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CIAO DATE: 12/01
International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
The Ideological Legacy in Russia's Foreign Policy
V. Kremeniuk *
After a certain lull Russia's foreign policy has moved to the forefront of discussions among politicians and analysts once more. Lately President Putin, Secretary of Russia's Security Council Sergei Ivanov, and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov have been talking much about it. The State Duma several times raised foreign political issues ranging from Russia's debts to American bombing of Iraq. The very fact of such discussions is important per se. What is even more important is what was said. There is an obvious dissatisfaction—relations with the West are peppered with reproaches and even threats; there are warm overtones addressed to the nearly forgotten Soviet allies (Korean People's Democratic Republic, Cuba, Vietnam) and Soviet friends (India and Iraq); there is a rekindled interest in CIS countries (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia).
This is how the surface of the foreign political process looks. Indeed what the leaders publicly say gives ample hints at what is going on behind the scenes where Russia's foreign policy is forged and implemented. One can say with a great degree of certainty that the process of deep-cutting critical reassessment is under way and that new approaches and strategies are formulated and tested.
Some people may take this with a certain degree of bitterness as an unjustified criticism of Russia's foreign policy and its results. Others will grasp an opportunity to present their ideas and be heard. This is what is happening and should happen as part of a normal political process.
To grasp the crux of the matter and go to the core of what is unfolding before our eyes we should bear in mind that at all times and in all free societies foreign policy has been, and remains, an object of bitter discussions and sharp differences and that it has always attracted various approaches and political positions. Therefore, the current processes evident in Russia's foreign policy should cause no surprise or indignation. What is more we should remember that new, non-communist Russia is only ten years old and that its diplomacy and foreign policy have not yet provided adequate answers to all possible questions. One should take the process with a great deal of calm and try to visualize its future results.
Should Foreign Policy Be Revised?
Many of those interested in foreign policy will give an unambiguously positive answer to the question. Indeed, Russia has got a new president; any state should air its domestic and foreign policies from time to time though this is not all. The foreign political results of the Yeltsin course are quite unsatisfactory; the nation does not perceive any real gains; nationalism is obviously gaining momentum in the country together with a distinct feeling that national pride has been crippled and that foreign partners cannot be trusted. A profound analysis of the last decade of foreign political efforts will provide an exhaustive explanation of public discontent.
What are the most important foreign political results of the last ten years? Different people will give different answers: we can select from formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States; a foreign political course which exhibited a new spirit and a new style; worsened relations with NATO and the so far vague hints at a general European conflict between it and Russia; the relationships with China and Iran. To my mind all the above is important but the fact that Russia has joined G-7 and what came out of it are more important than anything else.
First, this reconfirmed Russia's great power status since none of its economic indices can support its claim to the role of an "economically developed" country. The G-7 which agreed to let Russia join them as the eighth member despite its poverty and economic backwardness confirmed its special role. Besides, this speaks of the developed countries' desire to see Russia equally developed, to give it an insight into the most closed affairs of the Western world, to let it feel responsible for international security (including control over strategic weapons, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, settlement of international conflicts) and for the state and efficiency of such international institutes as UN and OSCE.
Second, there is no doubt that the G-8 membership was an advance extended to Russia in expectation of economic reforms and their results. There are two types of such advances: either growing foreign investments as a sigh of confidence that changes will follow (this happened in China) or a membership in closed organizations as a sign of support for the initiatives of the Russian government. Foreign investors preferred to play safe with Russia, those who risked their money in portfolio investments repented after the 1998 default. There is no way to lure them back. In fact, Russia's membership in G-8 turned out to be a practicable step from which both Russia and the West have profited.
Third, this step showed those who have always treated the West and the future of the relationships between it and Russia with a grain of salt that they cannot ignore the fact that Russia is a member of the most prestigious group together with the Western leaders.
Obviously, the G-8 membership is the most significant and spectacular result of the past decade. Russia has made a final strategic choice of cooperation with the West; it has demonstrated that it is prepared to support Western values and it is aware that without Western investments and Western technologies Russia's economy and social relations will remain locked in the communist impasse. It is hard to say what in particular determined the choice: either Kozyrev's admission of the leading role of the West or a sober recognition of the historic role Western technologies can play in modernizing and industrializing Russia. It is a fact that this important diplomatic achievement has placed the country within a certain global context even though in Russia there is no unanimous recognition of this.
Whether one recognizes the importance of this foreign political step or not one has to admit that it was the only significant diplomatic achievement of the last decade. It serves the background for the losses Russian foreign policy sustained in the same period: NATO has moved and will continue moving to the east despite Russia's loud protests and NATO unleashed the war against Yugoslavia despite Russia's loud protests. It was with great difficulty that Russian carved itself a role to play in the Kosovo events. The 1972 ABM Treaty between the USSR and US, the cornerstone of the strategic armaments control, is threatened. The list is much longer.
