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provided with the existing developed infrastructure, deeply detailed legal framework and extensive cooperation ties.
Washington is pursuing a vigorous economic policy in the region that is disproportionate to the level of relations achieved in this sphere, actively interferes in the course of economic transformations in Central Asian countries and influences their choice of integration preferences. The strategy of the United States is focused not so much on expanding its own economic ties, as on the tasks of geopolitical containment of Russia and China.
The United States is losing ground in the regional integration race step by step in recent years. Only bringing to power of loyal governments in the oil and gas producing and transit countries of Central Asia is capable of breaking this trend, apparently, and they will become the vehicles of the economic policy, that is hostile to Russia, like "Bakiyev's Kirghizia".
Author of the abstract - N. Ginesina
2017.02.008. YURI ALEKSANDROV. KAZAKHSTAN: FIRST EXPERIENCE OF MODERNIZATION // Aleksandrov Yu. Perehodnye Ekonomiki: Rossia, Kazakhstan, Kitai. - Moscow, Institute for Oriental Studies RAS, 2016, P. 47-52.
Keywords: Kazakhstan, modernization, economy, industry, oil-and-gas complex, transport infrastructure, integration megaprojects.
Yuri Aleksandrov,
Dr.Sc.(Econ.),
Institute for Oriental Studies RAS
After the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. almost all industrial branches of Kazakhstan and big agricultural enterprises could hardly survive, or found themselves on the brink of disappearance.
The structure of gross products changed: instead of goods production, the sphere of services came to the fore. This tendency is characteristic of the modern world, but in Kazakhstan it was a result of a slump in most branches of commodity production, transfer from the state order system and administrative distribution to market relations, and reduction of government allocations to economic development.
But Kazakhstan used to advantage what it received as a heritage from the Soviet past, like Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, namely, the oil-and-gas industry, as well as the heavy industry, which was in dire straits. By the 2000s, the state leadership of Kazakhstan was faced with a choice: either to go forward along the road of the Middle East "oil monarchies", or, using the hydrocarbon raw materials as an export resource, to switch over to creating a multi-sectoral economy on the basis of modern industrial and post-industrial technologies. The Kazakhstan leadership, realizing the vital importance of the second variant of economic development for political integration and security, has chosen precisely this variant. Kazakh leaders relied on the dynamic Kazakhstan-cum-foreign sector of extraction and export of oil and gas with drawing big world oil companies to this business. By the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis, the country's oil production has increased threefold (about 80 million tons), and gas more than fourfold. The fuel-and-energy resources accounted for 70 percent of export and more than 20 percent of the GDP.
The five-year "State Plan of forced industrial-innovative development for 2010-2014" was adopted. Its authors proceeded from the premise that private capital was not able and willing to orient to priority tasks of economic construction, primarily, to the development of the modern manufacturing industry. The loans of private banks were channeled mainly to trade and construction. Eighty-five percent of the more than $100 billion direct foreign investments in the economy during the first two decades of independent development were spent on raw material
branches. Special attention was paid to the active role of the state in the implementation of the plan. State financial resources should have been channeled through government and private operators. The central position in that structure was taken by the Fund of national welfare "Samruk-Kazyna" formed largely by profits from oil export. The volume of direct investments in planned projects was set at 6.5 trillion tenge, or $43 billion by the then rate (30 percent of the GDP in 2010). The central part of the plan was an oil-and-gas complex. The task was set to bring oil extraction to 85 million tons in 2014 (120 percent as against the level in 2008), natural gas to 54 million cubic meters (164 percent), oil export to 75 million tons (119 percent), refining of oil by Kazakhstan's oil refineries to 15 million tons (122 percent). But along with this, the output of non-raw-material sectors of the country's economy should have reached 40 percent of the volume of export. It was necessary to ensure the priority development of the energy, transport and information-communication infrastructure and achieve a positive change in the expansion of national entrepreneurship.
By the end of the planned period (2014) most of its targets were not reached fully, although definite positive changes and general economic progress did take place. High growth rates of oil and gas extraction were not achieved, primarily due to failure to develop key natural deposits. In 2014 the use of incomes from export for the implementation of the plans of forced industrialization was hampered by a drop in the world oil prices. Essential defects of the Kazakh economy also played a negative role, which was switching over from an administrative model to a market one. A no small role was also played by the weakness of national private capital. Another problem was the disintegration of the national economy on a territorial and reproduction basis -vertical and horizontal. Serious drawbacks came to life in the management system based on administrative command from above without feedback in discussion and realization of projects.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev in his regular Message to People in November 2014 said about the changes in the modernization priorities for the next five-year period (20152019). The point was the "New Economic Policy of Kazakhstan "Nurly Zhol" ("Bright Road"). It was a turn from forced modernization of industry to the development of the transport, energy, industrial and social infrastructure, as well as to support of small and medium-size business, as the mass base of economic growth. Nursultan Nazarbayev emphasized that it would be the development of the infrastructure that would be the pivot of a new policy. The common investment portfolio was determined equaling 6 trillion tenge ($33 billion, or 15.5 percent of the HDP for 2014), with the share of the state in it - 15 percent.
Summing up the results of the first (2010-2014) five-year period of the "Nurly Zol" strategy, one can conclude that neither Kazakhstan's economy nor its managerial apparatus was prepared well enough for tackling such stupendous task as the frontal and forced modernization of the industrial economy of the country. Yu. Aleksandrov supposes that it was the main reason for Nazarbayev's turn to a new strategy - integration megaprojects of national and international size. The leadership of Russia took such path ten years earlier, centering attention on the international expansion of the oil-and-gas sector of the fuel-and-energy complex. In this case such strategy was an alternative to modernization and broad diversification of the economy, whereas in Kazakhstan it is part of the common trend of the interest of the main actors of the Eurasian economy and integration policy toward a single economic area - from Western Europe with the Middle East to the Far East and Southeast Asia.
All the more so since in the past years a rapid growth of China's activity has been observed there. Kazakhstan is connected with it by pipeline systems of deliveries and transit of oil and gas from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan of oil, as well as participation in the motor-road Western China - Western Europe project. The Chinese "Economic Belt of the Silk Road and
Maritime Silk Road of the 21st century" project opens up still more interesting prospects for Kazakhstan. It was initiated by the PRC Chairman Xi Jinping in 2013, and after that active preparation work has started. China has already earmarked $40 billion for the project fund. From the point of view of the Chinese leadership, the creation of economic corridors "China-Mongolia-Russia," "Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar," "Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century" will lend the regional and world economy a powerful impetus. The common idea of the project ("one belt, one road") lies in the desire to set up a system of cooperation partners on land and sea and demonstrate China's resolution to put forward reforms of the global structure and order.
Author of the abstract - V. Schensnovich
2017.02.009. DMITRY MALYSHEV. CENTRAL ASIA: THREAT OF RADICAL ISLAMISM. SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN //
"Svobodnaya mysl", Moscow, 2016, № 4, P. 181-192.
Keywords: Central Asia, European Union, U.S.A., Tajikistan, radical Islam, international security, terrorist threat.
Dmitry Malyshev,
PhD (Hist.), assistant professor, Moscow State University
The world comes across terrorist and extremist challenges, which create a real threat to international security, ever more often. Terrorism has long stepped over the boundaries of continents and confessions. It is supranational, and this is its main danger. The destructive activity of the ISIS is causing great alarm both in the East and West. From a regional organization it has turned into a global factor of the destabilization of the existing world order. ISIS has not come into being from nowhere.
