International Affairs No. 6, 2017 – Table of Contents

WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the tectonic shifts now taking place in the infrastructures of today’s world under the conditions of globalization and the information and telecommunications revolution are together leading toward a radical change in the place, role, and influence of nations and peoples in the system of international relations. It is therefore natural to expect a gradual rethinking of the traditionally understood categories of world order, hegemony, dominance and submission, the places and roles of small nations, the character of the configuration of geopolitical forces, and so on. Of special relevance are the status of and outlook for the superpowers, and the phenomenon of superpower status itself. As is well known, against the backdrop of the triumph of the West and the United States, there was originally the conviction that a so-called unipolar world order had arrived, at the summit of which Uncle Sam was enthroned in splendid isolation.

Metamorphoses of the Powers and Might of the State …

ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP and his active efforts to undermine the foreign and domestic policy course inherited from the Obama administration sent waves of concern across the Western analytical community. His inaugural address had a bombshell effect on Western mainstream media. His close to perfect populist speech (calling “to drain the Washington swamp” and “give power back to the people”) was nationalist at the brink of “isolationism.”¹ He looked like a perfect right-wing populist and no exception to the common rule: clearly defined problems and real and urgent questions never supplied with clear (or rational) answers.

AS A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN and confirmed nationalist,² Trump is a fairly rare combination for us. Recently, experts started talking about Trumpism as a phenomenon and a combination of deideologized foreign policy, trade protectionism and a fresh attempt at reindustrialization of the American economy. The components of his protectionism are well known: reduction of the foreign trade deficit by limiting inflows of goods from China, in the first place, and other countries, the classical thesis Republicans have been using for many years or even decades. So far, Trumpism is rather a behavior style and determination of decision-making and actions. …

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS on September 24 were a sad experience for Germany’s political heavyweights, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Each of them suffered the heaviest defeat in its history, CDU mustering just 32.9% and the SPD 20.5% of votes.¹ Angela Merkel lost 8% and Martin Schulz 5% of their regular voters. The Christian Democrats hadn’t done so badly since 1949, and the Social Democrats got fewer votes than they had during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1913. According to a survey, more than 60% of Germans said that they couldn’t understand why they needed the SPD at all because there was no difference between its platform and the postulates of the CDU.

In the times of August Bebel, Kurt Schumacher or Willy Brandt, nobody would have dared ask such a question. In those days, the SPD was a party of lofty dreams, optimistic ideas, and fresh concepts. On the other hand, CDU voters wonder why Merkel doesn’t protest same-sex marriages and deduce from this that she doesn’t recognize the authority of the Bible. …

THE MINSK PROCESS, a string of diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, has gone into its fourth year. By and large, it has been given less than enthusiastic assessments from day one. There have been comments ranging from terse and moderately optimistic (“quite constructive, and although no breakthroughs were posted, this stage [the first round of ‘Normandy format’ talks between Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France] had certain benefits”¹) to openly fatalistic (“the Minsk agreements are a stillborn baby”²). Judgments such as the latter statement, which earlier on mainly came from Ukrainian politicians, are increasingly widespread today.

This situation involuntarily brings to mind a line from a children’s poem by M.S. Shvarts entitled “The Narwhal”: “It’s much easier to accuse than to try to understand.” What the search for a solution to the Ukraine conflict involves will be easier to understand if we formulate more clearly what we mean by the Minsk process. …

LATINO-CARIBBEAN AMERICA (LCA) is a unique civilization in terms of language, religion, the national identity of most countries in the region, their shared historical destinies, their mentality, and how they perceive the world.¹ In international Latin American studies, it has long been the practice to categorize LCA as a peripheral region. Today, it is already common to classify it as an “intermediate stratum” of the global hierarchy.²

Since the beginning of the 1980s, LCA has been engaged in processes of globalization, as part of both the world economy and the information society. In most countries of the region, a modern institutional structure has emerged with a functioning mechanism of state management and a market economy. …

TODAY’S GLOBAL CRISIS, which manifests itself in increasing chaos, has given rise to problems that civilization has never had before. The habitual method of global use of armed force cannot solve any of them. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in a speech at a session of the UN General Assembly in New York that exporting social experiments has tragic consequences and can have degrading effects on societies. He argued that a digital economy is essential as an instrument for tackling global tasks. A digital economy sets “a new paradigm for the development of the state, the economy, and society as a whole” and involves the use of information technology (IT) to make governance more efficient.¹ There exist two fundamentally different principles for building a digital economy.

