International Affairs No. 6, 2018 – Table of Contents

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs: Leonid Eduardovich, some time has passed since the meeting between the Russian and U.S. presidents in Helsinki, but it still gives the U.S. political establishment no peace. New topics for discussion are coming up in U.S. government agencies. How do you assess the past summit and the prospects for Russian-US. relations overall?

Leonid Slutsky: At present, anti-Russian hysteria has seized the U.S. However, there is also a different attitude toward our country in the U.S. We are in contact with dozens of politicians and civil society representatives who are absolutely normal, constructive and not affected by this anti-Russian virus. I believe that such negative relations, such a low point in bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow as now, are unacceptable. This can lead to completely unpredictable consequences. For example, if negotiations on extending the New START treaty do not resume in the near future, the nonproliferation regime, which has been in effect already for half a century, will just collapse in three years. …

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs: Your Excellency, Mr. Minister, in your opinion, what is facilitating and what is hindering a political settlement in Syria at present?

Q: How much progress has been made in preparing a new Syrian Constitution? …

RECENTLY, debate has intensified over whether a new international order is needed and what role the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should play in forming it. Of course, this debate was “triggered” by events around Crimea and Ukraine, which have shown that the current world order and its international-legal configuration do not correspond with obvious realities.

It is becoming evident that Russia and Ukraine have not yet finished building their nations and their nation states. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was only the beginning of that process, which could take a long time. Russian-American political scientist Nikolai Zlobin’s concept of a “second new world order” is being confirmed: “The Soviet Union is still in the process of breaking up…. The collapse of an empire is a long and painful process, especially if it comprised neighboring territories and a population that was mixed for a variety of reasons…. Boundaries within the USSR were politically engineered. Today, they often look illogical and at odds with reality. They may not become a long-term basis for the new political geography of Eurasia. The current borders in the post-Soviet space will inevitably change.”¹ …

Nonsolid Solidarity

THE BRUSSELS Summit Declaration¹ informed the world that “today, we have taken important decisions to further adapt NATO to the more challenging security environment. We have agreed a new, strengthened NATO Command Structure that meets the requirements of today and tomorrow. As part of our ongoing institutional adaptation, we have also agreed a new model to deliver shared NATO capabilities faster.” …

NATO, which was set up at the very start of the Cold War as a firm counterbalance to the Soviet Union and its allies, remains a primarily military Euro-Atlantic alliance for the collective defense of its member countries,¹ although, with the world having changed as much as it has, the organization makes no secret of ambitions to play first fiddle in global as well as Euro-Atlantic security affairs. In effect, this means “hybridization” of NATO – in breach of international law, the North Atlantic alliance borrows a wide range of functions, concepts and methods from other security-focused organizations, primarily the United Nations and the OSCE, and aspires to consequently become a global entity that would stand above current international norms and rules² with the OSCE and United Nations being subordinate to it.

The authors of these plans ignore the generally accepted fact that the OSCE is a universal regional organization and that NATO is not. The OSCE has 57 member states compared with NATO’s 29 and has the mission of ensuring security for all its member countries without exception and providing facilities for cooperation among them. The OSCE follows the principle of comprehensive and indivisible security that should be based on equal cooperation among all its member countries. This equali- …

SINCE THE STATE OF AFFAIRS in the European Union, the latter’s role in global affairs, and developments in the transatlantic partnership largely depend on Germany, European and world experts focus on the domestic and foreign policy of the new coalition government of Angela Merkel, formed by the CDU/CSU – an alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union – and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). There still are those who, from force of habit, assume that the SPD would be able to make a substantial contribution to the security and stability of Europe and to do a great deal to normalize Germany’s relations with Russia. However, what SPD leaders have said and done recently shows that the party is losing initiative in defending its positions and that the traditions of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) are being undermined. Brandt’s tenure as chancellor of Germany between 1969 and 1974 is seen in Russia as the starting point of a rapprochement between the Russians and Germans. Today, the policy of the architect of détente is seen in Germany either as a manifestation of weakness or as an obsolete model of crisis settlement. Facts show that Germany’s current government is either departing from Brandt’s principles or has scrapped them already.

