Completion of this foreign political season was spectacular indeed. President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the United States, his trip to California, and negotiations with Barack Obama. G8 and G20 summits in Canada. Gas war between Russia and Belarus. Russian president’s visit to Kazakhstan where he attended a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community’s Council. Spy scandal in the United States. In fact, the season is not even over yet. The Russian- German summit and a series of other international functions are in the wind. The Russian authorities are compelled to keep an eye on the developments in Kyrgyzstan, South Caucasus, Middle East, Iran, etc. Anyway, even the list itself of these and other major developments indicates that Russia is playing instrumental roles in international politics.
Medvedev’s visit to the United States was probably the most important event of all. Observers appraised it as successful. Granted that political agreements between Moscow and Washington are undeniably important, there is much more to the Russian- American relationship. Medvedev won American general public’s sympathies all over again. Not that he went there to accomplish that, of course, but this is politics for you. Nothing can be accomplished without a positive image of a straightforward and assertive leader.
Russia desperately needs both Western investors and, no less importantly, academics, inventors, and managers from foreign countries and first and foremost from the United States. There are no doubts that Medvedev is doing his honest best to make Russia look attractive, to overcome America’s traditional skepticism and distrust and develop sympathies with Russia in America. From this standpoint, his conduct meets standards of the Western political culture and lives up to Western expectations.
Everybody knows of course that there is quite a difference between a Russia Medvedev wants it to be and a Russia that is. Medvedev went to great lengths to describe to the Americans a country that does not even exist yet. Even that, however, is quite fine from the standpoint of American mentality which seems to appreciate Russian president’s enthusiasm. The Americans dislikes whiners of whatever caliber. Politics is about the future. A genuine political leader cannot afford fixation on the past, no more so than he can act on the basis of past hurts or successes. Whenever a politician makes an emphasis on the past, it is time for him to accept a job with the nearest university where lectures on political history are always in demand. That’s America for you.
Deliberately or inadvertently, Medvedev behaved like a professional politician as they are known in the West, one who knows his country’s failures and shortcomings but has the savvy to mask them and concentrate on its strong suits instead. His emphasis on how national interests of Russia for him are a higher priority than friendly relations with any foreign country was certainly appreciated and understood in the United States. Promotion of national interests is something Western elites understand better than anyone else.
It goes without saying of course that the Americans’ sympathies with Medvedev do not overcome the problems with which Russia is associated in American mentality. The Americans cannot help being disturbed by the fruitless war on corruption, inequality before the law, dependance of courts on the political powers-that-be, absence of political opposition, problems with freedom of the media, etc. If anything, the Americans are hardheaded pragmatics. They want knowledge of what will happen during the presidential election in 2012, when they can expect the YUKOS affair to be history at long last, and many other things. A single successful trip to the United States is no answer to all these and other questions. And yet, the criticism that Medvedev painted too rosy a picture for the credulous Americans and described a country that has nothing at all to with Russia as it is, is not exactly convincing. The president was trying to up Russia’s competitiveness in international affairs and better its image, no more and no less.
No wonder that this was how Medvedev brought it up at the recent meeting with Russian diplomats and ambassadors. «Visit to the United States is proof that cooperation in the area of innovations might be a genuine project rather than anything paid lip service to. It should formulate a positive agenda in the relations with the United States, it should develop the potential of our relationship. And there ought to be more to the bilateral relations than elimination of missiles or quarrels over regional conflicts,» said Medvedev. Stripped of political correctness and plain officialese, it means that Medvedev regards cooperation with the United States in the area of innovations as much more important than everything else. He believes that this cooperation might become the basis of the bilateral agenda which is somewhat empty at this time (or looks empty).
It is therefore logical that Medvedev insists on a turn in foreign politics so as to focus the country on «... modernization of economy and first and foremost modernization of industry with an emphasis on elements of innovation economy... We ought to decide, however, cooperation with exactly what foreign countries looks particularly promising.»
Security of Russia, its role in the affairs of the world, and its competitiveness in the global markets depends these days on how effective this modernization will turn out to be. Image of the Russian Federation in the world, parameters of its political system and development, its foreign political objectives and bearing points — all of these are important tools to be used with discretion. It is not catching up with the rapidly developing world that Russia ought to aspire to. It had better try and establish the regime of permanent technological development. Spurts are not for the world as it is, these days. One has to be in the group of world leaders. More than be there, actually. One has to belong there.
