After the war a year ago between Russia and Georgia, East-West relations plunged to their lowest level since Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985. Now that US-Russian ties have been reset during Barack Obama’s recent visit to Moscow, the Kremlin has the opportunity to redefine Russia’s role in the world.
Throughout the 1990s, Russia’s efforts to build western political and security structures were repeatedly thwarted by the victors of the Cold War, notably the US. Moscow’s clamour for Nato membership or, alternatively, for a new pan-European architecture as envisaged by the 1990 Paris Charter of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), fell on deaf ears.
Driven by rising oil prices and the US’s unpopularity under George Bush, Russia’s foreign policy from 2000 to 2008 combined a 19th-century focus on “great power” games and spheres of influence with a 21st-century rhetoric of multilateralism in a multipolar world. The former explains Moscow’s robust response to the reckless attempt by the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili to reclaim the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Like other global powers, Russia was not going to be humiliated in its own, postSoviet backyard.
However, the Kremlin lost more than just the media war: it played into the hands of those in the West who are vehemently opposed to any rapprochement with Russia. Ending the OSCE observer mission and other unilateral acts have undermined the Kremlin’s purported commitment to international law and multilateral institutions.
Multilateralism provides no magic wand to solve the complex issues of border disputes and contested sovereignty. In fact, international law is mired in profound contradictions between safeguards for national sovereignty and territorial integrity on the one hand, and provisions for national self-determination and the responsibility to protect populations against state oppression on the other. Existing institutions have neither provided stable political settlements for the postSoviet “frozen conflicts”, nor resolved the problem of unrecognised states such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Nato is divisive, the EU and the UN divided, and the OSCE feeble.
Since he became Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev has sought to overcome this impasse. Before and after last year’s war he proposed a new security treaty that would unite all Europe’s nations and security organisations, including Nato, the EU and the OSCE. For largely ideological reasons reminiscent of the Cold War, the West has dismissed this initiative, insisting that the EU and the OSCE can handle the “frozen conflicts” and that Nato is best equipped to deal with other issues such as global terrorism and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The reality is that none of the existing organisations has either a coherent conceptual framework or sufficient political clout to solve the most urgent security problems. Territorial disputes such as South Ossetia or Kosovo and cross-border threats such as terrorism and organised crime can be tackled only with close cooperation between the USA, Russia, the EU and other powers, with the support of multilateral institutions. That’s why Mr Medvedev’s proposed new pan-European Security Treaty should no longer be ignored by the West.
But Russia’s influence in global affairs will remain marginal until Moscow does more than merely oppose western arrogance and Cold War relics such as Nato. Mr Medvedev needs to specify his proposals on a new security architecture and also come up with concrete policy ideas for three pressing security problems: Iran, Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan-Pakistan.
On Iran, Russia must abandon the policy of the Putin years, which consisted of treating America’s opponents as de facto allies. Mr Medvedev should use Moscow’s influence to press for Tehran’s suspension of uranium enrichment by providing technological input in civilian nuclear energy and investment in Iran’s neglected gas infrastructure. Instead of further sanctions, which usually embolden beleaguered regimes, Russia could help to develop Iran’s South Pars gas field, part of the world’s largest gas reserve. Moscow could also provide credible security guarantees against foreign attacks in exchange for Iran’s commitment to end support for Hamas and Hizbollah.
On Israel-Palestine, the Kremlin must use its extensive contacts among the Palestinians and other Arab nations to promote a unity government and to exert pressure on Russia’s traditional allies in Syria to conclude a peace deal with Israel. Like Ankara, Moscow has significant potential to act as an honest broker.
Finally, on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Russia can offer more than logistical support for US military transport. It could stabilise the volatile border regions in Central Eurasia, press its Muslim allies in Central Asia to train elements of the Afghan army and police, and perhaps dispatch a multinational peace-keeping force to areas that have been cleared of Taliban insurgents.
None of this will be easy, but the newly created US-Russian presidential commission could help to ensure close coordination on Washington’s and Moscow‘s initiatives in areas of common interest.
Under Mr Medvedev, Russia has the chance to transform its old image as a resentful and reactionary former superpower into a new reality as a responsible global power beyond the old East-West divide. Moscow’s action in the wider Middle East and Afghanistan will reveal the Kremlin’s real intentions.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090810/OPINION/708099904