The significance of the foreign political failures should be discussed within their general dramatic and obvious context. The early nineties were the years of great or even super great expectations of both sides—the late nineties brought nothing but mutual disenchantment and even dissatisfaction. The West and Russia realized that the early expectations were built on sand: their responses were different but equally sharp. In the early nineties Russia expected from the West understanding and support of its efforts to build up a democratic society and market economy; it was planning to reach the aim in several years. The West, in an anticipation of spectacular successes of the reforms, promised its full support. This all ended with mutual disillusionment and displeasure. The West in the midst of fast economic growth is baffled by Russia trailing behind. Russia is watching the widening gap and the increasing asymmetry of their relations and potentials with bitterness.
The gloomy background has dimmed the glitter of the G-8 membership and added disquieting overtones to the deepening abyss between economic, technological and social spheres. An asymmetry fraught with risky and hasty actions in forming before our eyes: the West may think that the abyss has become deep enough to use the language of force and diktat when talking to Russia. The latter may think that since the chances of bridging the abyss are slim it should concentrate on the military factor to preserve the parity in its relations with the West and its great power status. Both may end in irreparable errors.
The ending balance of Russia's foreign political course of the last decade and its relations with the West displays growing instability, accumulating conflict elements (or unresolved problems), and dimming prospects for the future. One finds it hard to continue thinking that Russia and the West are equal partners. At the same time, the more and more obvious nationalist sentiments at home make it impossible for the Russian leaders and responsible politicians to recognize that the country is falling behind. Therefore, it is impossible to openly discuss a different foreign political course and a new desirable and realistic model of relationships with the West.
Relations with the East and the CIS leave much to be desired. There are positive shifts in Russia's relations with China, India, and Iraq. One feels that President Putin's visit to South Korea in February 2001 produced good results yet these obvious achievements and successes pale into insignificance against the background of one fact: the West is the place where Russia's economic interests, and its debts, are rooted. It is there that the key problems are discussed and will be settled: will Russia be let out of the financial impasse, will the West agree to continued high oil prices that are keeping Russian economy afloat?
Russia's successes in its relations with the CIS countries are questionable: the dubious alliance with Byelorussia and the prospect of Moldavia joining it, positive shifts in relations with Ukraine will not determine the future of Russia as a great power. So far, the CIS countries are still foreign political liabilities rather than assets. They are recipients of Russia's aid rather than profitable partners. If Russia guided by the imperial instinct will burden itself with responsibilities and promises to former Soviet republics its future revival will never happen.
Balancing Out Russia's Foreign Policy
The Russian leaders who are actively revising the country's foreign political positions either old and nearly forgotten or newly articulated do not conceal their preoccupation: the foreign political miscalculations of the nineties are too obvious. Russia was vacillating between an ambitious aim of a "strategic partnership" with the United States and other Western countries, on the one hand, and protests against NATO's eastward movement or equally provocative bombing of Yugoslavia, on the other. The range of these vacillations shows that Russia was not following a straight road of realism and a sober assessment of its aims. It rather progressed along a road of immediate responses to the situations in which it had no role to play and tried to register them without a clear understanding whether it needs it or not.
The above was clearly stated in the conception of Russia's foreign policy worded in 2000. The document also stressed that no disillusionment should push Russia towards narrowing down its relations with the West. It rather should complement them with more active involvement in other regions, in the East and CIS in the first place. In his interview to South Korean journalists given on the eve of his visit to this country in February 2001 President Putin said that Russia's foreign policy needed "balancing out." It should be less West-oriented, it should acquire more variety to fit its geopolitical situation. Indeed, the West, East, South and our immediate neighbors are equally important. The idea is not absolutely acceptable but is absolutely understandable: an absence of spectacular successes in the West (except the G-8 membership) should be balanced out by scoring successes in those regions where Russia is welcome for various reasons and where the West has no special interests.
The idea is potentially strong. The West has the situation in the world under its control: it has already captured or is capturing nearly all major markets (raw material, financial, commodities and services, and labor). Western GDP is estimated as 80 percent of world GDP. This is enough not only for maintaining adequate living standards in the West but also to preserve the consumer and foodstuffs balance in vast regions, of which Russia is one. Still, the West cannot do everything: many countries and their nations on the brink of extinction or the lowest consumption level are outside the scope of Western attention and concern.
Therefore Russia which is balancing out its foreign political activity between the West and the East is turning into a connecting link of sorts or an intermediary. Sometimes, Russia literary plays this role: an unexpected visit of the Russian president to Pyongyang helped defrost its relations with the rest of the world. In some cases (Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and Vietnam) the relations with which were artificially limited Russia has announced its readiness to become an intermediary. There are cases when Russia's role is less obvious but equally important—here I have in mind the planned trans-Euroasian railway, a new Silk Road, from the port of Pusan in the south of Korean peninsula, across Siberia and European Russia to the West, and Great Britain.
