By Vestnik Kavkaza
It is a modern tendency that Moscow’s position on major international issues is explained not by official representatives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, but the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Pushkov. He is an experienced journalist and is able to present paradigms of state policy in a simple form.
North Korea
It is obvious that North Korea won’t give up its nuclear program. Sanctions should effect population, the population should feel it and put pressure on the authorities to change their policy. But sanctions do not work in this society. The population doesn’t feel sanctions, because people are born and die under sanctions. Their own authorities put sanctions on them. The society is closed.
The authorities of North Korea have to demonstrate their success to the population. North Korea launches satellites, explodes nuclear devices which probably have no warheads. The next stage is the most dangerous – installing warheads on planes, i.e., the creation of nuclear bombs. If Korea shifts to this stage, we will get an absolutely new situation on the Korean Peninsula and in the Far East. It will damage the regime of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. We are not interested in this.
The question is how to influence the North Korean regime. This is a direct sphere of cooperation between Russia and the US. Even though North Korea is very isolated and internally focused, it cannot ignore the fact that there is no clash in the SC on its issue. We see international consensus that North Korea turning into a nuclear power is dangerous and leads to negative consequences. The consequences are that today no nuclear programs will think over getting a nuclear weapon. Such tendencies took place in Japan.
Iran
At the moment the US tone has changed. You remember that in the summer a lot was said about the so-called “military settlement of the Iranian problem.” At the moment the tone is different. Europe sees the situation peacefully. On the other hand, when the foreign minister of Iran took the floor to present the Iranian position, the hall began to express mistrust in him and the speech was accepted critically and negatively. Even though the Western partners call for a dialogue, they don’t want to listen to Iran. Such a dialogue of the deaf will lead to nothing. It could lead to the fact that some of countries of the region – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and so on – would like to have a nuclear weapon too.
“The reset”
Russian-American have stepped into the reformatting stage. “The reset” launched in 2009 as a sum of relations is not acute anymore. The “reset” has fulfilled its duties – the tone has changed, cooperation spheres were defined, but major disputable spheres, like the problem of the missile defense system, were not settled. After three years of delicate behaviour toward Russian internal policy the US broke down and in December 2011 Hilary Clinton criticized heavily the parliamentary elections in Russia. Putin replied quickly. The essence of his answer was that the USA supports the non-systemic opposition in Russia. Since that time we have turned from mutual moderation to sharp statements about the internal policy of Russia, which doesn’t improve our relations with the USA. One thing is that the Americans express their views on non-public diplomacy. Another thing is that the US makes statements which in fact means they are ready to confront our authorities.
We also have an opportunity to make statements about the questionable character of the American elections. The American elections are held through the system of electors. In declaring itself the first democracy of the world, the U.S. is the only democratic country in the world where there are no direct elections. This in itself is an atavism. To be elected president you need to spend a billion dollars. Can a country where people without a billion dollars generally cannot lay claim to anything be democratic? There are many more questions, but we have not made it into the theme of Russian-American relations. Americans in their usual manner believe that they can transform our internal policy to our relationship. The reset did not withdraw that subject. We need a new format of relations. We need to rigidly define areas of possible cooperation. I have spoken of them - these are North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, beyond the discussion of military scenarios. And we should decide where we will not find a common ground, and try to bring these topics into the third stage of our relationship.
The Magnitsky Law
Obama was not happy that Congress passed the Magnitsky law, because for Obama it could only be a problem. It is clear that the Magnitsky law cannot have a significant impact on Russian policy. Nevertheless, it is accepted to think that it is a law against corruption in Russia, but, unfortunately, we have to fight corruption by ourselves. The people mainly concerned with some corruption cases do not infringe on the democratic rights of Russian citizens, their expression and freedom of speech. Given all the shortcomings of the former leadership of the Ministry of Defence, one can hardly accuse him of aspiring to democratic principles.
The Magnitsky law has quite different goals - first, showing the character of the eternal faith of the U.S. in democratic ideals. The difficulty here is that if they had, say, rebounded from the Magnitsky case and passed a law applied to all states of the world, we could talk about some principles. When they say that only Russia should be subject to sanctions, the question arises: what is the case of other states? If Americans adopt a universal law, and such a project was in the Senate, they would face China and their closest allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where people not only die in prison, but in fact extra-judicial executions are legalized. The U.S. prudently limited the law to Russia and stated that it is a great democratic act. In fact, it is a political act.
Its second point is to tie the hands of Obama in relations with Russia. In the U.S. there is quite a strong anti-Russian right-wing conservative lobby, which, by the way, includes not only the Republicans. The Magnitsky law is a lever that can be used when, in the opinion of the American right-wing conservative groups, Obama will go too far in his relations with Russia.
Prospects of Russian-American relations
Now a lot will depend on what specific proposals the U.S. will make to Moscow. In February, the visit of the national security adviser of Barack Obama is expected; he has to bring us a so-called "secret letter." In all likelihood there will be some proposals in the area of disarmament, including nuclear disarmament. In our opinion, the ball is now on the U.S. side, because we are not the initiator of the crisis over the European missile defense system, it was an American idea. We have expressed our position. We need a guarantee that this system will not be directed against Russia, and the Americans have to offer us something in this area. Much will depend, of course, on the presence of some serious field for interaction, since this will depend on how successful the meeting between Putin and Obama will be.
