International Affairs No. 5, 2018 – Table of Contents

President of the Russian Federation

COLLEAGUES, welcome to this traditional meeting. …

Albania

Alexander Karpushin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary …

Chairwoman, Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation

International Affairs: The Second Eurasian Women’s Forum* is not too far off. What makes it different from the first forum? Is there much interest in it in the international community? …

IN 1776, Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of the Founding Fathers, chaired the Philadelphia Congress that adopted the historic Declaration of Independence. Before opening the sitting, he pointed to the sun carved into the back of his chair: “I have often looked at that sun behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.” In due time, history will provide an answer.

The “Thucydides Trap” …

We remember the tragedies of the two world wars; the lessons of history do not let us “go blind.” New threats bear the same old ugly features: selfishness and intolerance, aggressive nationalism and claims to exclusiveness.

Vladimir Putin, Speech at the military parade on the Victory Day, May 9, 2018¹ …

INFORMATION and communication technology (ICT) plays an unprecedented role in today’s world, but cyberspace is clearly lacking in security mechanisms that can guarantee stable and sustained world development.

Insufficient information security is a barrier to investment in high-tech sectors. Digital technology, with its artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data, the internet of things (IoT), electronic medicine, and electronic finance, is a hostage to the absence of internationally accepted rules of behavior in cyberspace. …

MANY EXPERTS call the 21st century an era of integration and unification. Integration processes at the interstate level proceed “through the formation of regional economic associations of states and coordination of their domestic and foreign economic policies.”¹ Regional integration is one of the most significant factors in current political affairs. Whereas the period from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century saw the formation of independent nation states, by the second half of the 20th century, this process was. Today, national economies are moving towards integration with each other, gradually forming a common market with more intensive movement of goods, capital, labor, services, and information.

There are few states in the world not involved in regional or subregional integration processes. Many states give up national sovereignty in favor of an integration arrangement with other states. Since the economy is the main driver of integration, its purpose is to increase the economic efficiency of production. Considering the integration processes under way in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR), the region’s strategic importance from a geopolitical perspective has steadily increased. …

THE RECENT DYNAMICS of world processes has confirmed that unipolar model is unable to cope with the global governance: the current financial institutions, the dollar system that de facto serves the interests of the United States, are gradually exhausting their resources.

The struggle between the financial and industrial elites inside the United States and the rising wave of disagreements between Washington and Western Europe do nothing good to the unipolar world. …

The Growing Attractiveness of the Northern Sea Route

China also sees the NSR as more than a transportation route. The Arctic is acquiring a new strategic importance due to its geopolitical role, its increasing economic significance, and its unique global environmental impacts. In December 2015, the prime ministers of Russia and China, Dmitry Medvedev and Li Keqiang, signed a joint communique stating a joint plan to put the NSR into more intensive use and to carry out research into the route’s shipping opportunities. …

FOR SEVERAL YEARS now, the world has been watching with a steadily growing concern how foreign policy changes are moving toward a global confrontation and how international relations are rapidly deteriorating with a threat of a “hot phase” on the horizon.

The idea of exclusiveness and superiority and “the great desire of a narrow group of Western countries led by the United States to preserve their domination in all areas in the hope of continuing to ensure their well-being and prosperity at the expense of everybody else”¹ is the main cause that in the past repeatedly plunged mankind into troubles and sufferings. …

“The royal authorities of the Restoration period referred to such sovereignty as essentially unlimited power to do whatever is required to ensure national security disregarding the constitutional order that appeared to preclude it.”

Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur …

Foreign policy of a great people is not arbitrary neither it is a game of chance; it takes shape for centuries according to the needs of this people and its ideas on what is useful.

