#9 - JRL 8208 - JRL Home
TITLE:
RADIO INTERVIEW WITH SERGEI KARAGANOV, HEAD OF THE FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY COUNCIL
[EKHO MOSKVY RADIO, 14:00, MAY 11, 2004]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)

Anchor: Hello and welcome to Ekho Moskvy. I am Ksenia Larina. Olya Bychkova was telling us twenty minutes ago about our guests today, I'll remind you the names of those we are going to hear from just now. We already have with us Sergei Karaganov, Deputy Director of the Europe Institute. We will discuss international problems with him and of course we will start with the topic of Iraq. To remind you of our pager: 961-2222. You can phone in your questions to political scientist Sergei Karaganov.

Karaganov: Good day.

Anchor: Well, of course, we should start with Iraq, especially with the constant reports connected with Russian hostages. I would like to remind you that we will follow up on this topic after 3 a.m. with Yevgeny Loginov of Interenergoservis who promised to be available on the phone. So, we understand that so-called forcible evacuation is the option left. I don't quite understand what it means. And in general, how should the state behave in such cases.

Karaganov: Well, a state can try to carry out a forcible evacuation, that is, roundup all its citizens and try to take them out of the country. But the state does not have any power to issue an order for them to leave, so, citizens may stay for various reasons. But I understand that the people who have stayed back, in spite of all the blasts and kidnappings and shooting and so on, were taking a deliberate risk, they were trying to earn some money. Besides, I think they have difficulty assembling because that means traveling from different parts of the country where they are scattered working at various facilities. So, only part of Russian citizens will be forcibly evacuated.

Anchor: Who should be responsible for security of people in such cases, in Iraq, for example, or any other country?

Karaganov: As far as I remember, our Foreign Ministry has already advised Russian citizens not to go to or stay in Iraq. But the state, of course, should take care of its citizens although over the past years it hasn't been doing it very actively. But after such a warning people tend to be left to their own devices. It's another question that the companies that send them should provide adequate protection. As far as I know, there is a huge network of both private and semi-state firms that ensure or are supposed to ensure security for them. But frankly I am not too sure that security can be provided in the conditions that exist on the ground.

Anchor: Do you know that when the first hostage incident occurred involving Russian people -- they were eventually set free - - a deputy of the State Duma suggested that the responsibility should be shared among the anti-Iraq coalition countries? To what extent are they responsible for the security of civilians on the territory of Iraq?

Karaganov: Well, to some extent the occupation forces are responsible, but the responsibility is moral rather than legal. As for calls by some members of our State Duma, we have heard many calls from the Duma that are totally out of touch with reality.

Anchor: Now, look, when the September 11 tragedy occurred we started dividing history into pre-911 and after 911. And the sentence that was repeated at the time, that the world has changed, don't you think the same sentence can be applied to the situation in Iraq? And naturally, I have second question: how well prepared are Russia and America and the world for such developments?

Karaganov: You know, September 11 did not create a new world, it was a commonplace that was bandied about, but it was obviously a mistake. The world had started changing long before that, simply the people who were celebrating victory in the Cold War or licking the wounds after a defeat, did not pay attention to the fact that the world has become more dangerous. The plain fact is that the strike on September 11 was directed on America and America dominates the world media and has immense capabilities to react to what experts had known all along, experts since the early 1990s were shouting about it. It was a small group, I belonged to it in a way, but nobody wanted to listen.

As for Iraq, of course, the world has changed as a result of American strike on Hussein and because the situation in Iraq has followed almost the worst case scenario. But the scenario will keep changing and is changing every six months or every twelve months. We are into an era of rapid change.

As for whether Russia is ready, let me say that we have a fairly good top foreign policy leadership.

Anchor: Do you mean the Foreign Minister?

Karaganov: I mean the Foreign Minister and some others.

Anchor: The Security Council.

Karaganov: And the Secretary of the Security Council, Sergei Prikhodko in the Administration. They are all top professionals thoroughly conversant with what they do. But in general, we are absolutely unprepared, as a political class, we are unprepared for the modern world because in the last 10-15 years we have been losing our ability to understand the modern world and the world has become more rapidly changing and more unpredictable, and new trends have emerged. So, we are now in a rather anxious position because we do not quite understand --

Anchor: Are we vulnerable?

