On February 27 Vladimir Putin published an article headlined "Russia in a changing world." The article provoked serious discussions in the country's media.
According to Dmitry Zhuravlev, General Director of the Institute of Regional Problems on foreign policy, from the status it had in the bi-polar world, when it was such a form a tug-of-war, is turning more and more into the tough process of real competition. "And the topic of foreign policy of any state, especially one like Russia, is becoming more and more important and serious. As regards the article itself - obviously, it will be much talked about after my speech - I would like to consider the main idea," the expert believes. "For a long time I tried to decide, how this article could be rendered in two words. I think more than 30 these are integrated into the text, but how to express it in two words? And yesterday, in the presence of Alexander Maksimovich, I finally found an answer. Russian foreign policy should follow from the interests of Russia itself. Russia has her interests, and we will act according to them. And then there is quite a lot of concrete material about how one should act in this or that sphere. I am very glad that this text includes an idea about the multi-vectorial character of our foreign policy, I was especially interested in what is related to the Far East. Like the candidate for the presidency, I am sure that this is one of the key directions of foreign policy in today's world. I am glad that the position in relation to NATO and in general to military organizations and international cooperation has been defined. I am quite satisfied with the article, it is a policy article. And God grant Russia in the 23rd year of her independence to understand that it needs a policy following from its own interests."
Daria Mitina, member of the Political Council of the Left Front thinks that the last foreign policy article by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the most successful from his seven articles. "At least, it seems so to me", she says, "I really think it should be the last, like a coda. If we consider it as a part of the pre-election program, from this point of view it quite satisfied me, too, as a policy article, which for the first time places those accents which I believe to be necessary. The very structure of the article seems to me notable. For your attention: if in the articles on foreign policy from the last few years, presented by the current President, Russian-American relations were always put in the first place, even compositionally, then in this article first comes the Asian-Pacific region, and clearly the role of China is distinguished. Actually, it may be that de facto this bloc is not in first place for us yet, but definitely, the very attempt by
the author to put it in first place is telling. Then follows the European Union, and only then "Russian-American affairs" (I liked this subheading a lot). The last, fourth, bloc, satisfied me the least, because I think that inadmissibly little is said about the problems of post-Soviet space. It is especially unfortunate given that we are creating the new Customs Union, we have new forms of integration and so on. On the one hand, it is good that maybe for the first time for several years the problem of the non-citizens in the Baltic countries has been clearly articulated. And this is a big issue. But nonetheless, the problems of post-Soviet space are not only the problems of humanitarian cooperation, as Vladimir Vladimirovich presents it, because relations with the Russian diaspora in Switzerland and relations with the Russian diaspora in post-Soviet space are two principally different questions. And here it would be desirable to read not only about the humanitarian aspect, not only about the support for the Russian language and culture, but also about
economics, because, much at our initiative, a huge economic mechanism was destroyed, and millions of people found themselves on the periphery of this process, and therefore we cannot avoid this topic, no matter how we would like to imagine the problems of post-Soviet Russians just as the problems of Russian language and culture. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and I think this part of the article should have been more developed. The bloc of Latin
America and Africa is not distinguished. I think this is also slightly short-sighted. At the previous discussion when we were speaking about military reform, our esteemed experts said that the head of state has to strategically plan 50 years ahead. Then I objected, as I believed that in a dynamic world it is difficult to plan even 10 years ahead. But in this case, I think, I could be desirable to look 50 years ahead, because, definitely, Latin America will be a bearer of social progress in 50 years, while Africa already today has become a scene of interaction of very many international actors of the first rank, so
to say. An economic repartition of Africa is already going on. There is a second wave of Africa's colonization, and it is somewhat strange not to see it, especially because quite real military operations have been transferred to the African continent, where Russia sometimes participates, sometimes not, but always in some way defines its position. And what I would also like to say, and Vladimir Vladimirovich is absolutely correct here, is that Russia's reputation
in the world, the attitudes to us in the world, is not so expensive task. He is obviously polemicizing here with the liberal part of his milieu, who said that the self-positioning of Russia is very expensive and one has to spend a lot of money and effort on this. Actually, nothing like it! Last week in Damascus I understood it very well, because it is a completely forgotten feeling, when people run to you on the street, hug you and kiss, and say "Thanks to Russia!" At the market they load for you full bags of food products and gifts for free. There are still places on Earth where you are welcome. And it did not
cost us anything, we just had to act decently. Unfortunately, we made a big mistake last year with Resolution 1973 on Libya. This indeed cost us a lot, also in an economic sense, not only in a reputational sense. But now we acted principally and decently, and the profit from this is measured not only in conventional units, believe me."