A Past Master at Political Realism …

AS DISTINCT from the European continental political tradition, the island political tradition of the United Kingdom invariably treated the problems of security and defense as two strictly separate issues. To lower real military risks, the British strengthen their security by building up their military and political influence in the key parts of the globe and participating in the settlement of all sorts of international conflicts. This practice survived for a long time partly due to the colonialist policy of the British Empire that preserved its weight in the Eurocentric system of international relations at the desirable level.

Traditionally, NATO plays the main role in ensuring security and defense of the United Kingdom: it outlived the bipolar world to become the key institute of North Atlantic security for the global world order. The special relationship between Britain and the United States, Great Britain’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council and its nuclear potential as a deterrence instrument serve the same purpose. As the Schengen zone, common foreign policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy of the European Union, the spheres of European integration most sensitive for British sovereignty, were developing, Britain’s involvement in the EU security structures ensured a great or even growing share of its international status and its security. …

THIS ARTICLE examines whether the unilateral economic coercive measures imposed by the United States on Russia over the past few years are legal under international law. The so-called sanctions are not a new U.S. practice. They were first used during the American Revolution of 1765-1783 and have been an American tradition since then.¹

Of the 174 documented cases of sanctions worldwide between 1910 and 2000, 109 were solely cases of U.S. sanctions. The United Nations used sanctions on 20 occasions, Britain on 16, the European Community (European Union) on 14, the Soviet Union on 13, and the Arab League and its individual members on four occasions.² Kern Alexander, a professor at the University of Zurich who has explored the economic sanctions problem from legal and political viewpoints, has confirmed that the United States has used economic sanctions against foreign countries much more often that all other states put together.³ …

THE IDEA of the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) surfaced in the world political discourse in the mid-2000s when an awareness of geopolitical connections between the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific became much clearer in the geoeconomic and security contexts. It was at the borderline of the two basins that a new area of confrontation of world powers appeared. The IPR spreads far and wide to China, Japan, the countries of the Korean Peninsula, East and Northeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Pacific countries of Latin America – half of the world’s population and over a third of world economy. Its growth rates, higher than the world’s average, increase its economic weight: fairly soon, it will account for half of the world’s GDP. Economy is not the region’s only distinctive feature. As an area of considerable conflict potential, it brims with military, territorial, ethnoconfessional, and ecological conflicts as well as conflicts rooted in its far from simple past.

The term itself has a rather long history in the science of international relations. Australian expert Rory Medcalf says: “It dates back to the 1960s and even to colonial times.”¹ Indian political scientists used it back in 2007. In the same year, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, in his address to the Indian Parliament titled “The Confluence of the Two Seas,” spoke about the dynamic connection between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and about the “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity” that should connect the countries of East, Southeast and also South Asia. He spoke of India and Japan as “the democratic nations located at opposite edges of these seas” that should pool forces to turn “broader Asia” “into …

IT IS HARD to find another marine expanse in the world that famous travelers, researchers, military commanders, poets, magi, and mere mortals would have written and talked so much about for centuries and that would have inspired so many beautiful and delightful legends, stories and songs about the innermost human feelings, tragedies, hopes, and faith in happiness. Fernand Braudel, a prominent French scholar who devoted his life to studying the Mediterranean, has described it as a “continent constantly floating on sea waves.” For centuries, people have deified Mare Nostrum, or “our sea,” as it was designated on geographic maps in the past.

It is no coincidence that here in the Mediterranean, the three main world religions – i.e., Judaism, Christianity and Islam – originated and developed. It is quite natural that to this day, in our digital age, full of hustle and bustle, some irresistible mysterious force draws millions of people from all over the world to the shores of this sea. Every year they go there to see the Pyramids of Giza, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Prado and Louvre museums, and to admire the works of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci in Florence and Rome, as well as the splendor of palaces in Istanbul and Petra (an ancient city hand-carved into the sandstone cliffs of Jordan). The Mediterranean countries account for almost one-third of global tourism. …

THE RECENT WAVE of terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States* forced the world community to pay special attention to the phenomenon of individual terror. Russia, likewise, had its share of similar acts.**

Its analysis moves the researcher into cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, individual terrorist acts were described as one of the forms of terrorist activities and were included into the scholarly classifications of types of terrorism.¹ On the other, the recent wave of lone-actor terrorism is a qualitatively new phenomenon that cannot be described as a simple continuation of the traditions of the past. …

ISSUES related to the use of military force occupy an important place in the national security strategy of the United States. In the last quarter-century, the role of this instrument of protecting the interests and achieving the aims formulated by the state has been revised to fit the attempts of the U.S. ruling elite to adapt to qualitative shifts in international relations and world economy. The same fully applies to different conceptual approaches of the country’s leaders to its place and role in the world.

