International Affairs No. 1, 2016 – Table of Contents

International Affairs: Lyubov Nikolayevna, first of all, allow me to congratulate Rossotrudnichestvo on its anniversary. Ninety years is an advanced, landmark kind of age that carries a great responsibility. How do you assess the aggregate humanitarian component in our country’s foreign policy activity? What, in your opinion, best encapsulates and highlights our public diplomacy of the 21st century?

During the celebration of the 90th anniversary of Rossotrudnichestvo, we invited to our Public Diplomacy Forum members of parliament, public, cultural and artistic figures and scientists from different countries. Our goal was to address current issues of international cooperation and ways of making the most effective use of the precious experience that has been accumulated throughout all these years. …

MORE THAN 400 REPRESENTATIVES of ethnic Russian communities in 97 foreign countries attended the Fifth World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad, held in Moscow on November 5-6, 2015. Among them were members of the World Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots, leaders and activists of national coordination councils, and journalists working for media outlets published by ethnic Russian communities. About 200 invitees to the forum represented Russia itself. They included members of parliament, central and local bodies of the executive branch of government, and various foundations and nongovernmental organizations.

The World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad is being held once every three years under the Russian federal law “On the State Policy of the Russian Federation toward Compatriots Abroad,” which was signed on May 24, 1999. The previous meeting was held in St. Petersburg on October 26-27, 2012. …

IN A NUTSHELL, our time is best defined as a “time of changes.” Changes have spread far and wide to practically all sides of life. They differ in scope and impact from local to unprecedentedly consequential and from political makeup to crucial shifts; they are responsible, to a great and increasing degree, for the image of the present and for our future.

The developing countries, a space of impressive shifts, are a prominent element of the global torrent of changes and a scene of the post-colonial phase of the great geopolitical revolution. It has already stirred up millions of people, scores of countries and nations that have burst out of the colonial ghetto, their prison for many centuries, to follow the path of political and economic transformations. They have acquired a voice of their own heard with increasing clarity in international affairs. …

Regarding the U.S. policy, perhaps it makes sense to start off not with it but with more fundamental concepts. I believe that there is a problem related to the uneven development of states. Obviously, this greatly affects the foreign policy of the United States that is entering into a new situation in the world, which is related to the emergence of new points of growth and influence, and the erosion of the previously established centers and structures with the downgrading of the role of traditional centers of force in global affairs. And Washington cannot but respond to that. Today, high economic growth is recorded on the periphery of the two former world systems. However, the U.S. share in the global GDP is declining: In 2012, it was 16.5%; in 2013, 16.3%; and in 2014, 16.1%. This movement is slow but it is downward. It is a trend although such figures should be interpreted correctly. A child grows rapidly, but an adult practically does not. Growth can only go so far. Say, China, which has until recently shown miracles of growth, positioning itself as a global factory, is also slowing down: It is impossible to manufacture more goods than there is demand for. Today, the highest growth rates are demonstrated not by the “dragons” of Southeast Asia but countries that used to lag behind, for example, Mongolia and Afghanistan, as well as certain African states.

Andrey Kortunov, Director General, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), Candidate of Science (History); akortunov.ru …

THE 23RD OF OCTOBER 2015 was the final day of the 11th round of negotiations between the European Union and the United States on a proposed free trade treaty. The full name of the accord, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), reflects its comprehensive character. The proposed agreement aims not only to remove customs barriers but also to harmonize various regulatory standards, protect investors, put restrictions on the use of subsidies, provide foreign companies with equal access to government procurement contracts, and solve a whole range of other sensitive problems. TTIP may bring into being a mega-bloc that would account for a nearly 40% share of the gross world product and run one-third of international trade.

