#8
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
No. 213
October 7, 2002
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
NATO, EU AND RUSSIA IN THE FUTURE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
17 vital points
State Duma deputy Andrei KOKOSHIN, director of the Institute for International Security (Russian Academy of Sciences)

1. The current trends in the system of international relations point to imminent radical changes in global politics, let alone in the middle and longer term, meaning at the end of this decade and further on.

This is true for virtually all of the basic centres of power, unions and coalitions, including NATO and the EU, which are in the throes of transformation.

2. Russia's relations with NATO and the EU are determined not only by the direct nature of its interaction with these two major unions and their leading members (including the USA as the mono-superpower, Germany, France, Britain and Italy), but also by its relations with China, India and several other countries, which are becoming increasingly more influential and are valuable from the viewpoint of Russia's national interests.

3. In terms of ethnic culture and civilisation, Russia is above all a part of the European civilisation (and it has more than once paid dearly for remaining it and made a weighty "contribution" to the salvation and development of the European civilisation).

4. Russia's relations with Western Europe (the Euro-Atlantic civilisation as a whole) are vital for ensuring a stable and non-deviation development of a modern system of political democracy and market economy, a system which the Russian people suffered for a historically long time to attain.

5. The creation of a system of effective democracy and market economy must not be an ideological issue, or "a question of faith." The Russian "political class" and business community must see that despite its drawbacks and weak points, democracy is today above all the most effective system of government (and self-government) of the state and society, with a variety of feedback connections that usually allow the state to promptly make proper corrective changes.

The victory of the West over the Soviet Union in the Cold War (attained despite the many outstanding achievements of the Soviet people in science, technology, the social sphere, education, etc.) is a vivid proof of the "management effectiveness" of democracy. This "management effectiveness" of democracy was also convincing in the military sphere, where the West as a whole proved more rational in determining the amount of resources to be spent on military goals, the priorities of their distribution and the methods of using military force in the interests of state policy.

6. While pursuing the line for broader political democracy and market economy and "a return to the lap of Europe," Russia at the same time does not need to be "dissolved in the Euro-Atlantic civilisation" or allow a complete merge of its economic, foreign and defence policy with the policy of its richest neighbours in the West (with due consideration for the fact that the USA is Russia's eastern neighbour on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, although a more distant neighbour than China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Mongolia). This would be wrong even in the hypothetical absence of Russia's special interests in the Far East, Central Asia and several other regions of the world.

Russia's special interests in China are based on peace and security in the region, including the former Soviet states in Central Asia. The dynamically developing China is becoming an increasingly more important trade and economic partner of Russia.

7. It is of special significance that China, on a par with another Asian giant - India, is a major military-technical partner of Russia. The importance of this aspect of our collaboration with two great Asian powers transcends the limits of defence-industrial and military-political interaction. It is the survival of not only the Russian defence-industrial but also of the science-intensive industries as a whole that largely depend on the Chinese and Indian markets of military-technical commodities now and until 2010.

8. NATO and the EU cannot be seen as the alternative markets for the Russian science-intensive civilian commodities and military items. These two organisations have their own aerospace and other military-industrial companies that use powerful state assistance in the fierce struggle for the markets of the Euro-Atlantic community. (This explains the failure of the joint Russo-Ukrainian-West European project of the creation and large-scale production of the novel An-70 military transport plane; the Russia-EU project of developing the GLONASS global space navigation system, which could have served the whole of Europe and could be subsequently linked up with the US JPS system; and several other projects that involved the use of military and dual technologies.)

9. We can assume that the new level of Russia-EU interaction reached this year will enable them to resume several major projects. If carried out on an equal and mutually beneficial basis, they would boost the development of science-intensive industries in Russia. But it will take super-efforts on both sides to make possible such boost.

10. The currently largest projects of Russia and individual members of the Euro-Atlantic community are undertaken in the fuel and energy sphere. Given a favourable situation on the world markets of energy and energy resources, these projects - if implemented - could be exceedingly useful for the Russian economy. But reliance on these projects alone would make the structure of Russian industries even more lop-sided and strengthen Russia's raw-materials orientation, which runs counter to the basic national interests of Russia and hinder its ability to win "a place in the sun," as President Vladimir Putin said.

11. While planning Russia-NATO relations in the next 10-15 years, the Russian political class should clearly see the place of that organisation in the minds of the greater part of the US political elite, on the one hand, and in the mind of the political forces of the leading West European countries, on the other hand. The reaction of the current US administration to the NATO decision to put itself at the disposal of the USA, made immediately after the September 11, 2001 acts of mega-terror, demonstrated a dramatic loss of NATO's value in the eyes of the White House in the new political-military conditions.

Washington has said more than once since then that NATO is dead and has lost its former significance for the USA. Despite their significance, these statements are surely not quite true.

12. NATO is quickly ceasing to be the "operational institute" of the US military policy beyond Europe but remains an extremely important instrument of "political management" of member states, as well as Russia and other post-Soviet countries.

The NATO structure will be used also for hindering the development of the EU into a power centre in the military- political sense. (It can be assumed with a great degree of probability that the progress of the military-political integration and self-identification of the EU will make this function of NATO increasingly important for the USA.)

13. Russia will not reject mutually beneficial and equal cooperation with NATO, above all in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But NATO enlargement will hardly create a favourable atmosphere for the fulfilment of these tasks (no international mechanisms that would match the magnitude of the problem have been created so far).

14. Despite the general devaluation of NATO's role in the eyes of the USA (above all conservative Republicans), Washington will not withdraw from Europe, let alone dismantle NATO even in the name of shifting the centre of gravity of its military- political efforts to Asia Pacific. This line is clearly seen in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America made public in September (unlike previous documents of this kind, the new Strategy appears to be a more directive rather that declarative document).

15. Launched in line with this US strategy, the second wave of the eastward enlargement of NATO will embrace Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which used to be part of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and are now sovereign states.

The attitude of the top Russian state leaders (and of the overwhelming part of Russian politicians and general public) to the NATO enlargement remains negative. Indeed, NATO enlargement looks especially unjustified in view of changes that have been taking place in Russia in the past 12-15 years and the level of political Russia-NATO and Russia-USA relations attained (especially in the year since the September 11, 2001 tragedy in the USA) after the creation of the new NATO-Russia Council at the Rome summit.

16. The eastward NATO enlargement can also have an extremely negative effect on the economic cooperation between Russia and the new NATO members in the Baltic region, which greatly depend, in part, on the transit of commodities from Russia (and via Russia) to Western Europe.

17. Unable to hinder these changes in the zone of its vital economic and political interests now, Russia will certainly retain the right to take requisite measures in the future, depending on the situation, in order to ensure its interests (above all national security ones), including in view of the Western interpretation of national security interests that have appeared more frequently of late (and with due consideration for the behaviour of individual NATO members, including new ones).

Despite problems and difficulties, the creation of the EU defence organisation is gaining momentum. (Several major elements of the future infrastructure of such defence organisation have been created in the past 18-24 months despite the predominantly negative attitude of Washington). The potential effect of this process on the Russian national interests is not clear yet. But it can change the layout of the power centres dramatically by the end of this decade, at least in this part of the world. And Russia should take this possibility into consideration.

BACK TO THE TOP    #227 CONTENTS    NEXT ARTICLE