Realism and the Small State: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
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Realism and the Small State: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan Gregory Gleasona, Asel Kerimbekovab and Svetlana Kozhirovac a Department of Political Science, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. E-mail: [email protected] b International Relations Faculty, Kazakhstan State University, Bishkek, Kazakhstan. E-mail: [email protected] c History of International Relations, Kazakhstan State University, Astana, Kazakhstan. E-mail: [email protected]
Realists characterize the contemporary international system as a field of competing units of various sizes and capabilities, struggling by means of strategies of selfadvancement to achieve goals that are sometimes common, sometimes contradictory. The nation-state is the fundamental unit in the realist constellation of actors. Large and resourceful states can achieve their goals through partnership, influence, alliance, demand, and coercion. Small and less resourceful states find the strategies at their disposal more constrained. Hence small states are encouraged by realist doctrine to pursue strategies of aggregation, coalition-formation, and integration. Thus, realist prescriptions for the small state encourage strategies that run counter to the realist explanation of international dynamics. Are realist policy prescriptions for the small state necessarily anti-realist? This paper addresses this question through an analysis of realist theory with respect to the foreign policy strategies of a small Central Asian state, Kyrgyzstan. International Politics (2008) 45, 40–51. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800218 Keywords: realism; small states; Kyrgyzstan; Central Asia
Introduction For the realist the basic currency of international affairs is power. Power is not easily created in international affairs. It tends to be relational. States are not so much powerful because of the absolute capacities that they command, but rather by virtue of the way they relate to one another. Weapon sophistication, throw-weight, naval tonnage, and so on are measures not of power but capacity because their meaning is always essential relational. The more powerful state is not one with a specific measure of naval tonnage, but with a relative advantage. Power, like status, is a quality that can be shifted around primarily only through zero-sum adjustments. For one state to gain more power, usually, means that some other state or states must lose a corresponding amount of power. The exact measurement of power is often
Gregory Gleason et al. Realism and Small State
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problematic. States can rarely be confident of being able to judge their power with respect to one another, although the leaders of states often have general ideas of how states rank with one another in terms of scales of various dimensions of power, military, economic, moral, and so on. But in this ranking, small and limited states often find that they are relegated to a position in which they have virtually no power at all. Any time a ranking of powerful states is conducted, the process seems to tail off soon after the first entries. Those rankin
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