Sergey Tatishchev, Russian historian (1846-1906) …

TODAY, elaboration of all sorts of soft power rankings and indices used to assess, measure and compare achievements of different states has become one of the actively developing and prominent trends of soft power studies in Russia and abroad. This trend has become an industry on its own right highly attractive for all sorts of state, private and commercial organizations and institutes.¹ Until recently, when the soft power problem was pushed aside for objective reasons (the “Ukrainian crisis,” much cooler relations between the Russian Federation and the Euro-Atlantic community of states, as well as the operation of the Russian aerospace forces in Syria), news about Russia’s changed positions in any soft power ranking had raised a wave of publications in the media and invited comments from state figures, academics and experts.² This means that rankings are important. At the same time, the level of scholarly comprehension of the methodology, range of representation and practical value of these rankings from the point of view of studies of the soft power phenomenon is still insufficient.

THE SCIENCE of international politics in Russia repeatedly displayed interest in soft power rankings and indices and made them objects of special studies. V. Korolev, A. Vladimirova and A. Grunina, in their collective article “The Country Brand as Reflected in the Global Soft Power Rankings,” have offered a detailed survey of the most popular indices of national brands and soft power. They also authors worked out the so-called “ranking of rankings” – an attempt at assessing and arranging the …

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS of February and October 1917 have been a subject for century-long discussions. There exists a large diversity of studies that delve into domestic, regional and international impacts of the revolutions. This article sums up a paper delivered to an international scholarly conference on the significance of the Russian revolutions of 1917. This conference marking 100th anniversary of these revolutions was held in St. Petersburg on November 2-3, 2017. In this article, the present writer analyzes the role of the Russian revolutions in international diversification and argues that the year 1917 should be considered the starting point of the confrontation between world development models propounded by Russia and the United States.

The International Diversification Concept …

TECHNOLOGY is moving ahead at a blistering and accelerating pace. To remain competitive in today’s digitized world, one needs not only to master new technologies but also to be able to detect them at their emergence. Digitization of all forms of social relations is one of the most obvious global trends. Traditional products and services become digitized, with software, computing resources and information and communication networks being increasingly sophisticated and methods of processing, storage, transmission, and protection of information being increasingly efficient.

Developers of digital technologies primarily consider mass markets to be their clientele and mainly use cloud computing to provide their services. The range of use of digital technologies extends far beyond the limits of traditional information and communication products and services. According to PwC,¹ a new digital technology typically takes 35 days to acquire a 50-million critical mass of users that it needs to bring about significant progress in the business world and “undermine” traditional business models. This means a need to look for business fields, economic sectors and national security areas where digital technology can be particularly effective. …

AMID the rise in cyber attacks against our country and the continuing attempts to maliciously rewrite history, it is especially important to constantly search for effective forms and methods of building trust among countries and peoples, support and foster the mechanisms of interpersonal communication and rapprochement, based on fundamental moral values.

Russian-Slovenian cooperation shows in particular that systematic historical and memorial activity is becoming an effective diplomatic tool. …

International Affairs: Mr. Ambassador, this year is the Cross Year of Russia and Japan [the Year of Japan in Russia and the Year of Russia in Japan]. Could you please speak about the activities planned in connection with this important event? Would it be correct to say that it will contribute to the development of mutual interest and mutual understanding between our countries, including the invigoration of people’s diplomacy institutions?

The Cross Year officially started on May 26, 2018. The opening ceremony was attended by the leaders of our two countries. Over 300 events and activities will take place within its framework. …

SINCE 1976, when official diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Russia were established, bilateral ties have been characterized by good intentions, but have made almost no progress toward actual cooperation. Contacts between the Philippines and Russia have always been warm and friendly, but still different from those among our neighbors in the region. Even though we have managed to avoid serious conflicts, we have been unable to derive optimal benefit from our friendship or tap its potential to our advantage.

That was often due to differences in history, culture and the political situation, which led our countries down different paths that almost never intersected. However, one equally significant factor was the lack of information about each other, which is necessary for the correct perception, understanding and development of relations. The Cold War ended almost three decades ago, and stereotypes characteristic of that era should go as well. …

THE RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY cherishes the memory of its outstanding predecessors, whose selfless efforts were always aimed at promoting and upholding national interests and bolstering our country’s position in the world. This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lev Isaakovich Mendelevich, a prominent diplomat who left a deep mark on the recent history of the country’s foreign policy service.