Throughout the Cold War, the period of sustainability of the bipolar world, Washington saw no need to regularly update strategic aims and tasks. Changes and revisions were reduced to the containment of the Soviet Union as the only adversary strong enough to oppose the U.S. in all spheres.¹ No wonder that for nearly half a century the official approaches to the use of armed forces remained practically the same. …

GERMANY’S PERCEPTIONS of new threats and plans for security policy adjustments are stated in the Defense Ministry’s White Paper 2016. which was published in July that year and maps out the country’s military policy strategy for the next few years. In the 1970s, the ministry published White Papers on an almost annual basis, but the 2016 document was the first White Paper since 2006. “The security situation has changed significantly over these ten years, but Germany has changed too,” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in explaining the reason for the new White Paper.¹

Experts said that Germany had made the decisive contribution to the European Union’s Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS), published two weeks before the release of the German White Paper, and so it is not surprising that descriptions of challenges in the EUGS and proposals for ways of addressing them put forward in that document largely coincide with those in the White Paper. Both documents argue that the European security environment has become more complex, volatile, dynamic, and unpredictable. The White Paper points out that the incorporation of Crimea into Russia, the Ukrainian conflict, Islamic State, international terrorism, hybrid threats, and cyberattacks are among the most significant new dangers. …

EUROPEAN POLITICS have displayed one remarkable feature in recent years – the emergence and rapid progress of fringe parties. Significantly different from mainstream parties in terms of structure and methods, those parties are mouthpieces for protests in their societies. They enjoy increasing support as more and more people are angered by the policies of their governments and European Union bodies, which is an indication of an escalating systemic crisis in the EU as a whole and in some of its member countries. Those parties focus on economic and financial problems, immigration issues and Euroscepticism, agendas that have been fueling their movement to top echelons of government.

Initially such parties received little support and were considered marginal groups, but by now they have been able to win substantial following in some European countries, and to even win parliamentary seats. Some of those parties are positioned at the edge of the political spectrums, usually at its right edge, and make extensive use of populist rhetoric. …

LIKE ANY OTHER COUNTRY, France treats the national security issues as a state priority ensured by diplomatic means and armed forces when external security is on the agenda and by domestic policy measures and the forces of law and order when internal security problems call for attention. Both dimensions are closely interconnected in the context of the open “Schengen” borders between the EU members and the steady flows of migrants from Africa and Asia traditionally heading to France.

Close attention to the problems of external security is explained by the fact that in the 1950s-1970s, when its colonial empire had fallen apart, France became an average European power albeit with global ambitions and nuclear weapons [1, p. 13]. It is still involved in active foreign and military policy in Europe and outside it – in the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East, etc. Brexit left France the only EU nuclear power with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which means that it is responsible, to a much greater extent than its neighbors are, for European and global security. This adds special importance to the question: What are the current internal and external challenges to its security and what can Paris do to ensure it? …

“IN ADDITION to traditional methods of diplomacy, ‘soft power’ has become an integral part of efforts to achieve foreign policy objectives,” the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation reads in part. “This primarily includes the tools offered by civil society, as well as various methods and technologies – from information and communication, to humanitarian and other types.”¹ Today, soft power is part and parcel of the foreign policy arsenals of states that are influential international players or, with good reasons, lay claim to such roles.

