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// Russia is back – January 29, 2008 –
Kommersant Vlast keeps publishing articles that sum up the last eight years’ results in various spheres of life in Russia. This time, the Moscow Carnegie Center’s expert Dmitry Trenin talks about the way Russia’s foreign policy priorities have changed, and about the consequences of these changes.
In 1999, a possibility of “the world without Russia” was widely discussed. Many people thought the financial crisis put the kibosh on Moscow’s international ambitions for long. In the article published on the eve of Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, Vladimir Putin admitted that the USSR’s collapse was mainly due to its economic ineffectiveness. So, when Putin became the president, he set the goal to make Russia a global player again, although on a different basis than that of the USSR: economic, and not military-ideological. As it turned out, there were very favorable conditions for it: the new president came in the epoch of rapid economic growth in Russia supported by energy resource prices to a large extent.
Putin came to the international arena as a pragmatist ready to try different means and ways for achieving the goal he set. First, he put in order Yeltsin’s foreign policy legacy. Putin normalized the relations with NATO, which had exacerbated due to the bombings of Yugoslavia. He also established close personal contact with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who for some time became Putin’s ‘connection’ both in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The first Russian leader since Lenin’s times to fluently speak a foreign language, Putin became close with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder – a man of a similar psychological type. With the support of these two partners, Putin could afford to disregard the criticism coming from the European Union due to the war in Chechnya.
The Russian leader decided not to exacerbate relations with the U.S. which faced presidential election in 2000. Putin waited for the White House’s new master to be elected, thoroughly prepared for his first meeting with George Bush, did his best to find common ground with Bush, and intuitively made the right decision on September 11, 2001: Putin personally supported the American president at the moment when the U.S. became a target for terrorists. Two weeks later, despite the stand of his associates, Putin decided to support the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, and not to impede the deployment of U.S. armed forces in Central Asia.
Certainly, it was a decision of strategic scale: the Russian president acquired a chance to become America’s leading ally in the struggle against international terrorism. The world’s strategic alignment turned upside down overnight: NATO was turning into anachronism, and a new global coalition headed by the U.S. and Russia was emerging. Putin thought that Moscow could count on Washington’s benevolent attitude to Russia’s chief interests. However, no specific strategic course followed that step of Putin. The ‘window of opportunities’ did not exist for long: Americans did not agree to regard the post-Soviet territory as the sphere of Russia’s vital interests, which was the main point on the Kremlin’s agenda. Already by summer 2002, the U.S. switched to preparing for war against Iraq. Moscow-Washington strategic partnership declined drastically since the U.S. invaded Iraq. The White House and the Pentagon no longer needed Moscow’s support so much, while the Kremlin saw a dangerous sign of striving for power hegemony in the U.S. actions.
In that situation, there emerged a ‘new Entente’ – a short-term union of Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, with the purpose of ‘friendly containment’ of the U.S.. Early in his first presidential term, Putin proclaimed Russia’s ‘European choice’, and then, with the growing prices on energy resources, hoped for political and, first of all, economic rapprochement of Russia and the EU countries. Relying on his close personal ties with heads of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, Putin wanted to build the relations of positive mutual dependence, based on interpenetration of capitals.
However, the relations cracked after the YUKOS case. Moreover, the year of 2004 – the year of EU and NATO expansion, terrorist act in Beslan, and the orange revolution in Ukraine – became the turning point in the relations between Russia and the West. After the Beslan tragedy, Putin actually accused the U.S. of carrying out a policy aimed at weakening and dismembering Russia. The events in Ukraine, where the Russian president suffered a grave personal defeat, were ever after interpreted not only as the U.S. special operation for separating Ukraine from Russia, but also as the creation of a foothold for implementing the ‘orange scenario’ in Moscow.
In that situation, former attempts at Russia’s integration into Western organizations looked naive and pointless. Those who were partners just recently, appeared as old rivals again. By acknowledging the alliance with the West, established by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, to be fruitless and prospectless, Putin ‘applied for divorce’. He decided Russia is no longer a poor cousin: it does not owe anything to anyone, and it will seek fortune alone, sometimes engaging in situational relations with various partners – of its own choice.
Early in Putin’s rule, many people admired the Russian foreign policy’s pragmatism relieved of ideology. Yet, the ideological charge appeared right after the ‘orange shock’. Nowadays, ‘sovereign democracy’ is a topical slogan. Russia demonstratively gave up the status of listener at the international arena. Putin now declines binding alliances (for instance, a hypothetic possibility of Russia’s accession to NATO). He allows Russia’s integration either at the global level (G8, WTO, OECD), or if Russia plays a leading part (on the post-Soviet territory). Putin is the only G8 leader who talks to Venezuela’s president and Hamas leaders. Russia cooperates with Iran, America’s worst enemy, in the nuclear energy sphere; it supplies air-defense systems and other weapons to Iran.
