How to Look at and Deal with Security Issues in Eurasia——Jiemian Yang

How to Look at and Deal with Security Issues in Eurasia

Jiemian Yang

Thirty years ago the geopolitical landscape of Eurasia witnessed a great change at the end of the Cold War. Thirty years later Eurasia is confronting with even more complicated and serious security challenges that inherited from the past and have been developing along with many new factors and events, most immediately and impressing with the COVID-19 pandemics.

Eurasia is an important part of the world and its security is closely linked with global setting. The global security environments have become increasingly difficult to maintain and manage as traditional security and non-traditional security threats are intertwining and mutually reinforcing. Additionally, while the Cold War has ended for thirty years, yet the Cold War mentality still lings on. Some countries are still looking for enemies, rivalries and competitors so as to cling to their so-called leadership and vested interests. For instance, the United States and some of its allies single out China and Russia as their main and dangerous security threats. Furthermore, they try to cover their true strategic intention by advocating the so-called struggle of "democracy versus autocracy". The excessive use of security concerns have been over-spilling into many areas, intoxicating the overall international relations and preventing many of the global security institutions and mechanisms from functioning normally, let alone building up the new ones to deal with the challenges of the present and future times.

The global impacts and influences are compounded with regional and national factors that has given the following dichotic features to present Eurasian security.

On the one hand, Eurasia has basically avoided large scale and high intensity of wars and conflicts. Most regional countries have increasingly been aware the importance of combating both traditional and non-traditional security threats and worked hard at international terrorism, climate change and COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, regional mechanisms such as the SCO and CICA truly believe in and earnestly practice New Security Concept and inclusive multilateralism with the same spirits of the UN Charter. Many regional security problems and issues are hence kept local, partial and controllable.

On the other hand, the Eurasian security is full of dangers that would turn into devastating and uncontrollable damages not only in the region but also in the world at large. In some individual countries, they are obsessed with domestic chaos, religious sect fights, terrorist attacks and even civil wars. Some of the national security problems and issues are not kept by borders and have extended into the neighboring countries and areas, just in the cases of the Gulf Region. Regionally speaking, Eurasia is both in need and in short of regional security institutions that cover the whole region, have generally agreed principles and hold authorities and effectiveness in preserving and promoting peace and stability. Therefore, Eurasia security is often vulnerable to such negative impacts as international terrorism and inter-state conflicts. Among the outside regional factors, the United States stands out most prominently and it often does more harm than good onto the region ranging from the hunting for enemies and rivalries to the irresponsible withdrawal from Afghanistan. The United States also leads such confrontational mechanisms as QUAD and AUKUS as well as the opposing blocks in the economic, financial and technological areas, to endanger security in and around Eurasia.

To rightly define security threats and dangers is an important step for finding out the solutions. Eurasian security needs general agreements on the major issues, creative thinking to adapt to the new situation, mutual confidence building measure to ensure peace and stability, etc. Therefore, we must not be overwhelmed by the challenges, instead, we should see the internal logics and dialectic interrelations between challenges and opportunities. To put it simply, the security challenges stand side by side with opportunities. All Eurasian countries both individually and collectively should translate their peaceful desire into effective strategies and policies so that they could make the region more stable, peaceful, justice and prosperous, thus also contributing to the world's peace, development and win-win cooperation.

(December 27, 2021)