Like many of our colleagues, he had to work in difficult times, when the world was changing literally right before our eyes, and relations between states were becoming more complex and multifaceted. The colonial system was disintegrating, and dozens of newly independent countries were coming to the international arena. New security threats and challenges were emerging, such as the arms race and the risks of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Amid the Cold War, steps to reduce military and political tensions and establish a mutually respectful dialogue between states with different socioeconomic systems were especially significant. Mendelevich contributed to the resolution of these and other problems. …

PRESERVATION of historical and cultural heritage of Russia outside its borders is one of its foreign policy priorities. Much is being done to recover historical facts related to Russia’s diplomatic presence in different countries all over the world; historical plaques have been already installed in Naples, Istanbul and Jerusalem to commemorate Russia’s diplomatic service.

The Eastern Mediterranean, with which the Russian Empire associated its wide geopolitical plans and in which it was presented by a network of diplomatic posts in the 18th-19th centuries, offers vast opportunities for anybody wishing to learn more. Russian consulate agents were stationed on the islands of the Greek Archipelago in the Aegean Sea, on Rhodes and Cyprus as well as in Egypt and Mid-Eastern countries. …

A COLLECTION of online records, “Documents from the Archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry: The 1917 Revolution: The Fate of Russian and Soviet Diplomacy” [Dokumenty arkhivov MID Rossii. Revolyutsiya 1917 goda: Sudby russkoi i sovetskoi diplomatii] has become available on the Foreign Ministry’s official website for all Internet users. Chronologically, it covers the period of the formation of the Soviet state from 1917 until 1922.¹ The digitization of archival materials is not the ministry’s first experience of this kind.

In this context, one may recall the relatively recent and extremely successful precedent in making public the collection “The USSR and Its Allies: Documents from the Archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the Foreign Policy and Diplomacy of the Leading Powers of the Anti-Hitler coalition” [SSSR i soyuzniki: Dokumenty Arkhiva MID Rossii o vneshnei politike i diplomatii vedushchikh derzhav antigitlerovskoi koalistii], timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory.² It would not be an exaggeration to say that the central theme of this collection of WWII documents is the remark by V.M. Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), on June 22, 1941: “Ours is a righteous cause. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours!” …

THIS is the continuation of our efforts to find out who were the women whom Soviet intelligence planted as secret agents in Western Europe via Britain in 1941-1943. They went ashore in the UK with Soviet passports to the names of Maria Dicksen, Yelena Nikitina, Emilia Novikova, Anna Uspenskaya, and Anna Frolova.

When the Russian coauthor of this article learned from his British colleague the bits and pieces of their life stories which the British special services had dug out his first response was: “If they were sent to Britain by Soviet intelligence they had been found in the Comintern.” …

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS are not the most popular subject among scholars, and human rights organizations and those specializing in various aspects of security – military, political, economic or environmental – are even lower on academic agendas. This is one of the reasons why a book by Russian diplomat Alexey Lyzhenkov, OSCE vs. Transnational Threats: Past, Present, Future, is remarkable.

Criminal activities in the OSCE’s area of responsibility, which extends from Vancouver to Vladivostok, undermine the security of countries, destabilize them, hamper their economic and social development, and violate or endanger the rights of about 1.2 billion people who live there, including their right to life, liberty and personal security as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. …

THE RUSSIAN-CHINESE Environmental Council has brought out a collection entitled The Environmental Legislation of the People’s Republic of China*

This Council was set up in December 2014 in the framework of the Russian-Chinese Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development to promote cooperation in environmental protection. Oleg Deripaska, chairman of the supervisory board of the Basic Element company, is the Russian co-chairman of the Environmental Council, and Zhao Yingmin, vice minister of ecology and environment, its Chinese co-chairman. …