The project's most spectacular part is an attempt to resolve the problem of the rogue countries, according to Western terminology, excluded from the normal international context. One finds it hard to contest the Western treatment of them—their domestic and foreign policies have been inviting sharp comments too often. At the same time, effective anti-terrorist and anti-drug efforts, that involve practical steps rather than lip service, are impossible without cooperation with the rogues countries, especially with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, the Korean People's Democratic Republic. Time has come to distinguish between the leaders' and nations' responsibilities for the crimes committed by regimes: innocent people should not suffer even if right and justice are expected to triumph as a result. Finally, there is no hope that the situation in the rogue countries will improve if the leaders and people are forcibly driven into one camp. Ostracized by the rest of the world, justly or unjustly, they tend to blend into a single whole.
This shows that, besides salvaging the great power status, the efforts to balance out Russia's foreign policy have a humanitarian dimension to them: a promise to resolve one of the most urgent international problems. It is the relationship between the rich "golden billion" (people in the West) and a huge majority of the poor of which there are 5 billion. The West that makes practically no attempts in this respect justifies itself by the presence of the UN, which is supposed to unite the planet's population into a political entity. The result is strange indeed: poor Russia is determined to remedy the situation either as the poorest part of the West or the most developed part of the rest of the world.
One feels reluctant to recognize these efforts as another spell of charity, which often affected the Soviet leadership. Having found a new niche in the international political division of labor Russia is not guided solely by considerations of abstract humanism and abstract justice. It is working towards complementing its still preserved weight (created by the nuclear missile potential and oil and gas complex) with an image of an international intermediary able to find common language with the rich (among which it has been symbolically admitted) and the poor (among which it inherited many friends from the Soviet Union). One has to recognize that this role may prove useful with time.
If the plan works and Russia is able to complement its G-8 membership with a new role the leaders of the country and its foreign policy should avoid dizziness from success and erroneous conclusions that may invite erroneous actions. Russia should remember that it couldn’t shoulder unjustified and ruinous spending: humanitarian actions earn no money and there is no need to deplete the Russian not very rich treasury.
Between the Scylla and Charybdis of Russia's Foreign Policy
Erroneous conclusions and erroneous actions are two most topical dangers: there are certain national traits that in the past have already prejudiced, to a great extent, Russia's interests (bravado and a tendency towards cavalier treatment of difficulties, an inability to correctly assess available resources and correlate them with the aims set, etc.). The foreign political process in Russia is suffering of certain structural failures that make its foreign policy either wobbly or inconsistent and hard to understand.
Here is an example. Studies of foreign policies of other countries done in the Soviet and post-Soviet times have produced a clear idea how foreign policy is made in Western countries where the foreign political course is absolutely open. We know of its formal state mechanisms: the supreme power, the legislatures, the media, and the foreign political departments. Research of this sort has embraced the United States, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, etc. and described both the formal and non-formal sides of policy-making: the domestic lobbies, think tanks, lobbies abroad, industrial branches and largest industrial corporations.
Taken together the studies produce a more or less adequate picture of how foreign policy is shaped in any of the states. To satisfy a more profound interest one can even procure relevant documents, speeches and statements of heads of state and foreign political departments, ambassadors and special envoys. Each of the governments is ready to supply them so that its foreign policy is better known abroad and that the media were not the only source of not always expertly interpreted information.
In Russia foreign policy is still a big "black box." With time the Soviet Union lifted its lid a bit and allowed a certain amount of information to reach the world: the former Soviet ambassador to the U.S. A. Dobrynin and V. Cherniaev, advisor to President Gorbachev, published their memoirs, certain documents became open to the public, etc. In Russia foreign policy remains a great enigma: in the Soviet Union foreign policy was shaped by the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, the KGB, Supreme Soviet commissions, and academic institutes that sent their ideas to the CC CPSU or straight to the Politburo or to the International Department of the CC CPSU. The latter analyzed all propositions and fit them into the context of the balance of forces in the CC CPSU and the highest leaders' personal preferences. The result was the Soviet Union's foreign political course. In certain cases (invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979) decisions were made differently.
Russia's foreign policy is becoming more or less coordinated, the extent being not quite clear because of the closed nature of policy-making. During the early post-Soviet years foreign policy turned into a battle-field on which career diplomats fought their colleagues, and where foreign policy experts from the State Duma committees (Vladimir Lukin, the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee was also visible), academic institutes, and amateurs from numerous newly-born centers, political parties, business circles and their organizations were airing their ideas and tried to implement them. Repeated attempts to create a certain state or a quazi-state document to guide Russia's foreign policy collapsed under the pressure of chaos and confusion.