Without renouncing Russia’s European origin, President Putin underlines its Eurasian location and its right for a full participation in forming universal values. Meanwhile, Western values are boiled down to a particular case, while the ‘Russian standard’ is offered to Russia. Louder and louder, Eastern Christianity is proclaimed to be the society’s value basis. Moreover, the Kremlin is not going to include Russia’s territory only: the president personally helped reunite the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. All-Russia Patriarch’s speech in Strasbourg gave the European audience an idea of the special ‘Russian-Eastern Christian view’. Russia is acting as a defender of traditional, that is Christian, values of Europe, being at the same time Islam’s defender as an observer in the Islamic Conference organization. Refuting the claims of the OSCE and the Council of Europe on being universally competent in the human rights issue, Russia’s representatives declared their intention to create their own data research center in Brussels.
Meanwhile, Russia’s image has considerably worsened in the last four years, despite the growth of credit ratings. Litvinenko case triggered unprecedented exacerbation of criticism of not just certain actions, but the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Russian authorities and the president personally. From the Kremlin’s viewpoint, that reaction of the West could mean one thing only: Russia’s return to the international arena was now seen as a real threat to unipolar world order which was established after the Cold War end and the USSR collapse. Putin decided to launch the counter-offensive.
Speaking in Munich in February 2007, he said the main goal of Russia’s foreign policy towards the West would be to revise the Cold War results. The chief task is to reduce America’s role to the position of the first among equals, and to form a multipolar world. The Kremlin thinks such world should be governed by ‘a concert of powers’ similar to the 19th-century Sacred Union or the UN Security Council. Putin believes the world tends towards general decrease of the traditional West’s influence and towards the rise of new centers of power: China, India, Brazil (Russia’s colleagues in BRIC), along with South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, and others. One leg in the G8, and another leg catching the ‘new wave’, Moscow hopes to become a kind of global mediator, or even a leading world player if possible.
So, the importance of Russia’s relations with its emerging great eastern neighbor is growing. Early in Putin’s rule, Beijing was concerned: where the new president would turn? Certainly, China was apprehensive of the U.S.-Russia rapprochement which began right after September 11. However, Putin set a course for strategic partnership with China, although the project’s real content and prospects remain unclear. Putin’s chief current achievement is the final solving of the Russia-China border. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has become an important regional forum. Russia and China moved from military-equipment cooperation to joint military exercises. The ‘Primakov triangle’, which seemed unrealistic, is actually beginning to work. It is the three-sided diplomatic cooperation among Russia, China, and India. Yet, despite regular visits and declarations, ‘great and friendly’ India is still in Russian policy’s deep reserve, while other East Asian countries are just outlined in Moscow’s policy at most.
Balancing between the major international forces, Putin’s Russia aimed at building its own center of force in Eurasia – on the territory from the EU in the west to China in the east, from the North Pole (where the Lomonosov Ridge extends) to the former southern border of the Russian Empire and the USSR. The stake was on the fact that Russia’s economy, as the most powerful one, would be able to act as a magnet for the economies of other CIS countries. Russian companies’ expansion in CIS states could become a real integrator of the Eurasian territory. Russia’s growing political weight would allow it giving support to friendly regimes and securing regional safety. At last, the Russian language, education, science, and culture (including mass culture) would form around Russia a ‘Russia-centered’ humanitarian environment.
So far, these hopes have not come completely true. In the political sphere, Russia failed in the last eight years to solve any conflicts on the post-Soviet territory: all these conflicts are frozen. In the economic sphere, there are magnets stronger than Russia: for instance, China, not to mention the EU. Abolition of empire privileges, or, quoting Minister Lavrov, “mutual economic emancipation” with its gas crises, completely buried the ties inherited from the Soviet Union. In the security sphere, Moscow’s ability and readiness to give effective support to friendly regimes (for instance, Uzbekistan’s) can hardly be determined in case of grave crisis. The Russian language is already forced to compete with national and other foreign languages and cultural influences, and its role within the former USSR has been declining so far.
A considerable problem of Russia’s foreign policy is the country’s growing loneliness. Multipolar world does not imply a magic solution of all difficulties caused by the U.S. hegemony. On the contrary, it means further complication of game rules. Even if Russia really becomes one of the five world’s leading economies by 2020, its breakaway from the leaders (the U.S., the EU, and China) would be multiple: 3-4 percent of global GDP against 20 percent of each giant. It would be hard to keep balance, and even harder to claim equality. There can be many poles, but they are of different calibers.
