#8 - JRL 6408
The Russia Journal
August 23-29, 2002
The best part of teaching in Moscow:
Students who care as much as I do about a Russia-West alliance
by Ira Straus
While Russian and Western diplomats are slowly getting around to the business of reconciling their conceptions of threats and interests, a group of students in Moscow has already done the main work for them.
The way it happened was this. Two dozen students from MGIMO, from Moscow State University (from a class taught by Dr. Tiziana Stella of the Euro-Atlantic Institute), and from the Higher School of Economics volunteered to participate in a Russia-NATO Simulation Exercise. Four Western students participated alongside the Russians. Over a period of ten weeks they traveled regularly across town to get together. They found ways to get one another past the propusk controls at their several universities. Often they continued their work for long hours into the night.
They divided into teams, one to look after the interests of the NATO countries, the other after Russian interests. The two teams proceeded to work their way through a multi-stage process designed for seeing if the interests could be reconciled.
In Stage One, the students made a comprehensive list of international interests of each side -- Russia and the NATO countries -- and of the threats they face.
In Stage Two, they classified these interests and threats into the following categories:
(a) Those where the two sides agreed on their interests or on the threat.
(b) Those where they agreed on the main point but defined the interest or threat somewhat differently, because of differences over secondary interests or simply because they had defined the issue through separate national bureaucracies.
(c) Those where they were on opposite sides or were themselves the threat to each other, either
(i) because of inherited historical postures of having separate forces and being in mutual opposition (postures that might in principle be overcome by combining strategies and organizing forces together), or
(ii) because of inherently opposing interests of their societies.
In Stage Three, the students suggested and compared options for how to deal with each area of shared or opposing interest. They put forward various proposals, then debated which ones the two teams could mutually accept.
In Stage Four, the proposals that were accepted by both sides, if sufficient to overcome the most important differences in interest, were to be compiled into a draft of a Joint NATO-Russia Strategic Concept. The draft was to be completed by providing some doctrinal language defining the shared global goals and outlook of the two sides.
The results were as follows. The interests were enumerated in detail -- perhaps too much detail, as the students tried to show their scientific rigor and not forget anything. The interests were classified and it turned out that, apart from the price of oil, practically no major interests fell into the last category -- the category where the two sides had intrinsically opposing interests. Rather, mutual opposition on strategic and geopolitical issues was almost invariably a consequence of past (Cold War) habits, or of allowing secondary interests to interfere when defining the national strategy on the primary interest. This itself was a highly encouraging result. It indicated that a comprehensive reconciliation of interests was in principle feasible.
The floating of specific proposals for reconciliation of interests was the most difficult stage of the process: there is no compulsory path from the specific data of opposing views and interests to a proposal for resolving the differences; making such proposals requires imagination and social risk-taking, on a scale that is usually lacking in diplomacy. Nevertheless, the students came up with proposals for reconciling the two sides on all the major interest-areas and threat-areas: rogue states, nuclear proliferation, oil, environment, geopolitical strategy in particular regions of the world -- Central Asia, the Baltics, China... And in most of these interest-areas, they were able to reach agreement on a proposal that they could jointly sign off on.
On international organizational questions, they found ways to accelerate Russia's involvement in Western institutions in return for Russian support for the role of these institutions in the world order. On NATO they supported Russian membership without a power of veto on decisions.
On oil, they put together a package deal that would turn the two sides into allies in energy strategy on a grand scale, along lines similar to those discussed in Gordon Hahn's article in The Russia Journal 9 August 2002.
On rogue states, they found that the rogue-state "allies" of Russia were potential threats to Russia itself, while the regimes on Russia's own list of states of concern, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, were threats to America as well. The solution the students found was for both sides to accept the validity of the concerns of each other about the entire set of roguish regimes, and to provide mutual support in dealing with them.
For reconciling the basic strategic doctrines on the two sides, they felt Russia could accept the fact of the global leadership of the Western democracies, given that they are the most modern and stable countries of the world, as long as Russia would in turn be accepted into a full participation in the process through NATO and other institutions. This would bring a greater multilateralism or sharing of influence over the joint global leadership process, but not a classical multipolarism or setting of power against power to obstruct leadership. The world was too dangerous a place for that. Common human goals were too important.
The two sides easily agreed on common human goals; the students disproved in practice the idea of the incommensurability of their civilizations. The commonality of goals was no mere rhetoric; it was concretized in a commonality of strategies for getting to the goals -- a joint strategic concept, and a plan for institutional structuring of their relations so as to sustain the common strategic outlook.
Proving that they meant business, the students proceeded to organize themselves into an inter-university group for ongoing work on Russia's integration with the Euro-Atlantic world. They have begun making plans to expand the work of the last year and raise it to a higher level in the upcoming academic year.
Perhaps more important than any single proposal made by these students was the fact that they showed that it can be done: the major interests of Russia and the West can be reconciled across the board. And if it CAN be done, then it SHOULD be done -- and on the official level, not just the student level. If the new NATO-Russia Council is to amount to much, it will have to do it.
In a hopeful sign, joint threat assessment has been placed on the agenda of the NATO-Russia Council. The ball is in its court.
Ira Straus has been Fulbright professor of political science at MGIMO, the Foreign Ministry-sponsored State Institute of International Relations. Several of his students participated in the NATO-Russia simulation exercise.
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