#10
Moscow News
June 19-25, 2002
Needed: an International Security Alliance
The past month has been remarkably successful and productive for Russia's foreign policy and diplomacy
By Sergei Karaganov

The U.S. president's visit has produced concrete and tangible results - a much needed, above all for Russia, treaty on strategic arms reduction and a market-economy status granted to this country.

Consolidating the spirit of cooperation with Washington greatly facilitated the Russia-EU dialogue in May. Russia has not caved in on the issue of Kaliningrad, nor, I believe, will do so in the future. The Brussels bureaucrats will hardly want to become a laughing stock for the whole world and set up, 15 years after the end of the Cold War, a new West Berlin in the center of Europe.

The Russia/NATO summit in Rome likewise proved more successful than could have been expected. A mechanism was put in place which, with appropriate will and persistence, could be useful in tucking in the loose ends and putting interaction and cooperation on a regular basis.

Subsequent contacts with the Chinese leadership within the framework of the Shanghai Group of Six, among others, helped preserve and consolidate the main component of our foreign policy -- the Chinese one.

These success stories are a product of several factors. The first one is of course the Putin factor. Sensible, flexible, apparently friendly but not over-familiar, he inspires trust. Through him, trust is extended to Russia.

In addition to all that, Russia has been extraordinarily lucky. The long-running exacerbation of the Arab-Israeli conflict sustains reasonably high oil prices, undermining the positions of pro-U.S. Arab regimes. This postpones a prospective clash over a U.S. strike against Iraq.

The Indo-Pakistani conflict has made the need for joint nuclear nonproliferation strategy even more pressing. Trade and economic contradictions between the Western allies are more acute than ever before. Unsettled, Europe has lost a sense of purpose, a sense of direction. All of this makes Russia a considerably more important and influential state than would be commensurate with its weight in the global economy.

It will be difficult and time-consuming to join the ranks of advanced world powers through the economic-social opening -- far easier to do this through a security opening, especially given that the new circumstances create prerequisites for security, formerly a divisive problem, to emerge as an instrument of cooperation and rapprochement.

In this context, the achievements scored over the past month can be seen only as a step toward a greater objective, namely, putting in place a full-fledged security alliance with the leading countries - to meet new threats and deal with growing instability.

In late June, a G-8 summit will take place in Canaskis, Canada. Its agenda, as always, has already been drawn up by the corresponding bureaucracies. Even so, state leaders have the privilege to deviate from the agenda.

In this connection I am inclined to endorse the proposals by the G-8 preparatory conference - a group of former secretaries of state, ministers, chairmen of central banks, and prominent experts of which I have the honor to be a member.

They must, above all, pressure the United States and other countries to desist from putting up protection barriers which seriously undermine the increasingly fragile world order.

Second, a shift is needed toward formulation of joint policy in the sphere of security and the safety of nuclear materials and substances that can be used to produce chemical and bacteriological materials. Nuclear materials alone are scattered around many hundreds of laboratories in more than 100 countries, quite a few of which are unstable.

Third, cooperation must proceed apace between civil defense services and emergency situations ministries in standing up to global terrorism.

Fourth, a uniform definition of terrorism must be worked out in order to create a legal framework for combating it. To date there is no generally accepted definition.

Finally, I would like to put forward my own pet proposal. It is necessary to move the G-8 toward institutionalization, at least in the security sphere, and use it as a base, some time in the future, for a new security alliance, including other major, responsible states, above all China.

This alliance is necessary for Russia. But at the same time it is necessary for all other countries, for more effective ways of meeting new threats and preventing the United States from again slipping into the mindset of a world hegemony.

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