Yevgeny Bazhanov: “Many diplomats of Azerbaijan and Armenia studied at our Academy”

Interview by Maria Sidelnikova exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza

Alumni of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs work in many countries, defining their foreign political courses. The Diplomatic Academy is thought to be one of the major world centers for training professional diplomatic workers, experts in international affairs, world economics, international laws, state governance, and management. Yevgeny Bazhanov, Rector of the Diplomatic Academy, expressed his view on some acute trends of international politics in an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza.

- To what extent does the Academy cooperate with the South Caucasus?

- We are in very intensive cooperation with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. First of all, I have already said that we have a department of retraining and skills upgrading, and both South Ossetia and Abkhazia send their diplomats to attend our courses. And we have three or four weeks to teach them. That's the first thing I must mention. Secondly, there are education programs. My colleague said that we have a presidential quota for foreign students at the expense of the Russian budget. And this quota also applies to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Annually, we have approximately 10-12 representatives of Abkhazia and about the same number from South Ossetia studying on a regular basis. I mean undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate courses. In addition, we hold various events - conferences, memorable days marked by both ambassadors' speeches, by the way, their own children study at the Diplomatic Academy.

Now speaking of Armenia and Azerbaijan, there is the same system - retraining and skills upgrading, and the mentioned presidential quota for training at the expense of the Russian budget. And every year we teach about 20 people from Armenia and Azerbaijan. As a result, many diplomats from Azerbaijan and Armenia are our graduates, because these programs have been running since 1994. Incidentally, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan is our graduate, as well as several directors of departments in both Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Until recently, we had a lot of representatives of Georgia, until severing diplomatic relations. Even now, we have students from Georgia - not officially, not funded by the Russian budget, but at their own expense. This happens constantly, and as far as I understand the position of the Foreign Ministry leadership, and of Russia in general, we will probably resume teaching students from Georgia on the basis of some official documents.

Now speaking of Turkey: we have a very active relationship with the Turkish Diplomatic Academy, with Turkish universities - we regularly hold various conferences, for example, last year we had the conference "Tourism in Russian-Turkish relations." It was attended by the Turkish Minister of Culture, the Mayor of Istanbul, the mayors of resort towns, and from our side there were also many important participants. We also had the conference "Russian-Turkish relations: Past and Present". The Turkish Cultural Center is going to rent our building, the Turkish ambassador visits us quite regularly, Turkish diplomats gather in our courses - I have already spoken about this - for retraining and skills upgrading. Overall, we are very active with Turkey, the more - the more actively.

Now with regard to Iran, we are also active, we hold seminars and conferences together, we published two books together: the first - "Russia-Iran: A View from Russia" and "Russia-Iran: A View from Iran." 10 Iranians and 10 representatives of Russia gathered to talk about our past and present attitudes towards each other, the attitudes of ordinary people and elites, academics, etc. With the Ambassador - he's gone now, but with the previous ambassador, we had very active communication, he spoke regularly at our events. Iranian analysts and government officials tend to visit us to hear our opinion on Russia's policy towards Afghanistan, the United States, Iranian issues, etc. We conducted a conference with the participation of Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Iran, Turkey, and I think we even invited the Afghans there.

- Could you, as a China studies specialist, describe the attitude of China towards the Customs Union - it must be a kind of competition for one sphere of influence?

- This does not prevent cooperation between China and these countries. Of course, both the Chinese and all members of the Customs Union wonder how it will develop further. But if it can be called competition, this competition is purely economic. And so there's nothing wrong, and we all compete in Moscow, and within a district, single enterprises compete. Some people try to talk about some geopolitical struggle between Russia and China for influence in the region. The Chinese are not going to displace us from there, they can't and won't be able to do so. And I repeat, they have no intention of doing this, because they know that they can't and will never be able to do it in the first place. Another reason for them not wanting to do it is the fact that they are our partners and understand that we are there to play a crucial role if everyone wants peace there. And this peace is fragile: today everything is fine in Egypt, the next day a nightmare is happening there. Now Ukraine - it is getting closer. And if we touch these regions, launch a struggle like there was in the 19th century, it may end in tears for everyone. We have already seen what is happening in Afghanistan, and no one knows what to do with it. No one would want Central Asia to be next. Therefore, they are very wary of this and understand that this region is inseparable from Russia, that there are too many Russians there, that our historical positions are too strong, and if Russia steps out, it is unclear how it will end for all in terms of extremism, collapse, chaos, conflict between states.

- Will the Academy train employees for the Eurasian Union?

- We are doing it at the moment. First of all, the head of the Federal Customs Service Andrey Belyaninov is our tutor. He passed Ph.D. defense in our Academy last year and told me that Vladimir Putin congratulated him with it personally. Last year we held a conference on the Customs Union, and Belyaninov, Nikolai Bordji, people who dealt with integration under Yeltsin took part in it. We will pay attention to the topic.

- Do you share the point of view of some experts who believe that the US is trying to apply the theory of controlled chaos in the Middle East?

- What chaos! They had Egypt, it was practically their ally. All its military elite was trained in the US. And then suddenly this state gets destroyed, chaos, extremists who hate the West and the entire Western civilization are striving for power. Do you understand how the state machinery works? Imagine Obama, he has a million problems in his own country: the opposition in Congress, poverty, high crime rates, etc. and problems with allies. And then he calls his assistants and says: Let's do something, we have an ally, let's destroy him and organize chaos. Of course, I have heard of this theory, although many of my American colleagues, political scientists, have not even heard of this theory. It was invented and is used with big pleasure because it sounds interesting. And if you compete with some country, you invoke it. By the way, I worked in the US for a long time, in the 1970s I was a consul in San-Francisco. I can say that whatever is now said about the US, was said about the USSR back then. If a typhoon hits the country, it was caused by the USSR.  If a government somewhere in Chile falls, Russia organized it. If American morals change, too many divorces, it is all because of the communists, because they are generally against family life. When I came back, I saw the same picture here... Of course, I don't want to say that there is no struggle, no attempts to hit each other, especially in the Cold War times, but one should not give credit to the Americans for everything...You know what happened in Iran in 1979? There was a shah. This shah was surrounded by agents of the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department. But they not only did not manage to prevent an anti-shah revolution, they could not even predict that it might happen. Carter, who was the president back then, fired the head of the CIA Turner and all the others because, despite the fact that they practically owned Iran, they could not predict that a revolution might happen. The truth is somewhere in between. Something is of course done, but one should not turn one's enemies into superheroes who can do everything.