As the previous rounds, the 11th meeting was a closed-door event and not much is known about its outcome. According to press reports, the European Commission proposed that the United States abolish 97% of customs duties in its trade with the EU. The EU expects that, in return, Washington will give European companies easier access to the U.S. government procurement market. One of the main points of dispute is the right of foreign investors to appeal decisions by the government of the host country, and the European Commission proposed its own rules for the appointment of arbiters and its own procedure for dealing with such disputes, including rules on appealing. Nothing is known about the American reaction. …

DEALING WITH THE GAMUT OF ISSUES that have caused disputes over the legal regime governing the use of the Caspian Sea is one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy. From time immemorial, the Caspian Sea has been a natural protector of our southern borders. It plays a strategic role as the crossing point of transportation routes between Europe and Asia, contains extremely rich offshore hydrocarbon reserves, and its waters are populated by a unique diversity of fish. The Caspian is a zone of our vital interests. Three regions of Russia are situated along its shores with 1.2 million people living in their coastal areas. The life of these people is directly or indirectly linked to the Caspian Sea, and their future largely depends on what path that region follows in its development and on whether there is domestic stability and peaceful coexistence among the five littoral states for which the vast landlocked sea is a shared legacy and a potential source of wealth for the future. Our neighbors share our criteria in assessing the significance of the Caspian Sea for themselves.

The Astrakhan Boundary …

ON JULY 26, 2015, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on board the frigate Admiral of the Soviet Navy Gorshkov endorsed a new version of the Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation, the basic document that specifies Russia’s naval and maritime policy. This version added the Mediterranean to the areas of the national maritime policy (the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific zones) and specified that Russia’s naval presence there is aimed at “turning it into the zone of military-political stability and good-neighborly relations.”¹ This is not fortuitous: The region is one of the main zones of Russia’s politics and international cooperation. Time has come to sort out regional developments, varied interests of the states involved and the problems they have to cope with. In other words, we should arrive at a clear idea about the region’s importance for the Russian Federation.

An Important Hub of World Politics …

For many centuries, the Middle East or, rather what has been going on there, echoed far and wide in the neighboring regions, Europe in the first place. Today, however, the threats achieved the dimensions unheard of before; they range from the inflow of refugees and the resultant migration crisis in Europe, a potential threat to its cultural and ethnic identity, to terrorism and radical Islam exported all over the world to threaten stability and security elsewhere.

The Arab Spring that reverberated in nearly all Middle Eastern countries widened the gaps between them, destroyed statehoods, fanned mistrust, and multiplied conflicts. …

IN RECENT YEARS, the academic and political communities have been discussing the new world order (the subject that has acquired special consequence because of the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine) with its outlines barely discernible through the fog of chaotic and so far incomprehensible changes in politics and economy. One thing is clear, though: With each passing decade the world, international relations and the habitual course of life are changing increasingly.

Multipolarity that had taken shape in the 1990s, consolidated in the zero years and replaced the very short period of America’s hegemony (the so-called unipolar world) can be described as the main evidence of these changes. It turned out that Washington lacked the necessary material and intellectual resources to carry the burden of global governance: Its efforts to rule unilaterally on the international scene failed; its policy lost much of its ability to respond promptly and adequately to the twists and turns of international developments. Washington often responds spontaneously and unsystematically: Witness the numerous armed conflicts in different parts of the world, economic and information wars and the exacerbated rivalry, not to say global confrontation between the great powers – the U.S. and Russia, and the U.S. and China. …

The Decline of Liberalism

IN 1992, FRANCIS FUKUYAMA brought “the good news” of the end of history: Liberal democracy had won, putting an end to the “history of conflicts” between states. Classical bipolarity had become a thing of the past. The Cold War ended in the “complete triumph” of the West (Western interpretation) to be replaced with tectonic shifts in the system of international relations. Politicians and experts spoke about the Soviet Union’s disintegration as the end of history of ideological conflicts and a logical death of geopolitics, a product of the imperfect balance of power of the New Times that developed into the bipolarity of the Cold War to arrive at the consolidated, stable and manageable unipolar world – the “new world order.” In this context, “the end of history” looks logical. Liberal norms and institutes as well as problems of economic development have moved into the place previously occupied by geopolitics and political realism concerned with the balance of power, problems of security and structural factors. Diplomats discarded the no longer needed security issues to concentrate at trade and climate change; the United States tempted by the idea of the end of geopolitics appreciated the possibility to minimize the maintenance costs of the world order and enjoy the advantages of globalization and open world markers. The Europeans, likewise, profited from the new unipolar world order. They used the chance to expand to the East and spread their soft power and influence on a global scale. …

EARLY IN THE 21ST CENTURY, America’s Middle Eastern policy suffered a series of failures that have decreased its security level, as well as that of its allies and the rest of the world. Today, these failures sprouted in Iraq and Syria where Washington’s political and military interference had stirred up terrorist and extremist activities. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL has become a regional actor and has dented regional stability and Washington’s defense capabilities.

