Russian Federation President Dmitriy Medvedev considered it necessary to make public five basic points in his foreign policy program on 31 August, just a month after publishing his new blueprint for Russia's foreign policy, and under conditions where conferences, meetings and negotiations connected with the situation in the Caucasus were taking place with unprecedented intensity.

So this happened to be one of the highest priorities for him, a matter of prime importance. How ever strange it may seem, under the influence of news flashes from the Caucasus or the expectation of the end of the world from the start-up of the hadron collider, hardly anyone in our country noticed or commented on the fundamental change to the Russian foreign policy blueprint. Especially since the first four points announced by the president, although in a milder form, are actually present in the blueprint.

It actually does also state that international law is the basis of the state's foreign policy activities and it speaks of its commitment to the model for a multi-polar world, openness and cooperation with all countries and the protection of our fellow countrymen and our entrepreneurs abroad. Only the final, fifth, point remains and it undoubtedly merits being quoted in its entirety: "Russia, like other countries in the world, has regions in which it has privileged interests.Countries with which we have been traditionally been linked with friendly, cordial relations, historically special relations, are located in these regions. We will work very carefully in these regions. And develop friendly relations with these states and with our close neighbors. That is what I will proceed from when implementing our foreign policy."

There was definitely nothing stated in the foreign policy blueprint about Russia's "privileged interests" in individual regions. Although, if you think about it, this position follows absolutely logically from the repudiation of a mono-polar world structure. If there is only one pole then just one country can have privileged interests throughout the entire world, and we know which one that is. But in a real multi-polar world, there cannot be as many poles as there are chairs in the assembly hall of the United Nations Organization. In reality, there are a small number of countries, which are poles of strength, whose interests go beyond the confines of their own national boundaries.

Dmitriy Medvedev has openly stated that Russia is one of them. People may object that this position contradicts the one in which it is stated that Russia recognizes the principles of international law. That according to the UN Charter, all its members have equal rights. But no, things are not that simple. The NATO founder countries, which drew up its Charter in Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, understood very well what a real multi-polar world was. It was no coincidence that they introduced the institution of permanent members of the UN Security Council with the right of veto - a kind of UN politburo, consisting of the five poles of strength in the multi-polar world of that time.

Despite the accepted story, it should be remembered that in 1944, none of these five countries openly possessed nuclear weapons. It is natural that at that time people decided to restrict fundamentally the influence of two other poles of strength - Germany and Japan- to their national boundaries, and India was still a colony of Great Britain. It is not at all a coincidence that the United States, in building a mono-polar world, has with such persistence conducted its attack on the UN as an effective tool of the multi-polar structure. Yes, the UN needs to be reformed, the composition of theSecurity Council permanent members needs to be expanded, but its architecture should remain unchanged - as the organization, which still most adequately reflects relations in the modern world.

It should be noted that the reaction beyond the boundaries of our motherland to Dmitriy Medvedev's statement was rapid and quite proportionate. Ukraine's President Yukoshenko, having realistically assessed who, in the first instance, the fifth point specifically concerned, noted cautiously: "I will state frankly: we are concerned about the concept of regions of the Russian Federation's privileged interests, recently introduced into by the Russian president". And Arnaud deBorchgrave, an observer with the American newspaper the Washington Times, expressed his attitude very frankly, if in a harsh style, in his article of 5 September: "The world 'crusade' for democracy, by the Bush administration, is seen by the Kremlin and many of America's allies as a euphemism for imperial pride. The new five-point doctrine was the response of the Putin-Medvedev tandem: in essence it is telling the Americans to keep out of the space of the former Soviet empire - moreover, not only of the former Soviet republics, but also of the satellites or client-countries."

It is evidently not in the least a coincidence that Dmitriy Medvedev published a new foreign policy blueprint immediately after Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and before the second round of talks with Nicholas Sarkozy. It was fundamentally important for him that accords on the direct involvement of the European Union in a settlement of the situation in Georgia were achieved only on the basis of his negotiating partners' recognition of the realities of the multi-polar world.

As a result, it was agreed that Russia would use all its resources to guarantee security in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the European Union would also use its resources to guarantee security on the Georgian side. This was a compromise between the two sovereign poles of strength in Europe, in which no place appears to remain for a third pole (the United States). It was sufficient to see the expression on the face of the inveterate Atlanticist, Javier Solana, at the concluding news conference to understand that he was going all out to prevent a precedent from being set, which would finally lay to rest Atlantic mono-polarity. There was no need to wait for long: Solana has already stated that everyone had understood everything incorrectly and that the European observers (and the non-European ones as well) would, he said, not only be basedi n Georgia but also in Abkhazia and in South Ossetia.

The European Union is of course the weak link in the mono-polar world that is taking shape. Powerful internal contradictions are pulling it apart: Atlanticists against euro-centrists, new Europeans against old, euro-optimists against euro-sceptics. For the moment,the European Union, despite the frantic political temperament of Nicholas Sarkozy, remains an economic giant and a political dwarf. So the fight for a multi-polar world is just starting.