Written evidence submitted by Dr Alex
Pravda, Souede-Salameno Fellow, St Antony's College, University
of Oxford
1. This year has seen Russian foreign policy
enter a new, more confident and assertive phase. The strident
tone of president Putin's criticism of the West owes something
to a concern to appeal to voters in the upcoming parliamentary
elections, especially those who might support nationalist parties.
The increasingly critical and defiant thrust of his statements,
from the Munich conference speech in February to the Victory Day
address in May, reflects a re-appraisal of Russia's position and
role in a fast-changing international order. The contours of this
re-assessment emerge clearly from a recent major review of Russia's
foreign policy produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While
the Ministry does not play a decisive role in shaping foreign
policy—that belongs to the Kremlin—the review it has
assembled is the most comprehensive and authoritative in recent
years.
2. Moscow sees a decisive shift underway
in the global balance of "resources of influence", a
term reminiscent of the Soviet concept of "the correlation
of forces". This balance is seen as shifting from US and
Western dominance towards a more diversified distribution that
favours Russia. Rather than merely lamenting the dangers of US
dominance and stressing the advantages of multipolarity, Russian
officials now assert the collapse of US-led unipolarity as a fact.
As Putin declared in his Munich speech, unipolarity is "not
only unacceptable but also impossible". The Russian policy
elite contend that Iraq has exploded the myth of American dominance
and see the EU as strained by rapid expansion. At the same time,
Russia is one of a group of states, the BRICs, rising to a new
global prominence, fuelled by rapid economic growth. Moscow sees
itself together with its fellow ascendant powers as new poles
of the modern multipolar world.
3. Moscow talks with confident ambition
about the need for Russia to be "an active world power".
Rather than responding to Western moves, as has been its tendency
for most of the post-Soviet period, Moscow wants to play a more
proactive part in setting the international agenda. Russia sees
itself as an independent and competitive actor in both regional
and global arenas.
Within the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent
States), Moscow seems bent on establishing regional hegemony;
in the words of one Russian analyst, it wants to be the centre
of the solar system of the former Soviet space. Moscow has certainly
shown increasing consistency and resolution in pursuing influence
over strategic areas, particularly in Central Asia. It has done
so mainly through bilateral agreements with key states in the
region. To increase its regional leverage Moscow has also promoted
multilateral structures, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO),
which Russia heads jointly with China. Modest in terms of actual
cooperation on the ground, the SCO has proved remarkably useful
as a framework for discussion about regional security issues and
as a platform for Russia's efforts to carve out a more prominent
global profile.
In order to play such a role, Moscow continues
to highlight the importance of active involvement in key international
organisations, especially the UN and the G8. Its understanding
of these bodies remains rooted in a notion of the international
system as best managed by a Concert of Great Powers. Moscow remains
eager to be a full member of such a Concert. However, rather than
asking, as in the past, for Western recognition of equal status
in G8 and other clubs, Moscow is now more confident of participating
on its own terms, as viable competitor rather than accommodating
supplicant.
4. Energy wealth fuels much of Russia's
recent general confidence and its regional and global ambitions.
Rocketing prices and fast-growing demand have persuaded Moscow
that oil and gas are the key means by which to realise its foreign
policy ends in an international system increasingly shaped by
geo-economics. There are some signs of what may be called foreign
policy Dutch disease. The Kremlin seems to over-estimate the capacity
of energy policy in managing relations with neighbouring states
and trying to boost Russia's international weight. Using coercive
energy diplomacy may have succeeded in extracting higher revenues
from neighbours which Moscow thinks have too long enjoyed subsidised
prices. But such leverage does not always bring the kind of longer-term
political regional influence the Kremlin would like to achieve.
It can also encourage efforts to diversify sources of supply.
The coercive use of energy within the former
Soviet space has also had a negative impact on Russia's image
as a reliable supplier in a wider context. Moscow apparently assumed
that all would understand that the ways in which it pressurised
neighbours had no bearing on Russia's energy policy in the West,
and particularly in Europe. Such assumptions proved ill-founded;
coercive diplomacy within the CIS spilled over and weakened Russia's
credibility as a dependable economic (and political) partner.
But it is not clear that Moscow has learned the lesson; its new
confidence borders on arrogant assumption that the West will go
on doing business with Russia for reasons of expediency. There
is a certain energy-fuelled arrogance, too, in current moves by
Moscow to develop a kind of gas OPEC, a venture that seems both
organisationally impractical and politically risky.
Most importantly, Russian reliance on energy
as its main resource of international influence rests on shaky
foundations, given the likely slowdown or even fall in world energy
prices over the next few years. And even with additional supplies
from Central Asia, Moscow will find it extremely difficult to
sustain energy exports while also meeting growing domestic demand.
Any significant increase in production will require very large
inputs of investment and technology.
5. Military security figures importantly
in Russian thinking, notwithstanding the preoccupation with energy.
The Putin administration has recently made serious commitments
to invest in long-neglected military capabilities. Awareness that
it is militarily weak helps to explains Moscow's sensitivity to
the modernisation of the US nuclear arsenal and, especially, the
development of defensive systems. Moscow sees their deployment
in Eastern Europe, alongside an extending NATO infrastructure,
as evidence of American military expansionism. Russian protests
reflect real concern about an expansive strategy that could impinge
on and eventually embrace Georgia and Ukraine. Rather than merely
protesting in typical post-Soviet fashion, a more confident Moscow
has underlined its dissatisfaction by suspending compliance with
the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) treaty and hinting at
withdrawal from the treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces.