An Economy Based on Big Data, an Eclectic System …

ON OCTOBER 14, 2017, the 137th Assembly of the Interparliamentary Union (IPU), the oldest international political organization, will open in St. Petersburg. It may be recalled that the previous, 136th Assembly that took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh, preparations for which were widely covered in International Affairs,¹ was truly historic for the Russian delegation. For the first time in 20 years, Russia initiated an IPU draft resolution on a very important and relevant subject, “The Role of Parliament in Respecting the Principle of Non-intervention in the Internal Affairs of States,” receiving overwhelming support from the majority of national delegations and ensuring its adoption by consensus.

Naturally, the resolution is important not only in and of itself. Its central provision is the unacceptability of the forcible change of legitimate governments under the guise of so-called humanitarian interventions – that is to say, what the entire world witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other parts of the world at different times. It would seem that the notion as such, which arises from the basic principles of international law, does not need additional arguments or advocacy. However, during the discussion of the final text and the amendments (143 in all), thinly veiled opposition on the part of “our Western partners” became obvious. As the saying goes, “that’s their guilty conscience speaking”: The sheer fact that certain countries put up fierce resistance showed beyond all doubt that the resolution was highly relevant. What’s more, as often happens in such cases, that was not about different approaches toward interpreting particular provisions of our resolution (which is definitely possible and appropriate) but about simply denying the need to speak out against outside intervention in the internal affairs of states. …

ITALY IS AGAIN at a crossroads. An attempt to carry out a constitutional reform that would have changed the country’s political system has fallen through. Italy faces a new political crisis as the ruling party’s policy is increasingly rejected both by the opposition and by the population. Where the nation will go from now on depends on a set of factors in its economy and its domestic and foreign policy. To make matters worse, developments in Italy are a source of special concern for the European Union. With the EU being plagued by economic, political and social crises, domestic instability in member countries causes it particular anxiety. The situation in Italy, which is one of the founders and leaders of the EU, exercises a direct effect on the pan-European political climate. Due to the high degree of mutual integration of the economies and political systems of the member countries, political instability in Italy threatens the stability of the EU as a whole.

A Brief Historical Note …

THE ONGOING UKRAINE CRISIS has been a harsh trial for Russia and the European Union; it has been especially painful for countries that recently became members of a united Europe. The reasons for this are their territorial proximity to a hotbed of tension and their special historical relation to Ukrainian affairs. This is especially true for Ukraine’s immediate Western neighbors: Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. Their attitude to the situation is in one way or another associated with the problem of Ukrainian sovereignty, as it is understood and perceived by the government of each country.

Poland, which held Ukrainian territories in the past and is now positioning itself as a midwife to modern Ukraine, is more susceptible to such concerns. As Kiev’s main advocate in the European Union, Warsaw is nevertheless very sensitive to the topic of its cut-off “Eastern territories” and the aggressive nationalism of neighboring “independent power.” …

ELECTED IN OCTOBER 2015 due to his widespread support in Quebec, Justin Trudeau (of the Liberal Party of Canada) came to power with promises to change foreign policy and elevate Canada’s role as a global actor after nine years of rule by the Conservative Party. Two years after Trudeau assumed the post of prime minister, however, analysis of his government’s foreign policy shows it is closer to that of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper (2006-2015), which was characterized by close ties to the foreign policies of the United States and Israel, than it is to the foreign policy of his Liberal predecessor, Prime Minister Jean Chretien (1993-2003), which was against the unilateral invasion of Iraq by the United States and Great Britain in 2003.

In the brief period between November 2015 and the start of 2017, when Stephane Dion was minister of foreign affairs, Canada’s foreign policy was aimed at increasing the country’s role in the world arena through such measures as expanding its participation in peacekeeping missions. However, it displayed neither real independence nor any kind of innovation. When Christina “Christya” Freeland, a journalist and parliamentary deputy of Ukrainian ancestry, was appointed minister of foreign affairs in January 2017, it was even less likely that Canadian foreign policy would offer anything new. Justin Trudeau might thus leave behind a completely different legacy of the Canadian liberal identity than Lester Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, or Jean Chretien. …

AN INTERPRETATION of values and meanings of international relations should precede any further discussion of them.