The above-quoted passage suggests that Russian foreign policy, in view of its scale and priorities, is being equipped with soft power instruments and mechanisms more intensively than the foreign policies of other states. But admittedly, soft power is still an area where we are quite a good way behind leading Western countries, although the authorities that formulate and implement Russia’s foreign policy are continuously trying to evolve more effective soft power methods in the awareness of the significance of soft power for the country’s ability to adapt to changing international realities. The main reason for Russia’s being behind are differences of strategies and resources – the West is not simply Russia’s competitor in the use of soft power but uses it as a means of confrontation with Russia. …

BELARUS’ POLICIES of seeking integration with other countries and with whole regions have been arousing special interest recently. Time and again, guesses are made in the West and Russia who Belarus is going to choose as its friends and who Belarus and those friends would have as mutual adversaries.

THE GEOPOLITICAL STATUS of Belarus, which is quite a small country even by European standards, is a source of some unease for its neighbors. Belarus is located right in the center of Eurasia and lies between Russia and the European Union, both of which seek to win it over to their side. But whereas the Russian political elite is consistently and calmly building partnership with Belarus, Western politicians are trying to destabilize the situation in the country, resorting to the well-tested “color revolution” method, a method that doesn’t, by the way, work too well with the Belarusian mentality. …

AT ALL TIMES, relations between Russia and Japan unfolding under pressure of two opposite trends were complicated and contradictory. On the one hand, the two countries, and their business communities in particular, hailed new chances to expand economic cooperation. On the other, this trend was kept within certain political limits created by the unresolved problem of Northern Territories. In 2012, Shinzo Abe, having regained the post of prime minister of Japan and being aware that the border problem would not be resolved any time soon, decided, no matter what, to expand cooperation with Russia. In effect, this meant that Tokyo accepted Russia’s approach to bilateral relations that presupposed, first and foremost, economic cooperation and deeper mutual trust followed by the quest for a solution of territorial disputes. Since 2014, his plans have been strongly affected by the rapidly deteriorating relations between Russia and the United States due to the Ukrainian crisis. The Obama administration pressured Tokyo to “freeze” its political dialogue with Moscow and drop the idea of expanding economic cooperation. It seems that Donald Trump, much more inclined to pragmatic and rational approaches to America’s allies, is prepared to give Tokyo a wider leeway on the Russian issue.

Today, Russia, likewise, is more interested than before in cooperation …

CURRENT PROBLEMS in Russia’s relations with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia stem from what are commonly called intercivilizational antagonisms. On the one hand, Russia is an immediate geographical neighbor of the Baltic countries, which for long periods were part of our civilizational, i.e. political, economic, cultural, and even ideological space.

On the other hand, the past few decades have made clear that those periods of belonging to the same state were unable to bring us together but, if anything, moved us away from one other. Forgotten antagonisms from the past came back to life, and new grievances and frictions emerged. …

THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of the birth of Sergey Leonidovich Tikhvinsky (1918-2018) is a good occasion to remember this outstanding diplomat and historian, the patriarch of Russian sinology. The employees of the MFA Department of History and Records (formerly the Historical-Diplomatic Department, which he headed from 1975 to 1980) hoped to congratulate Sergey Leonidovich in person, but unfortunately, he died in February 2018, just a few months before the anniversary.

Naturally, a biography of this leading figure in Russian historical science, a diplomat who took part in events such as the establishment of diplomatic relations with the newly created People’s Republic of China, the drafting of the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, and the normalization of relations with Japan is known in many details. It is difficult to add a new dimension to what we already know, but this article has a different purpose. …

PRINCE ALEXANDER GORCHAKOV, Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Russia (1856-1883), was the last of Alexander Pushkin’s Lyceum classmates who lived long enough to become a moral and philosophical bridge between the romantic epoch of the Russian statehood as described by Derzhavin and Zhukovsky in their odes and the pragmatic and calculating era worthy of essays by Shchedrin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. He felt at ease in both contexts; as a young man, he was reproached for excessive punctuality, as well as systemic thinking that was ahead of his time; later, for the traces of romantic idealism of his school years. Some thought of him as a liberal too lenient toward Russia’s enemies; others, a confirmed conservative of unshakeable imperialmonarchic principles. Even if he complained, from time to time, about disfavor of his bosses or even the czar, he made a splendid career as a statesman, reached the highest imperial posts and earned the highest awards.

