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I always start talks about my book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) by focusing on my job as the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times because I have the best job in the world. I get to be a tourist with an attitude. I get to go wherever I want, whenever I want, and write about whatever I want. It is a great job. However, there is one downside to the job; I have to write attitudes twice a week, every Tuesday and every Friday, on the editorial page of The New York Times. The big challenge I had when I started the job in January 1995 was: What attitude?

Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, Russia has found itself in search of a lost national identity. The communist regime has collapsed, country has broken into separate nations and it has suffered a decade of deep social reform. Russian identity inevitably is, and should be, multidimensional. Russian self-perception and self-value vis-à-vis the West is an important component of this identity. The combined (but internally split) essence of Russian civilization is often defined as Eurasian. For years, Russian civilization was a mixture of European and Asian. The School of Eurasianism, which interprets Russia’s relationship with Europe and Asia, has recently been rejuvenated, based on the work of Russian political classical thinkers like N. Danilevskyi, N. Berdyaev, L. Gumilev, L. Karsavin, V. Illyin, P. Savitskyi, and N. Trubetskoy. Classical Eurasianism is aimed at overcoming the seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between the well known Slavophil and Westerner schools. Through this dialogue, debates about Russian policy toward the West have returned (after decades of Soviet ideology), seeking a middle path between the purity of Slavophils and the extremist Westerner views.

I am interested in exploring how peoples can learn to live together, and how they can learn to give each other the opportunity to flourish without disadvantaging someone else. What non-lethal limitations can be framed around those who refuse to do so, or who insist on carrying the torch of their civilization to attack other people? I am not just asking if the attacks can be stopped. I am looking for more than that, for the capacity for living together. Can local, regional and global structures be harmonized to achieve this?

These assumptions form a policy framework that assumes it is reasonable for the West to intervene in the affairs of non-Western countries as well as in countries that are close to the West but are not Western in behavior (often defined as non-democratic). Western masters aide these nations by advancing democracy. Let us consider this policy framework.

Economists are a peculiar bunch. They have a high regard for themselves, and the mathematicians among them are the haughtiest of all. They snicker at theories of international relations and grand strategies, unless the strategy is a derivative of game theory. No wonder they are often brushed aside as snobs.

Arnold Toynbee, the famous British historian and philosopher, argues that modern society should achieve a kind of universal peace in the new millennium. Toynbee asserts strongly that wars and culture clashes destroy the foundation of a civilization. He states: a comparative study of recognized civilizations all over the history shows that social destruction is a disaster whose secret hidden key could be found in the nature of war. In fact, principally, when a war is provoked by a civilization, it is also an independent cause for its destruction.

Rafis Abazov is an adjunct lecturer at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of The Formation of Post-Soviet International Politics in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (1999), the Freedom House Report on Kyrgyzstan (2002 and 2003), the Historical Dictionary of Kyrgyzstan (2004), and Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan, as well as numerous articles on economic and political development in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. He has contributed articles to the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, and the Encyclopedia of National Economies.

In the literature on peace and security, we identify at least two different uses of the term Eurasia. One stakes a rather narrow geographic boundary while the second includes a much broader region. If we adopt the narrower view, Eurasia incorporates the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union and possibly their security zones in Eastern Europe. Choosing to see Eurasia more broadly means defining it as the huge land-mass that comprises the continents of Europe and Asia. We may call the narrower definition Eurasia Minor and the broader one Eurasia Major.

All religious activists appear to look alike, and indeed are treated by the news media as one in the same. However, many variations exist. On one level, different activists choose different tactics. Terrorism is only the most extreme (and the rarest) form of public action. Other activists utilize media campaigns, public intimidation and democratic choice (by putting forward candidates in elections). On a more basic level, great differences exist in the desired outcome of the struggle itself and in the degree to which religion is central to the conflict.