Largely symbolic, such moves signal both the
seriousness with which Moscow takes these issues and its wish
to avoid open rifts with the West. The way forward is closer,
more regular and more timely use of existing consultative channels
at the military and political level. This could reduce the misperceptions
that feed Moscow's suspicions of US/NATO plans.
6. Moscow also views with suspicion Western
concerns about Russia's internal political development, especially
the growing constraints on democratic freedoms. It is this area
that has seen the steepest rise in Russian assertiveness. Instead
of its earlier defensiveness, Moscow now counters with objections
to what it calls interference in Russia's internal affairs. The
OSCE has come under ever heavier fire as a vehicle for Western
interests. A more confident Moscow has issued defiant statements
about the sovereign nature of its version of democracy. The Kremlin
says less about shared values and more about the right of all
states to safeguard cultural and political sovereignty; this stance
reinforces Russia's alignments with partners such as China and
the states of Central Asia. Strained exchanges with the West over
democratic values have contributed to the general deterioration
in the climate of relations.
Voicing loud public concern about the general
direction of Russia's political development only seems to produce
more stubborn defiance from the Kremlin. This mood of defiance
makes Moscow less prepared to respond constructively to specific
Western concerns about violations of human and democratic rights.
Nor does a "diplomatic" dual approach of public restraint
and private complaint necessarily yield dividends. The gap between
the two positions feeds Moscow's suspicions about the West's instrumental
approach to these matters; failure to follow through on private
warnings undermines credibility.
The most promising way forward is to focus on
specific violations of rights to which Moscow has signed up, and
to be firm and consistent in responding to continued infringement.
The West should highlight not so much the normative superiority
of international acceptable values and standards as their practical
benefits for Russia—in running its own affairs and especially
in realising its ambitions to be taken seriously as a responsible
global actor.
7. The recent cooling in relations between
Russia and the European Union owes something to two strands of
thinking in Moscow. First, the difficulty Moscow has in coming
to terms with the growing influence of the new East European member
states on EU policy towards Russia. If Moscow finds it irritating
that Poland can obstruct progress in relations, it is doubly exasperated
by Tallin's ability to defy Russia: as a small state and, in Moscow's
eyes, as one infected by an "anti-Russian virus".
The second strand in Russian thinking complements
the first: conviction that the way in which to deal with the EU
is through bilateral relations with the large states of Old Europe.
Moscow is frustrated at not being able always to resolve problems
with Brussels through Berlin and Paris. At the same time, Moscow
is encouraged to persist with bilateralism by the disunity it
sees within EU ranks. And Russia has been more active recently
in trying to capitalise on differences within the Union, particularly
on issues of security.
Brussels should continue to impress on Moscow
that Russia cannot by-pass the New Europe by dealing bilaterally
with some leaders of the Old. Presenting a firm and united front
is clearly the most effective way of driving home this message.
At the same time, Brussels should do all it can to discourage
governments in Eastern Europe from pressing a militant nationalist
line towards Moscow.
To move the overall relationship with Russia
forward, the EU might profitably pursue a two-track strategy.
Brussels should persist in trying to build stronger working relations
with Moscow in areas of potential practical cooperation, such
as combating terrorism. In the realm of energy, the EU should
continue to insist on reciprocity as far as the rules of doing
business are concerned; and it should do so with a confidence
that reflects its strong market position.
Because negotiating cooperation of this kind
can easily become mired in bureaucratic process, Brussels would
do well to set this within the context of a wider vision of the
developing relationship. This does not have to take the form of
any grand treaty to replace the current agreement. But given the
uncertainty on both sides about the long-term perspectives, it
would be helpful to pay more attention to the vexed questions
of where Brussels and Moscow envisage the relationship going.
If nothing else, a process of systematic consultation on aims
and perspectives could reduce nervousness in Brussels about Russia's
flexing of post-imperial muscles and anxiety in Moscow about EU
quasi-imperial expansion.
8. Relations with the United Kingdom are
going through particularly difficult times. Moscow has complained
of British "messianic" criticism of Russian democracy;
it has also berated London for granting political asylum to key
émigrés. The singling out of the UK as the outlier
in Russia's relations with Old Europe is due in part to London's
alignment with the New European states. It also reflects the fact
that Moscow sees Britain as very close to the US yet of little
use as a source of influence on Washington.
Much of the recent tension between Moscow and
London has remained at the rhetorical political level; practical
cooperation still continues in many areas.
London should concentrate on developing relations
with Moscow through Brussels rather than play to the Kremlin's
preference for bilateralism. The UK should continue to take a
firm line on violations of democratic and human rights within
Russia, combining a consistent stand on general principle with
effective follow-through on specific infringements.
London should capitalise on its outstanding
commercial know-how, especially in the financial sector to press
the pragmatic case for the observance of norms and rules—as
vital for the successful conduct of business within Russia and
especially between Moscow and international partners.
The case for internationally acceptable rules
should be made not only through high-level political channels.
More effective in the long term is the encouragement and diffusion
of best practice through developing contacts among British and
Russian business leaders in medium and small enterprises as well
as in the large corporations.
Dr Alex Pravada
30 May 2007
| 