Foreign observers and experts were constantly complaining of an impossibility to determine how this or that foreign political step was being prepared and what exactly prompted President Yeltsin's numerous initiatives and statements (such as "taking off missiles from alert duty," an agreement to let Poland join NATO made in 1993, the entirely incomprehensible story of a "peace treaty with Japan" that remained unsigned, and many other things). Often, or even too often, Russia's foreign policy course looked a product of conflicting wills and bitter scuffle behind the scenes. It was a sign of the state's general weakness and its inability to enter into stable and predictable relationships or exercise balanced approaches.
Little has changed since that time. On the one hand, foreign and Russian experts agree that society is demonstrating a lack of interest to foreign political problems though the country has traveled far to become part of the world community. Indeed, its finances and economy depend to a great degree on the world oil markets. Second, an absence of an active and obvious public interest in foreign political issues leaves much space for loud campaigns and demonstrations of the no longer existing freedom of choice in foreign politics. Third, there is an impression that Russia's foreign political course is free to perform trick of all kinds including U-turns.
On the other hand, it is still unclear how the roles and responsibilities are distributed: recently the Security Council of Russia has obviously gained weight. One looks with satisfaction at its increased coordinating possibilities and is baffled by vagueness of its competence and responsibilities. We need a law on foreign political activity (like that which the United States adopted in 1947) which would provide details of how the foreign political process is organized and outlined the spheres of competence and responsibility on the "president-executive power" level and on the level of the government and its departments.
So far, Russia's foreign policy will, to a growing extent, remain a hostage of court squabbles in the Kremlin. It is an open secret that all foreign political decisions are made there as a result of struggle between various parts of the state machine. This is a great stride forward away from the Yeltsin era yet can hardly satisfy Russia's foreign political partners. They need a clear and predictable foreign political course rather than short-term decisions forged behind the scenes.
Diplomacy as the function of a royal court remained in the past together with Talleyrand, Metternich, and Gorchakov. The situation changed radically in the twentieth century: foreign policy is dominated either by long-term armament programs that cost billions and require decades to be implemented or by long-term interests of big business with billion-worth projects that need decades to be repaid. This calls for maximum openness; there is no need to lay bare secrets yet the mechanism of decision-making should be clear. A foreign political course should be predictable and based on exact calculations of possible profit and losses.
Let's take servicing of Russia's foreign debt and attracting foreign investments as an example. The Foreign Ministry of Russia seems to take no part in this major field of foreign political efforts and shifted the burden of decision-making onto the Central Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade the foreign political experience of which is inadequate. As a result the state is demonstrating its complete inability to address the problem that is vitally important for the country's future. Many times the highest Russian officials discussed it abroad yet there is no visible progress. It is hard to comment the failure: either the government has reached the top of its competence or it does not know how to address the problem. Both variants do not speak well of Russia's foreign policy.
We have joined the world community and this naturally calls for serious changes in our foreign political course burdened with confrontational and Cold War experience of the past. Some of top diplomats speak about the need to keep secret the "true aims" of Russia's foreign policy. This should be changed completely: the world community is living by different rules and prefers to be aware of the partners' intention and to be able to predict their steps. Otherwise there will be no trust and no confidence. As soon as lies, dual standards and secret aims (of which nothing is publicly said) come to light the state is banned from the community. Communication will be reduced to an absolute minimum while the desire to help and support (with restructuring debt, for example) will disappear altogether.
Russia's foreign policy looks like a man who remained bed-ridden for a long time and who is making his first wobbly steps. Our diplomacy is moving towards fundamentally new relationships with the world outside in the West, East, South or elsewhere based on cooperation and trust. Russian diplomacy has not yet learned to identify the country's national interests and priorities: chaos and confusion are still evident. Russian diplomacy has yet failed to grasp the true scope of the changes that occurred in Russia and the world: Russia is no Soviet Union while the world is no longer bi-polar and is not following Russian rules. Russia is still measuring its might and the might of others by the number of missiles and warheads rather than by the level of living and the amount of capital free for investments. It seems that the minds of Russian politicians and diplomats are still clogged with vague ideological patterns and the division of the world into "us" and "them."
Russian foreign policy should finally abandon the heritage of the totalitarian past for the sake of the country and the international community of which it has become a part (though the quazi-patriots in Russia refuse to accept this). This heritage is daily augmented by demonstrations of Russia's economic weakness and incomplete nature of democratic changes. Otherwise we may be caught in a vicious circle of national self-isolation that will reproduce itself: all large countries are facing this danger all the time. If this happens Russia will lag behind the most developed part of the world still more and will finally find itself outside the road of mankind's development.
Endnotes
Note *: Viktor Kremeniuk is Doctor of Sciences (History) and Professor. Back