Yurii Solodukhin, Full State Councillor of Russian Federation of the first rank says "In my view the article is good because it is, I would say, purely pragmatic." "The methodologists would say it is carried out on a so-called phenomenological level," he adds. "It gives a picture of the contemporary international situation, the picture, on my view, is virtually exhaustive, and very precise. "Virtually exhaustive" is because, as Daria Alexandrovna mentioned, the topics of Latin America, Africa and some others are omitted, but the most essential is present. The main discoveries, conceptual and theoretical breakthroughs I have not found there, but perhaps this aim was not put forward in the first place. This is my first point. Second: notably, we are dealing with an article which is seventh in the whole cycle. And the very fact that an article on foreign policy, on international relations, is the last one is a break with a tradition that has prevailed in our country practically since 1917, because all the reports at all the party Congresses were always opened with an article on the international situation. And then they spoke about internal politics. That this article is the last indicates a change in our view on the role of our country in foreign politics. If back then we felt ourselves a hegemonic country, and our foreign policy was an instrument in the world's repartition, then now we see foreign policy as an instrument for acheiving those aims and fulfilling those tasks which were outlined in the previous six articles. If we consider the thrust of this article, it seems to me this is a farewell to certain illusions which we still nourished several years ago. I mean Russian-American relations. You remember, the "reboot" was announced, we heard talk of partnership, nearly strategic partnership. Now it is clear that all this faded, did not came about, did not work, and Putin's article is a search for a Russian place and role in the conditions when our relations with the U.S. are, to put it mildly, not successful. The priorities here, as was mentined, are defined quite clearly. This is, first of all, the Asian-Pacific region. That this topic is placed in the foreground is, in my view, quite justified. But I would be less optimistic about China's position, because what is being done by China in the sphere of economic relations in Siberia and the Far East does not inspire much optimism. I mean, Chinese investments do not go to high-technology branches; this is still, traditionally, forestry, construction materials, public catering, financial capital, and so on. China has signed a couple of contracts with a couple of subjects of the Russian Federation, related to the production of tractors and construction machines, but all this is also assembly facilities for production. I repeat: prospects in the Asian-Pacific region for Russia do exist. Next, as regards Europe. The author's intention to invite Europe to deeper cooperation with Russia is evident. Vladimir Vladimirovich is a realist, and although he speaks of integration from Lisbon to Vladivostok, the matter is not integration of interstate relations, but the integration of economies. It is difficult to say whether it will work. The point is that we do have an interest in Europe. This is our biggest partner in the sphere of economics. 48 per cent of our trade is with the countries of the EU. The countries of the CIS, which come next in rank, are only 15 per cent of our foreign trade turnover. The gap, as you see, is huge. But can we offer Europe something that will interest it? So far our supplies are basically oil and gas. And Europe perfectly understands that we will keep supplying them, because we need to sell these resources somewhere. But can we offer something else in the sphere of the economy that will stimulate them towards integration? At least, the article does not give concrete answers to this question. Yet, I repeat, the very formulation of the question is correct: yes, we cannot ignore Europe, we are deeply integrated there, and we should just move to some qualitatively new level."
According to Alexander Yusupovsky, member of the Council of National Strategy, the current struggle for domination in the world, for a uni-polar world,
or, to put it diplomatically, a Pax Americana, recalls the pre-war situation, the 1930s. I don't want to draw any parallels, to compare Libya with Ethiopia, or Syria with Spain, some analogies are very obvious. The only difference is that the position of contemporary Russia is much weaker by many parameters, territorially and geopolitically, in its potential and the balance of powers, than it was in the 1930s. I would note another feature of this article. In my
view it illustrates very well that in the contemporary world the border between foreign an internal politics has ceased to be clear. This is also a very important moment, because it is no secret that the principles which were the basis for the post-Potsdam and post-Yalta world - sovereignty, non-intervention in internal affairs and so on - have been intensified during recent years. But by what means? By means of humanitarian intervention, of the principle of human rights, which was employed by our partners, thus devaluing all the other principles of the world legal order. Here, it is mildly and reasonably claimed: guys, we are, of course, for the principle of priority of the human rights and so on, but we'll not let you parisitize on this within our country. I assure you that the world community and our liberal community will not forgive Vladimir Vladimirovich for this. Neither will they forgive him our hint at a civil society, especially that segment directly connected to foreign embassies, as previously Vladimir Vladimirovich put it straight, those "creeping into the embassies" (but now he expressed this diplomatically). They also will not forgive him, and, maybe, will not explicitly say the reasons, but the information strike with all the calibers both in our own and foreign media will be, I think, huge.