The concept of values, therefore, is fundamental for the world community and international relations: they determine individual and collective behavior; shape customs, traditions and cultures; and serve as the source of juridical laws. In short, they are signally important for the human community. Axiology as a science of values proceeds from the premise that there is no complete and final list of values cherished by all mankind. Values differ from one stage of history to another. As one of the key categories of social thought, the concept of values is behind the objects and phenomena, their properties and ideas that embody social notions and ideals. The Constitution of the Russian Federation has identified human rights and freedoms as the highest values of mankind. …

THE INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES of constituent territories of the Russian Federation are a relatively new subject in Russian regional studies and a separate field within them.

It is only natural that Russian regions have been stepping up their international activity and have been concerned over international problems. They have been directly drawn into international processes by globalization. Foreign economic activities have become an important feature of social and economic development for many Russian regions and the dominant social and economic factor for some of them. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which entailed the severance of long-time ties that its command economy had brought into being, many of Russia’s regions saw international activities as a way to improve their difficult social and economic situation. However, there are clearly legal boundaries for such activities – they must not contravene the national interests of the Russian Federation. …

THE FORM of individual participation in the political organization of the state that stems from and was upheld by European and Christian civilization throughout the development of mankind has undergone a metamorphosis, losing one set of features and acquiring another. No one can say that democracy as a form of expressing the will of the majority of the electorate is perfect. While its earlier forms were practiced in the comparatively small Greek republics and cities of France in the 18th century, both of which were monocultural and monoethnic societies, a fundamentally different reality applies today.

Our planet’s population has become far larger and is already approaching the 8 billion mark. Aided by modern means of communication, the financial and banking system, and the international division of labor, it has become more compact and interdependent. In addition, the several mighty powers that possess nuclear arms and aerospace capabilities have acquired global interests and become de facto immediate neighbors of all nations, regardless of where they might be located. Another exceptionally important factor is that the world today has a tendency toward division, not along national or racial lines but predominantly according to religious and cultural principles. Simultaneously, some nation-states remain at the beginnings of human civilization while others have stepped into the 21st century. …

THE LARGE AMOUNT of foreign policy work done by the Russian leadership in recent years has proven insufficient to fill gaps in social and economic statistics. This work mainly focused on measures to attract foreign investors and to raise the investment attractiveness of Russia. Measures to intensify cross-border movement of capital and attract “smart money” to Russia have been seriously impeded by economic determinism and overlooked many aspects of international relations.

Today’s Germany is an indisputable leader of the European Union, and it is no accident that Russia’s relations with Germany cover the greater part of financial and technological cooperation between Russia and the EU. It would be no mistake to see Russian-German relations as a traditional channel for social and cultural communication between Russia and the European family of nations. This area of international relations is an element of the ultimate foundations of Russian statehood and reflects the very essence of Russian society. Russian-German relations should be divided into four basic groups: economic, political, cultural, and scientific/scholarly/educational . …

“The Bulgarian state has been baptized with Russian blood and therefore can and must never become alien to the Russian heart.”

I.S. Aksakov, 1881 …

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND current relations between the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK) and the Russian Federation (RF), it makes sense to go back more than 25 years to the period before Kazakhstan and Russia became sovereign states. After all, these relations did not start from scratch. The common life of the republics in the Soviet Union was full of different forms of cooperation and interaction in all spheres, and their development experience on the eve of 1991 was complementary.

Let us recall that in the late 1980s the population of Kazakhstan was fully literate; the republic had 56 higher and 260 specialized secondary educational institutions and a total of almost 7 million students in the education system. …

ONE OF THE PLACES OF HONOR among the outstanding statesmen of Russia who served as its foreign ministers belongs to Prince Alexey Lobanov-Rostovsky.* At 35, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Constantinople (1859-1863); later, he returned to the Ottoman Empire as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (1878-1879) and served in the same rank in London (1879-1882) and Vienna (1882-1895). On February 26 (March 10), 1895, Nicholas II made him foreign minister.

