rich natural resources and geostrategic importance of the region,
it is only natural that neighboring states, regional powers and
superpowers, and transnational corporations should all take a very
keen interest in Central Asia. Apart from countries like the United
States and China, corporations like Chevron and Daimler-Benz, it
is doubtless Russia that has the most intense interest and
ambitions. That interest partly reflects a surge in neo-imperialist
sentiments in the Russian political elite, especially the desire to
regain hegemony over the space once ruled by the Soviet Union.
It is not merely a question of radical nationalists like Vladimir
Zhirinovskii; irredentist aspirations have become popular even
among more staid figures in the centrist political establishment.
One ranking figure in the apparatus of President Boris Yeltsin, for
example, has openly declared the need to "rehabilitate" the idea of
"empire" and to jettison the pejorative associations it carries for
peoples in the former USSR. Depicting the Russian state as "a
spiritual union of peoples inhabiting the territory of Russia," he
argues that Russia, "as the bearer of a Eurasian civilization and
multinational community, is simply fated to be an empire." ¹ Irredentist aspirations clearly inform Yeltsin's policy "correctives"
he prepares for the Russian presidential elections of 1996. During
a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in
Helsinki in January 1996, the newly appointed Russian foreign
minister, Evgenii Primakov, declared that Moscow is reorienting
its foreign policy toward the former Soviet republics. Despite his
reassurances to Christopher that Russia respects the sovereignty of
her neighbors and that his government does not seek to reestablish
the USSR, he flatly declared that the economic reintegration of
these republics is "inevitable." ² Such irredentist aspirations,
however made and qualified, are first and foremost directed at the
republics of Central Asia.

Realization of these ambitions, however, remains highly
problematic. First, Moscow cannot ignore the fact that these states
have already acquired an independent status, full membership in
the United Nations, diplomatic relations with countries around the
world, ties with powerful transnational corporations, and the
support of the Muslim world. Clearly, these other parties will not
remain indifferent if Moscow seeks to realize irredentist, even

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