Karaganov: Do not quite understand what is happening. Actually we are double vulnerable. All of us are vulnerable, but we can become double vulnerable not only because of terrorist acts but also because of simpler things that determine our development, the development of industry, the quality of brains and discipline in a small group of people who form the elite that can pull the whole country. India is rising not because almost of its 900 million poor and half-jobless people work well but because several million people work well.

Anchor: But I would like to go back to international terrorism because one of the features of the rapidly changing world is the disappearance of the watershed between the domestic and the foreign policies. I mean one can't really tell now that this is an internal matter of a country and these are international matters. We all see what is happening in Chechnya or Iraq. Just a week ago, I was talking here with a British journalist who had come from Baghdad. He spoke about what he had seen there, about soldiers on the one hand and about peaceful people on the other hand. A listener called in and said, I am sorry, but I don't understand what you are talking about. Did your guest come from Chechnya or from some other place? No, he came not from Chechnya but from Baghdad. You see, it was a mirror reflection. So, how can all this be assessed and how an internal problem may be distinguished from an international problem? And does it have to be distinguished today?

Karaganov: The disappearance of the watershed between the domestic and the foreign policies has been a tendency of the last 30 years. Some call it the dilution of national sovereignty. The world has become more transparent in terms of information, and it is no longer possible to hide or deny things. But people's behavior is still based on the ideology of relationships that day back to the so- called Westphalia system of several centuries ago.

It is being diluted now but people can't adapt so quickly and the political class denies these changes. There are two groups among world politicians. One includes those who are connected with domestic policy and who fight for sovereignty. The second one includes those who are associated with foreign economy and foreign policy, who know this world inside out and they say that it cannot be held together simply because they have different perceptions and different interests. This happens in every country, not only in Russia. Nationalists and cosmopolitans exist in all countries. The world evolves but people need time to catch up. As a result, time is compressed when people do not adapt to new realities and adapt their thinking to new realities.

But as I have said, we are going to be much more affected by this process than other countries and their political classes simply because there is a very small stratum of people in this country who can monitor global tendencies thoroughly, if it exists at all.

Anchor: But can't humankind work out joint methods to counter all this if it goes beyond the acceptable. Take for example the latest events in Chechnya, the assassination of Kadyrov. It was said immediately that al Qaeda was involved. So, what is this? Is it Russia's internal matter, I mean Chechnya, or not?

Karaganov: Both, it's an internal matter of Russia and it's an international problem. But mentality is lagging behind. Before September 11, almost all countries, except for Britain, and maybe slightly Spain that knows what terrorism is and slightly more cynical Americans, had condemned us for Chechnya as one. Indeed, it's hard not to blame us for how we were doing it there. However, it is obvious now that if we had not done it, this malignant tumor would have spread to the whole south of the country because it had been supported from the outside almost from the very beginning, it was a question of expansion of a certain type of Islamic ideology. In other words, from the very start it was a mixture of a national liberation movement and a terrorist movement.

By the way, a national liberation movement still lives in the minds of most people. And it's a positive term. Is it a positive term for you when you mention a national liberation movement?

Anchor: I don't really know. Do you?

Karaganov: I would say that a national liberation struggle -- even a call for a national liberation struggle is a corpus delicti.

Anchor: It's separatism.

Karaganov: It certainly is. As a rule, in 99 percent out of 100 percent, it leads to terrorism. In 97 or 95 percent out of 100 it leads to the creation of incapable states -- just look at virtually all states having liberated from the colonial yoke, they cannot ensure normal life on their territories, wars and internal conflicts have been common there, as well as rude violations of human rights. But the main thing is that they have been total failures in economic terms. As a result, nearly half of UN member-nations are declining states. They have fallen so low that they cannot rise, even in theory.

Anchor: So, why is there always a lot of money for national liberation movements?

Karaganov: Actually, a lot of money is not needed for that. In the past national liberations movements used to be supported, for example, by the United States for ideological reasons.

Anchor: And we also used to support some of them.