Despite all assurances of officials, the sentiments of Russia’s ruling elite are not yet established and swing like a pendulum. Hardly had the West stopped being an unconditional role model, when it turned into a sworn enemy right away. There is certain risk that some specific steps of the state are driving Russia into a dead-end, limiting its opportunities for maneuvering. If Moscow manages to get compromises on the missile defense and the CFE Treaty by means of forcing the West to partnership, -- very well. If not, what comes next? Will Russia (and will it want to) implement its threats, and how far is it ready to go along the way of confrontation and arms race? What if Moscow’s verbal threats trigger a new alliance of Western countries so as to contain Russia? It is necessary to keep in mind that both the creation of NATO and the preservation of U.S. military presence in Europe were the West’s response to the international crises intentionally provoked by Stalin to demonstrate his own firmness.
Let us summarize. Over the eight years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, Russia’s international positions have strengthened. Owing to growing prices on energy resources, as well as the consequent economic growth and the strengthening of Russia’s financial position, the country managed to assert itself as a separately-standing great power. The achievements of the foreign policy proper are more modest. Russia’s attempt to incorporate into the West on its own terms failed, while U.S. and EU terms proved to be unacceptable. The solitary sailing, which is presented as the only one corresponding to the country’s historic tradition and national interests, is going quite stormily. Political relations with the U.S. and most EU countries have strained, and have exacerbated with some neighbors.
The moment is special also because Russia’s president has been so far the only genuine subject of the country’s foreign policy activities. Vladimir Putin’s personality had a great impact on Russia’s international behavior. Other officials mostly acted as assistants and agents of the president. Meanwhile, the line of demarcation between tough competition and confrontation (here is where Russia’s foreign policy is balancing now) is thin and almost invisible. Only virtuosi can play on the edge.
Foreign Policy: Chronology
2001. June. Vladimir Putin for the first time meets George Bush Jr. in Slovenia.
September. Putin expresses condolences to Bush due to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and declares support to the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign.
2003. May. At the celebration of St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary, Bush and Putin declare there is ‘partnership’ between the U.S. and Russia, and announce the intention to jointly develop a missile air defense system.
2004. October. During his visit to Ukraine to take part in commemorating the 60th anniversary of Kiev’s liberation from Nazi invaders, Putin supports Viktor Yanukovych in the struggle for presidency in Ukraine.
2005. September. The agreement on building the North-European Gas Pipeline (Nord Stream) is signed.
2006. January. Russia cuts off gas supplies to Ukraine. Europe starts widely discussing the danger of its energy dependence on Russia.
2006. July. G8 summit in St. Petersburg. Despite the calls in the West to expel Russia from the G8, the summit goes as planned.
2007. February. Putin speaks at the Munich conference on security policy issues, and criticizes the U.S. foreign policy.
April. Russia announces that it suspends its membership in the CFE Treaty.
July. At the IOC session in Guatemala, Russia gets the right to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. Nearly at the same time, there blazes up the diplomatic conflict with Great Britain over the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi to British court as a suspect of Alexander Litvinenko’s murder.
“We see what’s going on in the world”
In the last eight years, Vladimir Putin often made it clear he is not satisfied with Russia’s position on the international political arena.
2000. “Our foreign policy’s independence is doubtless. Pragmatism, economic effectiveness, national tasks priority make up the policy’s basis. However, we are yet to work to make these principles become a norm of state life.”
2001. “We should accurately fulfill our long-term obligations and agreements, and defend the principles on which we now build our relations with other states. It is a balance of interests and mutually profitable cooperation, respect and trust. These approaches are much more productive than stiff ideological dogmas.”
2002. “The confrontation period is over indeed. However, I would like to point out something else: tough competition is normal in the modern world.”
2003. “Our foreign policy’s important element is a wide rapprochement and a real integration into Europe. Certainly, it is a complicated and long-term process. Yet, it is our historic choice.”
2004. “We need the EU expansion to unite us not just geographically, but also economically and spiritually.”
2005. “Russian nation’s civilizing mission on the Eurasian continent should be carried on.”
2006. “Not everyone in the world could depart from the stereotypes of ‘bloc’ thinking and the biases inherited from the global confrontation epoch… However, it means we too should make our home strong, safe, because we see what’s going on in the world. As the saying goes, ‘comrade wolf knows whom to eat’. So, he eats, not listening to anyone.”
2007. “There is a growing inflow of foreign money used for direct interference in our domestic affairs… Even in the colonialism epoch, there was the concept of the so-called civilizing role of colonizing states. Nowadays, they arm themselves with democracy-promoting slogans. Yet, their only purpose is to obtain unilateral advantages.