"Let me turn your attention to the article's title: "Russia and the changing world", says Natalia Dmitrieva, an academician of the Academy of Russian Philology. "With his detailed address to the very concrete events of the political arena, Vladimir Vladimirovich, in a way, tells us that at this historical moment the state of affairs is as it is, but the world is changing, my friends, and in the near future - and the author says it indirectly, but in the main message of his article - the meanings will change, and we must be ready for this. And here I would like attract our attention to the last section of the article, as the English say, "last but not least." I daresay that in the global meaning of this article is the last aspect which the author considers - the humanitarian dimension. In the near future the changing world will bring a demand for new meanings and new ideas. And here, the author tells with his text, Russia has strategic advantages, thank to its culture and its specificity, which we cannot neglect. I agree with the previous speakers that it is unlikely that the Russia foreign center "Russian World" will handle this role, this mission. Probably, we should speak about "Russian World" not as a foundation, and not in terms of its concrete administrators, but we should speak about a Russian world in the global meaning of this expression, because besides the fist in a velvet glove, that is, force and diplomacy, we should also remember that Russia has a mind and heart. And these global meanings for the new world which Russia has a
right to and can demonstrate, we should demonstrate to the world in the nearest future. For me this article in its message and its appeal is precisely about this. Especially because it came out right after the candidate's speech on the Day of Defenders of the Fatherland before his supporters, when he said "A battle for Russia is going on." The battle for Russia will go on not necessarily, not only and not so much by offensive and aggressive methods, as by the methods of the new world, because the world is changing."
Dmitry Kondrashov, the editor and founder of the journal "Baltic World" says, "I also would like to address the title and try to graphically express the idea that has been already delivered by many participants, because these are the conditions of this article. Part of these conditions is that today foreign policy has turned from the high art of a caste of diplomats into a rough and primitive activity of the masses, an activity easily surpassing any borders, so that to say where the border is between foreign and internal policy is impossible. In this context, there were important decisions, for example, the decision to strengthen Russia's defensive capability. The context following the article is the Government's decision yesterday to cancel the monetarist system of evaluating the effectiveness of the country's foreign policy, suggested by Dmitry Medvedev. But there was another important moment: the statement Vladimir Putin made, if I am not mistaken, at the atomic center in the Nizhny Nogorod region, that we must preserve the existing world order. This was alarming, and therefore I was reading this article with some caution. Preserving the world order is a noble aim. But will not it turn from a noble to a kamikaze strategy? Honestly speaking, I still have some worries. For example, the appeal to the existing model of the world legal system, which is already de facto not working, the demonstrative refusal to work with the methods of our partners. But let us hope that this is courtesy. But there are some points which calmed me. Now I turn to details, increasing the measure of my competence. The first that attracted my attention is the absence in the section on the EU of the mentioning of the necessity to continue working on the framework agreement with the EU. I remind you that the previous framework agreement with the EU ended in 2007. Around 2009 an attempt to work out a new framework agreement started. And this work is still being conducted. The existing framework agreement, which does not satisfy, first of all, the EU, because in their view it gives insufficient preferences for European companies on the Russian market, makes no progress. The non-mentioning of this agreement means that, first, one cannot surely claim that the employees of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took an active part in writing this article. Second, there is a new approach to European politics, because the message is that the main partners of Russia, which view the world similarly to Russia and which exist within the European space, are Germany and France, and there are members of the EU whose views are unacceptable to Russia. Among them, clearly defined, are Latvia and Estonia - my native country, by the way - and I think this list can be extended. So the thesis about creating a two-speed European Union, already popular in Europe, in the near future will evidently gain very strong support from Russian foreign policy, and, I think, economics too. The second moment that was decisive for me, and it has been noted by the participants, is that indeed, all the integration processes in the Eurasian space are only lightly touched upon. It has been explained why this is so, but I found in this article the answer to a question that has tortured me for a long time, because all these economic, juridical and contractual constructions of the Eurasian space for me looked like some chimaera. I could not understand how this common space can work with the presence of anti-Russian ethnocratic elites. We can say that in some countries, for example Ukraine, these elites even hamper entering into a common space, but there are slippery moments, for example the intensification of nationalist rhetoric in Kazakhstan, a country which is the basic engine, intensification of the pressure on the Russian
language in Kazakhstan. How could a common Eurasian Union exist being disintegrated in humanitarian and cultural aspects? I found an answer in the article: Russian humanitarian and cultural cooperation must be put at a higher degree in states with already-formed stable Russian-speaking groups of population, where a solid part of the population uses the Russian language. This should be written in big letters for all our figures from "Russian World" and even from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is the reference to what Vladimir Vladimirovich said in the article on the nationality question and historical Russia. With this notion he defined the existence of the historical territory of settlement of the Russian people as a unifying factor for all European integration processes."
