A Research of Security Challenges in Mongolia

Mongolia is a country located between two great powers Russia and China. This is a unique positioning in the international affairs arena, which requires it’s foreign and security policies to be balanced with its two neighbors and countries beyond. Therefore, Mongolia does not face immediate external or internal military threats as long as it keeps friendly relations with Russia and China. As the margin between security and development has been narrowed, for a small and underdeveloped country like Mongolia, development challenges indeed constitute the biggest security challenges.

Thanks to this geographical position, Mongolia is isolated and at the same time protected from many kinds of regional security challenges. There will be no military threat to come to this land from a third nation over Russia and China. These two neighbors are capable enough to deter, neutralize and defeat the regional threats before they reach Mongolia. Historically, the fact that Mongolia was the least suffered country among the regional nations from the Korean War shows that the country has been benefited by the two big powerful buffers from the serious regional conflicts. But on the other hand, having no direct threat does not mean having no security challenges. Mongolia is overwhelmingly vulnerable from the balance of power between its neighbors. The tripartite Khiagt agreement has somewhat officially declared balance of power between the two in 1915 and 20th century history has clearly shown how a change in this balance might be dangerous for the very existence of the country. Chinese troops marched to the Mongolian capital city in 1919, when Russia was going through civil war in 1917-1919 and was unable to enforce the agreement. In the 1960s, Soviet troops were stationed in Mongolia making the country the first line battle field of possible military collision between Moscow and Beijing (Galsanjamts, 2011, p. 3). Thus, Mongolia gives top priority to its neighbor policy and aims to hold a “balanced relationship” between the two.

Although keeping the balance between the two big neighbors are the foremost important concerns of Mongolia, the national security cannot be ensured by only focusing on the neighbors. Even though it successfully held the “balanced relationship,” its landlocked location presents more security challenges. The Cold War history showed that the sandwiched geographic location politically and economically isolates Mongolia from the rest of the world, and retains the country underdeveloped and uninterested by other powers. Possible bypass of Mongolia the regional economic cooperation, therefore, is considered a security challenge for Ulaanbaatar because it would leave the country isolated or “vacuumed” from the world development, suffocating all its potentials and keeping it totally dependent on the neighbors. Thus, it strives to be an active regional actor and responsible partner to prevent from isolation or vacuumed suffocation. Mongolia wants to have its role in global and regional peace and stability. For an instance, it tries to have its contribution in peace support operation for ensuring the regional stability. With the same purpose, Mongolia invites third nation’s investments in its strategically important economic sector to diversify Russian and Chinese direct influences.

Domestically, Mongolia has moved away from a closed society with totalitarian rule and planned economy to an open society with democratic government and a market-oriented economy. This has not been an easy transition but, by and large, we have been successful. Mongolia has built solid institutions of representative democracy, which have withstood the test of several elections. Government change proceeds smoothly without endangering the democratic process. Successive governments have worked, since the early 1990s, to build a more liberal, market-oriented environment conducive to a private sector-led development. The challenge before the government now is to proceed further and firmly with the economic reform in the face of budgetary and social constraints and unfavorable developments in the external sector.

Internationally, Mongolia faces a world where interplay of forces of continuity and change, of globalization and localization makes this world a more complex place, and calls for an increased international cooperation to respond to the challenges of the new era.

In the 1990s the Asia-Pacific region emerged as a new and important direction for our foreign policy. In that region Mongolia’s policy goals consist in the following. Enhancing mutual understanding through exchanges of visits, promotion of political dialogue and cultural exchanges. In the 1990s Mongolia worked to diversify our external ties in political, economic, trade and military spheres with regional countries. There have been exchanges of visits at various levels, which helped engage us more actively with the Asia-pacific region. Developing trade and economic ties with the region through creating opportunities for increased bilateral trade; encouraging links between private sectors; encouraging foreign direct investment; where appropriate, seeking aid in major areas of reform; engaging with the APEC process; seeking membership in PECC; supporting multilateral economic cooperation in North-East Asia. Mongolia also works to promote sub-regional cooperation of land-locked and transit countries. Moreover, it has been taking part in some of the APEC working groups as a guest participant and has been developing own Individual Action Plan of trade and investment liberalization in accordance with the APEC model. Enhancing Mongolia’s security environment through building a multipillar framework for security. Therefore, the Asia-Pacific region and relations with regional countries have been high on Mongolia’s International Relation’s agenda in the past several years.

Apart from developing a balanced relationship with the two neighbors, Mongolia is striving to rely on a third force, which has become a key orientation in the country’s foreign policy. With a view toward implementing this policy Mongolia concluded a “Treaty on friendly relations and cooperation”, first with the Russian Federation in 1992 and then with the People’s Republic of China in 1994. In addition, Mongolia considers it vitally important to develop active cooperation with other influential countries in the Asia-Pacific region in order to create a new national security environment. In fact, Mongolia is working to develop such a strategy which would not only meet the national interests of the country but also one which would be understood and accepted by its neighboring countries as well as other nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

The drastic changes in the environment surrounding Mongolia and the future development trend since the end of the Cold War make it imperative that Mongolia consider its future development and security issues within the framework of the Asia-Pacific region, including North-East Asia. This necessity rises in view of the need to consider the future development of a small country like Mongolia within the context of the region with similar development trends, geo-strategic interests and economies.