America’s diplomatic defeats in the Middle East should be identified and analyzed: This has become an objective necessity since they might be rooted in the mechanism of foreign policy decision-making in the United States. Here I have looked into the process that led to the Iraqi war in 2003 to reveal the pluses and minuses of decision-making inside the U.S. Administration that might reduce substantiveness of the decisions and the efficiency of their realization. …

THE FALL OF 2015 brought along an escalation of a separatist conflict in Spain as a movement in Catalonia for the secession of the autonomous region from the country gained momentum. On September 27, Catalonia, which has the official status of an “autonomous community,” held early elections for its parliament, which is part of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the historic institution that rules the region and includes its legislature, government and president of the region. The president, who is the head of the Catalonian government, is elected by the regional parliament. September’s elections were won by a wide margin by a coalition of two nationalist parties – the ruling Convergéncia Democrática de Catalunya (Democratic Convergence of Catalonia) or CDC and the left-wing Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) or ERC.

The nationalists needed early elections after a plan of Catalonian President Artur Mas, the CDC leader, to call a self-determination referendum for November 9, 2014 was thrown out earlier that autumn by the Spanish Constitutional Court at the initiative of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, leader of the rightist conservative People’s Party. There were two questions on the ballot: “Do you want Catalonia to become a State? If the answer is in the affirmative, do you want this State to be independent?”¹ …

LATELY, experts are discussing with increased interest whether the globalization of hydrocarbon trade, competition between Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and the Western political and economic sanctions against Russia affect the latter’s competitiveness in international natural gas business.

On top of this, there are the European Commission’s attacks on Gazprom, the uncertain future of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, the European Union’s Third Energy Package, the planned European Energy Union, Russian attempts to become firmly established in the Chinese gas market, and Russian plans to reduce gas imports from Central Asia and Azerbaijan. …

REGIONAL INTEGRATION has developed into an important factor of international relations. Today, practically all states on the map of the world belong to at least one regional association. In this context, the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam offer the best example of an active involvement in the integration processes unfolding in the APR, the talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in particular. The region is increasingly often described as a locomotive of the world’s economic development in the twenty-first century.

The TPP idea was born in 2003 when the so-called Pacific Three (New Zealand, Singapore and Chile) started talking about a possible association; two years later, they and Brunei formed the so-called Pacific Four and signed a TPP agreement on a free trade zone with no obligations of further integration enacted in 2006. In 2008, Washington’s interest supplied the project with a fresh impetus and stirred up attention of Australia, Vietnam, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, and Peru. Japan was the last to join in 2013. In view of its declared openness, the agreement might acquire new AP members (South Korea and Taiwan, in particular, have become interested). Today, the members are talking not about an expansion of the 2006 agreement but about a de facto new document that stretches beyond the free trade issues to cooperation in investment, intellectual property protection and ecological standards. …

TWENTY YEARS have passed since what looked at first glance like a senseless slaughter in Rwanda in which one million of its citizens lost their lives. Today, wars and conflicts unfolding in other regions of our planet invited a closer scrutiny of the Rwandan slaughter. There is a strong possibility that certain politicians stirred up nationalists and pushed peoples into the bloodshed to satisfy their geopolitical ambitions and that the interests of the United States and Europe clashed there. This is confirmed by the deliberate inattention of Europe otherwise inclined to moralizing and by the deliberately passive response of the UN Security Council. We should go to the roots of the developments in Rwanda to better understand what have happened in the world since then.

