#6159
[Second Issue of the Day]
#6
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
March 27, 2002
DUAL AUTHORITY IN FOREIGN POLICY
The economy is still the key factor in national strategy
Author: Vladimir Kuchin
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
DUAL AUTHORITY IN FOREIGN POLICY PERSISTS. HOWEVER, RECENTLY THE RUSSIAN ELITE SEEMS TO HAVE ADMITTED THAT STABLE DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENT TAKES PRIORITY OVER WAVERING BETWEEN THE FOREIGN POLICIES OF OTHER STATES.
Over the past few months, a strange situation has been taking shape in Russia's foreign policy. On the one hand, we can clearly see a Kremlin agenda for long-term cooperation with the West: outlined in hints as far back as last summer, publicly proclaimed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, and systemically shaped during President Putin's visit to Washington and meetings with European leaders.
On the whole, the new policy is being maintained logically enough, despite a series of serious trials it has undergone since it was announced. Russian leaders did not actually raise an outcry over Washington's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, even though they did not change their assessment of this move, considering it an error. The Kremlin's reaction to agreements between a number of Western states and states of Central Asia regarding a possibility of their future military and economic cooperation was rather quiet. Evident discord with some of the clauses of new Bush's military doctrine aimed at counteracting the "axis of evil" was formulated in a firm, but civilized manner. Differences over the Chechnya problem can be described with the formula of "agree to disagree." In a word, a certain algorithm of interaction among elements of consensus in positions, differences, search for compromises, which are, on the whole, typical of the relations within the framework of the Western world, is being formed.
Simultaneously, another trend is growing stronger along with this policy among the Russian political elite, as if independently of it. The Duma speaker and commander of the Federal Border Guard Service are demanding that the Americans should leave "our zone of influence" in Central Asia. Some analysts, officially known as liberals, are raising the alarm - warning against making "unjustified concessions" on nuclear arms cuts. A part of the elite has been speaking in support of Saddam Hussein again.
It is noteworthy that both members of pro-presidential parties in the Duma and state officials from the foreign policy and security blocs support the new policy, by default or through lip-service. Either perplexity or ill-concealed opposition is clearly seen behind that. Taking into account that nowadays the government controls the overwhelming part of the media, the anti-Western tone in the media, which is increasing at present, only confirms this assumption.
To cut it short, a picture of a certain dual power is taking shape in the sphere of international activities. At least in form it resembles a situation of 1993-1994, when a "realistically patriotic" opposition to the "naive" and, as it turned out later, "treacherous" foreign policy for integration into the Western community had formed in the depths of the Russian elite on the sly. Quite possibly this comparison is far-fetched and does not sound correctly taking into account the new situation in the country. On the other hand, however, the elite and its psychology does not change that much radically, especially when it has to do with "mightiness" of our power or lobbying their selfish or narrow professional interests by individual members of the elite. Moreover, as contrasted to almost slavish obedience for strengthening the hierarchy of power in the domestic affairs, its bravery in the badly disguised counteraction to the Kremlin's new foreign strategy suggests an idea that the elite has well-grounded hopes for convincing the country, and then the president once again of the "naivety" of the current trend for normalizing relations with the West. Quite naturally, traitors will be found later. The cynics even ask themselves the question: does the matter concern agreed division of labor in the international affairs between the "kind" president and the "evil" elite?
Many conjectures about the persons whose "new brains" had prepared the change in the Kremlin's foreign policy have appeared of recent. However, this quest deviates from analyzing a more fundamental reason for explaining seemingly unexpected and hard-to-explain, at the first glance, president's decision.
As it seems, realization of the fact that the country's economy is the key factor of the national strategy of survival and the foreign policy is, in essence, a resource utilized to service the domestic policy, has become the original reason for a recent sweeping change in the foreign policy. It might be alleged exaggeratedly that, for instance, tasks of combating the problems of homeless children or providing housing for officers become priorities for the next decade, whereas the choice of our position in relation to, for instance, NATO expansion should be determined by the appropriateness of these issues in the cause of resolving the former priority tasks. In practice this link is naturally more temporary, but the fundamental principle, no matter how "selfish" or simplified it might seem, must be exactly like this. During hostile aggression, Russia should do its best to repulse an external threat; but if a disaster situation develops within Russia, its interaction with the rest of the world must be subordinate to the task of counteracting the domestic threat. This is stagnation: but is the only possible course to revive real, rather than transient, power for Russia in the world; and is the only criterion of effectiveness for any policy in international affairs. If the question is posed like that in the discussion of the link between domestic and foreign policy and the specific content of the latter, the president's new agenda has a good chance of success. However, the tradition of fighting for Russia's power "to the last Russian" is fairly stable.
Dual authority in foreign policy still persists.
(Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin)
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