Mongolia is appreciative of the assistance and support being rendered by the major Western powers to the democratization process in the country and to the development of its economy. We firmly believe that the support being rendered to Mongolia in conducting an independent, peace-loving, non-aligned policy in Asia designed to create trust in our international relationships will meet the common interests of these major nations as well as the countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It is becoming increasingly evident that these countries fully understand the reality that creating such a position for Mongolia will help create favorable conditions in the relationship among themselves, as well.

There are a number of regions in Asia and the Pacific where the balance of power must be maintained. Mongolia has successfully rid itself from being entangled in the confrontation between Russia and China and, in this sense, Mongolia must become an example to other countries lying in such regions. Although Mongolia is a small country, it has squarely refused to accept direct foreign military assistance, and it has solemnly stated that in times of peace it will not join any military bloc or alliance, station any foreign troops in its territory or allow their transit through its territory. Moreover, Mongolia has reduced its armed forces by several thousand men.

In the Asia-Pacific region our security strategy consists in building a multi-pillar framework of security by maintaining friendly good-neighbourly relations with our neighbours; developing closer bilateral relations with other regional countries; working within the ARF multilateral process; contributing to North-East Asian peace and stability; developing military-to-military contacts; mplementing global non-proliferation and arms control regimes, and encouraging “track two” dialogues on security issues. The end of the Cold War substantially improved Mongolia’s immediate security environment by bringing about improvement of relations between Russia and China which Mongolia sees as a major stabilizing factor. Mongolia’s relations with Russia and China, their sole neighbours, are governed by such principles as balance, good-neighbourlines, mutually beneficial cooperation, long-term nature. Mongolia signed respective Treaties of Friendly Relations and Cooperation with Russia and China. Mongolia does not have any territorial or border disputes with their neighbours which serves as a good basis for their good-neighbourly relations. As part of their effort to contribute to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, in 1992 Mongolia declared its territory a nuclear-weapon-free-zone. In December last year the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled Mongolia’s International Security and Nuclear-Weapon Free Status. At the ARF Meeting on Monday the Ministers welcomed this resolution. Since the early 1990s Mongolian scholars have been taking part in what is called “track two” activities on regional security. Since 1996 Mongolian scholars work with the CSCAP and are active in its North-Pacific working group. There have been regular exchanges, and several bilateral roundtables on regional security issues were held.

As our world politics — and those of the Asia-Pacific — revolve around interconnected global policy frameworks, Mongolia’s foreign policy and national security objectives cannot be emphasized in isolation. The two hundred years of struggle against Manchu Qing dominance left a valuable, hard-earned lesson that strength and perseverance will lead to growth. Significant events such as WWII and the Cold War strengthened Mongolia’s sovereignty and democracy. All the while, Mongolia’s foreign policy sought opportunities to develop, expand, and modernize. A history is not a history without a leader. Late Marshall, Y. Tsedenbal was the prominent master mind of expanding Mongolia’s foreign policy and securing national sovereignty and core values. Without his ambitious, far-sighted, courageous achievements, Mongolia’s foreign policy may not be as strong, prosperous, and far-reaching. As Mongolia’s foreign policy concept grew overtime, challenges also became apparent. Both traditional and non-traditional security threats challenge Mongolia’s modernization and competency in solving its foreign and domestic issues. The 2010 National Security Concept and the 2011 Foreign Policy Concept became the two most important documents in shaping Mongolia’s modern history. From a regional perspective, imminent threats do not end with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the maritime island disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Mongolia’s vast natural resources are available for extractive institutions at the cost of the Mongolian people. China’s economic dominance, which creates national security concerns, is no longer a secret. Various institutions and, good governance will play fundamental roles in carefully assessing bilateral agreements and deals under the framework of NSC and FPC.

As an advantage of the geostrategic position, Mongolia enjoyed the two big buffers of Russia and China and will remain the same way as long as the balance of power between them is kept. Thanks to the neighbors, Mongolia feels no immediate military threat so far, but the location has its own disadvantage of isolation from the rest of the world and global development. Development challenges constitute political and economic risks for the national security of Mongolia. An immediate problem Ulaanbaatar faces is managing the fast economic growth along with balancing strategic interests of big powers on the natural resource deposits like coking coal, gold, rare earth metal and uranium. There should be an effective mechanism that ensures fair distribution of these mineral resources in a balanced way of the big powers’ interests, which should eventually become the guarantee of national security of Mongolia. Promising economic prospects raise MOD hopes of defense budget increase. Renewal of the outdated old Soviet weapons requires a big budget compared to the poor economic condition of Mongolia in the last decade and the reform relied only on UN PKO reimbursement. In 2011, decade long saving from the reimbursement has provided a decent means to invest in partial modernization of MAF weapon stock. The MAF was an important leverage of Ulaanbaatar’s “Third Neighbor Policy” and will likely be the same in the near future. OSCE has endorsed Mongolian membership and NATO has commenced very first official dialogue for cooperation with Mongolia in 2011. The MAF takes the lion’s share for this change of attitude of European partners along with the successful democracy in the country.

Defense modernization of Mongolia will unlikely impact the regional balance of power, first of all, the balance of power between Russia and China. The nature of “smallness” and dependence of Mongolia on them eliminate the possibility of hostile intention towards the neighbors while the assurance strategy of Ulaanbaatar builds confidence among the neighbors.

As the stated above facts we can see that it is very important that representatives from the Asia-Pacific region interact more closely between each other and among themselves to be able to develop common responses. To stand together to overcome the challenges and to see the value of maintaining the work of cooperation that helps promote mutual understanding, dialogue and cooperation is crucial.