A gifted man, he amazed his contemporaries with his excellent abilities as a statesman, his brilliant education, wide knowledge of foreign languages and talents as a writer. A refined dignitary, “he was excellent and irresistibly charming company… invariably elegant in the choice of words and subjects… he was highly attractive to cultured society”¹ and its female part. His skill of dealing with the worst of predicaments, his peaceful disposition and boundless energy put him in a class of his own. …

“The spy is the greatest of soldiers, If he is the most detested by the enemy, it is only because he is most feared.”

King George V …

JAPAN’S ATTACK on Pearl Harbor, the United States’ naval base in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, started large-scale military operations in the APR. In a few days, the correlation of forces in the eastern periphery of World War Two changed dramatically and the number of states fighting on both sides increased. On December 8-12, 1941, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and several other states declared war on Japan at sea and on land. On December 9, 1941, China, having declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy, launched land operations against Tokyo; two days later, Germany and Italy joined the fighting against the United States and turned World War Two into a global war.

At first, the Japanese Blitzkrieg on the Pacific was fairly successful: Japan destroyed an impressive share of the American and British naval forces, captured Malaysia, the Philippines, partly Burma and moved into several other territories. The British suffered military and, having surrendered Singapore, moral defeats. Indeed, in the previous 15 years they had been tirelessly turning their biggest naval base into an “impregnable citadel.” However, as soon as fighting began, the British troops inside the citadel promptly laid down arms and surrendered to a much smaller Japanese military contingent.¹ …

ANDREI GROMYKO, an outstanding politician and diplomat, used to say: “Better 10 years of talks than a day of war.” I often heard him say this – a saying that has now effectively become an aphorism. He regarded bilateral and multilateral talks as an important diplomatic tool that should be used in national interests. At the same time, Gromyko stressed that talks should be conducted by relying on economic power, not from a position of strength.

Generally, it has been believed since times immemorial that the key to the art of diplomacy is the ability to prevent wars and strengthen peace. In this regard, the art of conducting negotiations as a method of resolving disputes has always been a high priority. Cicero said 2,000 years ago: “There are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute.” The former referred to talks. …

VALINASR is an expert on the problems of the Middle East, a fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Diplomacy, dean of the Paul Henry Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. In his book The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat,* Nasr tells of his two years of working at the U.S. State Department during the administration of Barack Obama. Nasr’s work is distinguished by its deep analysis of the socioeconomic and political processes now under way in the Middle East.

Nasr’s book acquires special relevance today in light of the foreign policy measures taken in the Middle East by the administration of Donald Trump. The attention of the expert community was captured by the newly elected U.S. president making his first foreign visit not to the countries of his most important European allies, or to Canada or Mexico, but to the Middle East – to Saudi Arabia and Israel. His visit was marked by a summit of Arab and Muslim nations and took place against the background of talks on the prospects for creating an “Arab NATO.” Like the Russian Federation’s involvement in the region, this undoubtedly gives Nasr’s book practical importance from the viewpoint of providing a situational analysis of the current state of affairs in that region of the world. …

THE RUSSIA-ISLAMIC WORLD GROUP of Strategic Vision has brought out an extensive study of Islamophobia – a Russian translation of Islamophobia: From Confrontation to Cooperation by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.* Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu is a Turkish academic and diplomat who from 2005 to 2013 was secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s second-largest organization in terms of the number of people it represents.

In his book, the fruit of many years of reflection about practical work that had been done to create an atmosphere of religious tolerance and eradicate Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination by means of multilateral diplomacy, Ihsanoglu proposes an eight-point plan to attain this objective, a goal that might seem unattainable (p. 17 of the Russian edition). It is a remarkable fact that a person who has headed such a huge international organization wants to share his thoughts because he is talking about the civilizational problems of 1.5 billion people, the world’s Muslim community. Ihsanoglu complains that not too many people in the West know what the OIC is all about (p. 18). …

Akayev, Askar. (Contemporary Integration Processes in the Post-Soviet Space) – 2, 282

Akopov P. E.G. Kutovoy. International Talks at the Crossroads of Civilizations – 6, 234 …