On February 27, with Russia's
presidential poll already in sight, Moskovskie Novosti
daily featured an international politics opinion piece by Vladimir
Putin, which came as the seventh in a series of programmatic papers by
the Russian prime minister and March 4 elections front-runner. The
vision of foreign policy issues and perspectives laid out by Vladimir
Putin drew responses worldwide and merits an in-depth analysis.
It is clear that the majority of the challenges confronting Russia
internationally stem from the US tendency to maintain at any cost its
monopoly in global affairs, including the “right” to occasionally tailor
the political map of the world to Washington's liking. Russia, as a
result, faces recurrent attempts to exclude it from the process of
shaping the international policy agenda and to subject its geopolitical
status to fundamental downgrade. As of today, the US seems to
reject the very idea that other countries must be treated as equal
partners in handling the world's problems. Russia, a major
power and a large economy with the overland territory spanning 1/7 of
the world's total, stretching across two continents, and opening direct
access to two oceans, is entitled to its own national interests and
geopolitical aspirations and has to take the threats to its standing
seriously. It should be also taken into account in the context that
being a key player in the European and global politics has over the
course of centuries become an integral part of Russia's political
tradition. Putin stresses that “Russia has generally always enjoyed the
privilege of conducting an independent foreign policy and this is what
it will continue to do”. Other countries – Moscow's allies or
geopolitical rivals – should at all times be aware that Russia is
prepared to defend itself and its friends, as well as the general
principle of equal rights in international politics, meaning that the
freedom of maneuver available to its peers should not be perceived as
unlimited if Russia's national security regards factor into the
situation.
No doubt, Moscow is yet to contribute to formulating the global rules
of the game which, among those of others, should duly reflect Russia's
own interests and views. The rules obviously should include the
following:
1. The
principle of inviolability of national sovereignty.
2. Universality
of the norms of international conduct and unacceptability of double
standards.
3. Absolute
priority of diplomacy in conflict resolution and a ban on the
disproportionate use of force.
4. Unacceptability
of “humanitarian interventions”.
It is an open secret that in many cases the death tolls related to
“humanitarian interventions” far exceed those inflicted by the regimes
condemned as dictatorial and targeted under the pretext of protecting
civilian populations. Nor should it evade watchers that Washington
exercises double standards by asserting that interventions against other
countries are admissible as human rights override national sovereignty
but would never agree to see the US sovereignty called into question.
5. The indivisible security principle
The rules of the game espoused by Russia are consonant with the
concepts of fairness and security to which most nations and countries
would readily subscribe. Therefore, Russia's approaches to international
relations are guaranteed to meet with understanding in all epochs,
especially these days when we routinely witness the principles supposed
to keep the world stable being cynically brushed away. The moral values
underlying the policies pursued by Moscow will, in the long run,
translate into its definitive influence globally. The mission of the
Russian diplomacy is to have the values reinstated as the basis of
international politics. No country but Russia has the potential to
become in charge of outlining a new agenda and international code ruling
out any form of global dictate.
Helping other countries stay sovereign and independent – and,
in the process, coherently citing the above principles atop of pertinent
case-specific regards – Russia also reinforces its own security and,
paradoxically, that of the West. The arrangement exemplifies the general
paradigm known as the indivisibility of security. In contrast,
the US efforts to sideline Russia and to impose on it the background
power status routinely cause the West to float Utopian initiatives or to
launch completely irresponsible campaigns.
First, the US is currently trying to achieve complete
invulnerability in the military sphere, including the immunity to a
response nuclear strike. Obviously, the in-depth motivation behind the
pursuit is to avoid assured mutual destruction under the scenario of a
nuclear conflict. Chances are the US elite fears that some day its
country would be thrown out of history similarly to how the US treated
Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. The US is planning to build a global
missile defense and, at the same time, coerces Russia into drastic cuts
of its nuclear arsenals in the hope that missile defense infrastructures
would be able to neutralize Russia's residual nuclear deterrent. It is
an easy guess that arms control talks would be ending in stalemates if
Washington continues to rely on the strategy, but it is also clear even
at this point that the US complete invulnerability will always be an
illusory objective.
Secondly, one gets a permanent impression that the US and its
European allies plan to leave Russia short of allies and economic
partners by undermining the regimes friendly to Russia across the world.
The tendency was manifest in the cases of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran
but similarly surfaced under less pressing circumstances, for example,
when Russia's energy giant Gazprom could not get the green light to buy
into Opel, sanctions were slapped on Russian companies – typically those
of the military-industrial complex – for transactions with regimes kept
under pressure by the West, and European regulators passed passed
discriminatory laws hurting Russian suppliers. The policy carries
particularly high risks when applied to the post-Soviet space. The
recent outbreak of unrest in Kazakhstan's Zhanaozen and the serial
attempts to undermine stability in Belarus appear to reflect
Washington's far-reaching strategy aimed at derailing the Eurasian
integration project in its relative infancy. Washington reckons that
regime changes in some of the post-Soviet republics can slow down the
Eurasian integration while the local elites largely remain undecided and
the Customs Union is experiencing the inevitable formative-phase
problems.
Thirdly, steps are obviously being taken to destabilize Russia
as the West is putting to work its velvet revolution technology
disguised as support for greater democracy and popular political
involvement. Money is being poured in massive quantities in various NGOs
in Russia as a part of the package while activists from various groups
are trained to mobilize the corresponding audiences.
Fourthly, Russia finds itself targeted in a carefully
planned information warfare campaign. The time has come for the Russian
administration, academic community, media, and expert groups to compose
in response a broad conceptual framework based on Moscow's positions in
the spheres of historical studies, culture, human rights, etc. A
propaganda defeat is imminent if Russia continues to speak the Western
conceptual language with keywords like democracy, totalitarianism,
authoritarianism, and Stalinism which imply a priori negative
assessments of all aspects of the Russian and Soviet historical
experience. Adopting the language, the Russian administration and
academic community render themselves defenseless at the face of the
Western information warfare.
Fifthly, Russia's foreign policy should be equipped with a
convincing humanitarian component. Combining diplomacy, clever
information policies, and the popularization of the Russian language and
culture should help Moscow address its long-term goals internationally,
especially in the territories historically associated with Russia. “We
must work to expand Russia's educational and cultural presence in the
world, especially in those countries where a substantial part of the
population speaks or understands Russian”, wrote Vladimir Putin. The
Russian course should in all cases be premised in the assumption that
the treatment of Russian-speaking populations – or the interpretations
of common history offered in the CIS countries – do not belong
exclusively to the realm of domestic affairs of the respective countries.
Within the CIS, the common historical past automatically translates
into lasting mutual obligations of moral and humanitarian character.
Those include respect for the rights of the population groups which
natively speak Russian, while the readiness to oppose, in concert with
Moscow, the tide of historical revisionism should serve as a criterion
of true disposition towards Russia and its people. The above themes
merit a permanent place on the Russian diplomatic agenda, notably,
vis-a-vis Ukraine.
Russia should decisively advance its own principles for the
international relations and be prompt to response to any infringements
upon its national interests. Moscow has the leverage it takes to make
other countries respect its positions over missile defense, the
post-Soviet space, the Middle East, etc. For example, Russia's threat to
close the Northern Supply Route used to sustain the operations the West
is running in Afghanistan would surely sound alarming to Washington and
the European capitals.
Russia will actually earn the friendship of an ever-growing
number of countries in all parts of the world by firmly advocating its
international policy principles and national interests. In a world where
the principles are respected, Russia will score benefits far
outweighing the costs of re-establishing itself as a global power which,
in fact, it has never stopped being.
No comments:
Post a Comment