Chronicle of Events …

NUCLEAR SAFETY is one of the world’s major security issues. The terms “nuclear safety” and “nuclear security” usually denote different notions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines nuclear safety as “the achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards”¹ and nuclear security as “the prevention and detection of and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear material, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities.”²

It follows from these definitions that nuclear safety implies protection of nuclear materials and nuclear facilities while nuclear security implies protection of nuclear power plants. This article purports to put nuclear safety in the general context of nuclear issues and to look at some aspects of cooperation between states in measures to ensure nuclear safety. …

SECURITY has always been a key point of the foreign policy of any state. In this era of globalization, classical diplomacy is not the only method used by world powers to keep themselves secure. They also make extensive use of alternative efficient ways of handling modern threats and challenges.

Such ways include biometrics, which are measurements and analyses based on the combined use of biological data, information technology, mathematics, and statistics. Biometrics involve checking the identity of an individual by studying their biological characteristics such as facial features, voice patterns, handwriting, fingerprints, hand geometry, iris patterns, and DNA. …

IN OCTOBER 2015, the Argentine Republic and the Russian Federation marked the 130th anniversary since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The initiative to celebrate this date came from Presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Vladimir Putin, who made the decision at a bilateral meeting on July 12, 2014.

This made it possible to hold a series of events and meetings this year, which have emphasized the importance of this event for the two countries. …

Conference Opening Session

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs: Ladies and gentlemen, we are holding the fourth international conference devoted to modern journalism and information issues. Thanks to the hospitality of our hosts, the University of San Marino, to our mutual pleasure, our discussion will take place within these ancient walls. …

THERE ARE INTERPRETATIONS that are growing more and more complicated, theories that explain and methods that help comprehend nationalism. This phenomenon long ago spread far and wide beyond the framework of disciplines that normally studied it to become an object of interest of academic branches that study international processes and relationships. They supply the background against which the “self-evident opinions” about nations and nationalism George Kennan offered in his Around the Cragged Hill* look like old postcards that gladden the eye and warm up the soul.

“Another” Kennan …

THE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS JOURNAL has done the right thing by publishing an article by Prof. Yury Piskulov, Doctor of Economics (Yu. Piskulov. Along the Road Laid in Helsinki. No. 5, 2015), devoted to the 40th anniversary of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). At that time, the painstaking and productive work of its participants was capped with success – the 1975 Final Act. I did not say “the right thing” by accident. Strangely enough, the anniversary of this unique event in modern European (as well as in global) political history passed almost unnoticed in the world media. There are reasons for that, too. Today, those in the West “forget” many history lessons; some of them tell about the rational politicians of the second half of the 20th century who found a way out of the extremely tense situation in the relations between the East and the West, which was to a very large extent similar to the present situation. This is precisely the subject of the book “Russia and the West: The Reverse Side of the Conflict (An Economist’s View),” which is Yu. Piskulov’s second work under review; it was written and published this past July.*

“Forty years later, the CSCE has not lost its appeal or relevance,”¹ Dr. Piskulov points out in his book. The author, a major specialist on economics and politics, stresses the outstanding role that was played by President of Finland Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, who demonstrated an international-level politician’s approach towards the challenging task (including his work behind the scenes) of organizing the conference and ensuring its successful completion. No doubt, President Kekkonen’s trusting relationship with the Soviet leaders, including Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei …

Alexey Podtserob’s latest work “Russia and the Arab World”* was not only an instant success (by sheer chance I bought the last copy in the MGIMO bookshop) – it is worthy of our respect. In his highly impressive monograph, the author has gathered a huge amount of information about the history of the relations between Russia and the Arab world based on a thousand and a half sources. This was done by a highly respected scholar who for many years had worked in different countries of the Arab East rising from the lowest diplomatic posts to the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation. The book is not only a scholarly effort but it is also tinted by the author’s far from indifferent attitude to the events and problems described by him.

The scope of the efforts poured into many years of gathering relevant materials and the scope of historical events – from the 17th century to our days – are amazing. All this information Dr. Podtserob has gathered, sys-temized and rendered in an easy-to-read manner. His 500-odd pages are being read with unflagging attention. …