Karaganov: Besides, they wanted to break up empires formed by European nations. We supported those movements because we sought to proliferate socialism. As a result, together, we have created a disastrous number of incapable states and territories and no one knows what can be done about them now. And they now generate all those grave problems the mankind will have to deal with. During the Cold War years, fears of a major clash forced the United States and the USSR, as well as their allies, to suppress certain moves by those declining states. But they have now forgotten about that. As a result, during the past decade in Africa nearly 13 million were killed, or 12 million, no one knows precise figures. That is tantamount to a world war, especially given the total population in Africa.

The situation is now particularly grave in the bigger Middle East stretching from Pakistan to Morocco and, say, from Uzbekistan to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Most nations, with the exception of perhaps Iran, have seen a clear trend of declining GDP per capita, and the situation tends to worsen. Sooner or later, they will be destabilized, one after another. The Americans have to understand where they have conducted this operation and how they did it, in Iraq. But the fact that they have planned modernization of this region is perhaps a proper reaction. But the problem is that they have chosen the wrong methods. As a result, the situation may further aggravate.

Anchor: They seem to have made the same mistakes we made...

Karaganov: Colonial wars once resulted in backward nations taking the path towards civilization, some of those nations, for example, China or India, partially Iran, to a lesser extent. But most of them, when Europeans have pulled out, have been disintegrating gradually.

Anchor: Is it due to their mentality?

Karaganov: This is a general level of their political, economic and social culture, a limited level of education. They have resulted in their inability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. In a situation when in the global production, manual labor -- what those nations can offer -- has been gradually declining, those countries are doomed.

By the way, we are on the dividing line between the two. If we stake on resources, on the revival of old industries and complain about everything, as we usually tend to do, in what concerns demography, the demographic situation, we may find ourselves in that group of nations that will always be backward. We have not cleared the line, after which it will be possible to say that we are a nation having a future.

Anchor: For the time being we have been trying to replace everything with symbols, the way we are used to. Much talk is now heard about a great power...

Karaganov: There is no doubt about it, but the intention to be a great power may play a positive role, serve positive goals such as being proud for one's country, gaining confidence, really willing to make it a great power. But it is also possible, as it has been proposed here, to replace lessons in information technologies with military training, which can only cause laughter or fears, the very idiotic proposal, especially in conditions when mass armies are no longer required at all. They can only be needed in the most retarded African nations, with soldiers armed with machete knives and Kalashnikov machine-guns. If we go about restoring our great power status in this way, then of course, Russia as a great power has no future.

Anchor: Regarding the army, I wanted to ask this question at the very end, but our time is almost up even though we skipped the news, I wanted to ask you about the massive exposure of the liberating army, the process that is taking place in America now. Do you think it is a planned and orchestrated campaign?

Karaganov: No, it was not a planned campaign. First, it is natural that in any such conflict outrages are sooner or later bound to happen. War is a hideous phenomenon, and man is a dangerous animal. And in a war this dangerous animal often breaks free of the constraints of civilization and the worst representatives of the species do what they do.

I don't think -- knowing something about how British and American professionals are trained -- I don't think there were real atrocities there. If one imagines that such operations are carried out by some other countries, they do take place and political opponents take advantage of this, the opponents of the war and secondly, the opponents of Bush and Blair. That is normal. It proves that America, in spite of attempts to curtail some freedoms in connection with the fight against terrorism is still a democratic society with an effective system of context between political forces.

Anchor: But there hasn't been a trial yet, and the names of the individuals have not been given?

Karaganov: Names haven't been given, but Bush is in a spot of trouble. His popularity was already going down due to setbacks in Iraq and now he has to answer these questions and more questions may follow because it's impossible to impose a total news blackout on such a big war and, trial or no trial ... And then imagine a trial that begins just in time for the elections. Some trial. So, additional pictures will be printed in newspapers. Especially since some of the photographs that have already been published are suspected of having been staged.

Anchor: Really?

Karaganov: And it doesn't matter whether these facts really happened. Even if it was a put up job, even if it transpires that a third or a fourth of the photographs were faked and 250 more will appear, a great number of people will travel around the globe with pleasure and speak about atrocities committed by the American military, whether or not they were really committed. This is the world today.

Anchor: Let me remind you that our guest here today is Sergei Karaganov, deputy director of the Europe Institute. Thank you very much.