographic/economic pressure to pollution (see Izvestiia, 2005a; Pleshakov, 2005).

4. That Iran should be a nuclear power is definitely not just Dugin's idea, but is quite important in the context that Russia is seen by the West as able to prevent it. Some Western observers definitely distrust Moscow's assertion that it would do its best to do so (Wall Street Journal, 2005). On Moscow's ambivalence towards Iran and possible use of the Iranian card with the US, see also Afrasiab (2005).

5. Some Western observers believe that Putin is following these plans by using Russia's natural resources as a major way to expand Russian influence in Eurasia (see Rodriguez, 2005; Walsh, 2005; Vardul, 2005).

6. Sazhin, Dugin and other observers' statements about the importance of Iran for solving Iraq's problems have been confirmed by recent developments. The December 2005 parliamentary elections put in power Shiite Islamists with strong ties to Iran (Reuters, 2005c). In fact, Wesley Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate and NATO commander from 1997 to 2000, admitted that Iran would ultimately benefit from the American removal of Saddam Hussein. He assumed that the possible options included Iraq “evolving into a Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that would strengthen Teheran's power in the Persian Gulf just as it seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel (Clark, 2005).

7. On Pan-Turkism and Soviet, implicitly Eurasian, ideology, see Znkovsky, 1950; Hostler, 1957, 1993; van Schendel and Zűrcher, 2001.

8. Dugin believes that Russia should lead the countries of central Asia, in fact, the entire post-Soviet space. This feeling is shared not only by the Russian élite but also recently by an increasing number of the central Asian élite. For example, Uzbek leader Islam Karimovin in 2005 signed an agreement with Russia that is nothing less than a fully fledged military alliance (Blagov, 2005; Izvestiia, 2005b).

9. The spread of radical Islam increasingly bothers Russians, who see it as a product of Wahhabis, implicitly connected with foreign countries (Myers, 2005a). Dugin and the majority of the Russian élite believe these foreign élites directly or indirectly support the US and its stooges. In fact, they believe that NGOs, like Islamic extremists, are financed by the US and have the same goal—spying, or destabilising the political situation in Russia, leading to an ‘orange revolution’ (New York Times, 2005; Myers,, 2005b, 2005c). One might add that the Chinese élite also regard NGOs financed by the West as American tools to undermine the country's stability. (Kahn and Sanger, 2005). Regarding both Islamic extremists and NGOs as almost exclusively the product of malicious activities of the US and its proxies, Dugin and similar folk almost totally ignore the objective conditions that led to the spread of Islamic extremism in Russia and the ‘orange revolutions’, i.e. poverty, social/economic disintegration, corruption, etc. Curiously enough, this explanation for Islamic extremism is similar to the current American administration's explanation of the rise of terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere, reducing everything to ‘bad’ ideology and sinister manipulation by Al-Qaida.

10. See Dugin, 2005c. His statement has some grounds, for Eurasianism is, indeed, popular among certain Turkish intellectuals (see, for example, Akturk, 2004).

11. “Turtsiia na vostochinom puti”.

12. This view of the US as driven by reckless, self-destructive, foreign policy is shared by other Russian intellectuals (see Burlatskii, 2005).

13. For example, he supported Meir Kahane, late noted Israeli right-wing extremist, and translated his book into Russian (Kahane, 1988). Eskin published his work all over the Russian-speaking world, including the US (see, for example, Eskin, 2000).