Despite the subtleties or even changes of his viewpoints (rare for a noble czarist dignitary), he avoided a reputation of a reactionary or of an odious figure; he was never accused of aggressive obscurantism and similar sins. All Soviet historians of diplomacy, with all their dislike for the crowned double-headed eagle, invariably wrote of him with respect even if with a share of obligatory criticism. …

I am not the first warrior, nor the last, the Motherland’s illness will be long. So pray for your beloved in the dawn. 0 my wife, fair and bright!

These lines by Alexander Blok open the two-volume set “I Am Not the First Warrior, Nor the Last”* of a three-volume edition prepared for the 80th birthday of Vladimir Petrovich Lukin, a prominent domestic politician, diplomat and public figure. The book features the best wishes and congratulations to the honoree from his numerous colleagues and friends and contain dozens of V.P. Lukin’s public speeches, articles and interviews. …

THIS YEAR, the second volume of the textbook “A History of Russian Diplomacy”* was published. (The first volume, spanning a period from the ninth century to 1917, was published in 2017. Authors: A.I. Kuznetsov, Yu.A. Raikov, V.V. Samoilenko. V.O. Pechatnov, I.V. Popov. Yu.A. Raikov.) This publication is the logical conclusion of years of research and methodological work by the Moscow State Institute (University) of International Relations, primarily the staff of the Department of Diplomacy, including many former diplomatic officials. It is important to note that despite the chronological bounds (1917-2017). quite narrow compared to the first volume, which spanned more than 1,000 years of Russian diplomacy, the second volume is marked by its focus on events and in-depth analysis of transformations in the domestic diplomatic service during the period under consideration.

It is possible to say that with some long-established traditions still alive, Soviet and then Russian diplomacy has undergone more significant changes over the past 100 years than ever before. The 20th century has been rather complicated with regard to national history in general and the history of foreign policy and diplomacy in particular. Nevertheless, despite its turbulence and the scale of accompanying sociopolitical, economic and cultural changes, it would be appropriate to talk about a kind of a timeless constant that is defined as Russia’s historic mission as a country and state. In this context, in the narrow sense of the word, this is a historic mission of the domestic diplomatic service as a very important functional manifestation of the latter. This is a central theme of the present book. …

NATALIA KULISHENKO’S “The Stalingrad Story of the English Queen”* is a biography of a remarkable British royal: Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, Queen Consort and the wife of King George VI of England, crowned in 1937.

Elizabeth, the daughter of Scottish Earl Claude Bowes-Lyon, was born on August 4, 1900, and lived to be over 101. Elizabeth witnessed both world wars, having been born at the turn of the century. During World War I, the 14-year-old Elizabeth helped care for wounded soldiers at a hospital that had been set up at Glamis, her family’s ancestral castle. During this time, she suffered the loss of her older brother at the front, the despair of her mother, and learned to take responsibility for her family. …

A NEW EDITION of De Gaulle, a highly popular work of prominent Russian historian Marina Arzakanyan was published by the Molodaya gvardiya Publishing House in the Zhizn zamechatelnykh lyudey (Illustrious Lives) series. There is no need to talk at length about its hero: General de Gaulle, one of the greatest political figures of Europe of the 20th century, is well known to the educated Russian audience. A talented military commander, the savior and leader of France during World War II, the founder and first president of the Fifth Republic – this is a far from full list of his heritage. He is described as the “last great Frenchman” who belongs to the pantheon of the great sacred figures of French history: Jeanne d’Arc, Cardinal Richelieu and Napoleon Bonaparte. This explains the never slackening interest in his personality and his life.

Marina Arzakanyan hardly needs detailed representation: she is one of the outstanding Russian experts in the history of France, Doctor of History and Leading Researcher at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, with over 80 works to her name. Her monographs “De Gaulle and Gaullists on the Road to Power” (1990) and “General de Gaulle on the Road to Power” (2001) have become classical works and a must for those who study the history of France. She has written a lot about other prominent French politicians: President Chirac, prime ministers Eduard Balladur and Pierre Bérégovoy and about French history: “Recent History of France” (2002); “Political History of France of the 20th Century” (2003) and was one of the authors of “History of France” (2005). …