#8
strana.ru
June 27, 2002
A Strategy for Russia's Next Steps in the G-8
(Russia should) make itself a leader in building up the G-8, as a way of enhancing its role in the world
By Ira Strauss

The G-8 is the only important Western grouping that Russia is as yet a member of. The OECD accepts the goal of eventual Russian membership, but no one knows when it will happen. NATO is ambivalent on the goal of Russian membership. The EU is negative, for reasons that are unfortunately realistic. That leaves the G-8 for now, with OECD and perhaps NATO in prospect.

Building up the G-8 is, meanwhile, the way that is immediately available for increasing Russia's role in the world.

How can the G-8 be further built up? There have been a number of proposals in the West, but there has not been the energy to carry them through. The initiative has been lacking, partly because the Western countries have other institutions for playing their role in the world. Russia has the interest to supply the missing energy for strengthening the G-8.

Some of the possibilities are:

* institutionalizing the G-8 - giving it a secretariat, letting it develop a substructure of committees and civil staff

* enhancing the informal dialogue of G-8 leaders and their capacity for initiative, by meeting more frequently. Since this seems impractical in person, frequent videoconferences among the leaders could serve the purpose.

* increasing the G-8's role in global regulation, by adding major items to its agenda, by turning to it more frequently for working out joint plans, and by turning to it for joint responses to crises. Frequent meeting by videoconference would make this feasible.

* strengthening G-8 links with other institutions of global regulation, so that it can play more effectively its informal role as a "steering" agency. If G-8 has a bigger staff, it can assign personnel to maintain links with other institutions, such as the UN Security Council, NATO, OECD, IMF, and WTO. These institutions in turn can assign the personnel for liaison with G-8.

* establishing a G-8 agenda item on integrating Russia into the rest of the Western institutions and global economic institutions -- OECD, NATO, etc. Make this a continuing G-8 agenda item, supported by a staff and perhaps a subcommittee. G-8 would thus offer Russia a venue for holding a dialogue as a full, equal partner on Russia's goal of further integration with the West. It would be a much more dignified posture than the role of supplicant, which has hitherto been the basis for Russia's dialogue with OECD and NATO; and because Russia, unlike small Central European countries, cannot accept the role of supplicant very easily, the dialogue has not gone far. Using the G-8 for this dialogue would provide a way out of the logjam. In particular, Russia has not been able to get a serious dialogue with NATO on joining NATO, as would have been logical after 1991, and this gap has created a vicious circle in all of Russia's other relations with NATO. G-8 can provide political impetus from the top level to move integration forward, cutting through bureaucratic habits that have obstructed progress for the last decade. NATO and OECD bureaucrats often focus on demands that all new members must satisfy every unimportant item of the NATO and OECD acquis, and special interest-based demands often come up as well. This is the natural business of entrenched bureaucracies, which cannot be expected to act on a basis of political vision, even when some of their personnel have the necessary vision; it is on the level of political leaders that the secondary interests can be put in perspective and the greater national interests given their due attention.

In pursuing a strategy of building up the G-8, Russia can put itself forward as a leader in building Western unity. This would work wonders for building trust. It would enable Russia to overcome the image of a potential spoiler. Tremendous damage has been done to Russian diplomatic interests by the distrust that it faces, particularly the fear that exists in the West that Russia's role, once it is inside Western institutions, will be to drive a wedge between Western countries and weaken their institutions. By putting itself forward as a proponent of those Western institutions of which it is itself a part, starting with the G-8, Russia can transform its image from negative to positive. This will do more for getting Russia an equal status in NATO than any number of logical arguments with NATO people.

Russia can become a chief defender of G-8 and Euro-Atlantic integration against the "anti-globalization" protesters. It can frankly state what Western leaders, in their deference to political correctness, fear to say: that these are nihilistic anti-Western protests. It will help if Russia understands the distinction between Euro-Atlantic institutions and globalization. The West does promote globalization, but West-West institutions are NOT the institutions of globalization; rather they are regional integration, and they have aspects of positive joint regulation as well as deregulation. Thus, they provide a balance to globalization, which is mostly global deregulation, and a protection against its excesses or pace. Globalization itself is inevitable and mostly benign, but needs the Western and other regional integration processes as balances. As a moderate voice, representing the relatively conservative eastern wing of Europe in its spirit while being liberalizing in its contemporary policies, Russia has a chance to help restore balance in Western discourse on globalization, integration, and political-economic regulation.

Russia's fundamental interest is in the success of G-8 and, actually, of all Western institutions, since they are a basis of world stability and global regulation. This is something that Russia has understood clearly since September 11, although as far back as the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras it began to correct its analysis and accept this reality. To be sure, where Russia is not a member of an institution, particularly in a military alliance such as NATO, Russia cannot give much support to that institution -- it can support it only to the extent that it becomes a member; otherwise it risks that the institution might too often be used for policies that it dislikes.

In the G-8, the condition of membership has been met. Russia can give it full support and work without reservation for strengthening its role. Here Russia can remind itself, without risk of embarrassment, about its interest in a "common European home" -- including the "greater Europe" of which G-8 is one of the embodiments, not just the little Europe of the EU - as one of the foundations of global order and an ultimate global "common human home". This was a language which Russia rightly used during the period of the phasing out of Communism, but which itself faded out of use for want of validation in practice. Today, in the G-8, Russia's analysis of its interest in the institutions of regulation has finally been validated.

Russia's interest in global regulation and stability is one of its vital interests; it is among the countries most at risk from terrorism, regional conflicts, and weapons of mass destruction. The G-8 and other Western-based institutions are the joint planning ground for the struggle against terrorism, for the regulation of regional conflicts, and for opposing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. Objectively, Russia needs for them to be successful, as well as for itself to be included in them. It need only imagine the chaotic consequences if any of the major West-West institutions were to disappear, in order to realize how much it is in its own fundamental interest for them to remain strong and grow even stronger.

If Russia had begun to be brought into the West-West institutions after 1989, and rapidly brought in after 1991, it would have joined with great enthusiasm, which would have been appropriate to its own true interest in the success of these institutions. It could have emerged as a leader in the revitalization of the West-West institutions. Today Russia still has, objectively, the opportunity to play this role, but it is necessary for it to remind itself of this and make an effort to revive its enthusiasm, in a more mature and professional form. If it does this, it will be able to use its new level of acceptance into the G-8 to regain for itself a leadership role befitting to its importance in world geopolitics.

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