2004-02-16
FOUR YEARS OF
PUTIN'S FOREIGN POLICY
Dmitry KOSYREV, RIA Novosti
political analyst
From the 1999-2000 foreign policy chaos to a fundamentally
new status of Russia on the world
scene and new problems related
to this new
status. From the leader of a state in crisis to the head
of state that has become a new leader
of the world economic growth. This is the service record of Vladimir Putin as the country's
senior diplomat.
In the autumn of 2000, this author wrote: "I want to remind
those who forget easily that
a year ago Moscow was shaken
by absolutely schizoid and completely
unbelievable scandals, like the one
over the Bank of New York, the smouldering Yugoslav war and the
recently avoided Russia-NATO confrontation over Pristina. Meanwhile, the Americans were preparing to walk
out of the ABM Treaty, which was
fraught with the disintegration of our security system.
Taken together, this formed a picture
of apocalypses and nascent isolation of Russia in Europe and America... But the appearance of Vladimir Putin disrupted these plans and the
attempts to put pressure on Putin's Moscow were ineffective."
Today, in 2004, some people may wonder
what all this meant. They
do not remember that the US air strikes
against Yugoslavia and open disregard
of Moscow's protests could have developed
into a war. At least this is what
could have happened after the forced march
of Russian paratroopers to the airfield
in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and the order
issued by General Wesley Clark, this
year's presidential candidate, to attack
the Russians. Thank God, the
British troops in the province refused
to comply.
Few people today remember the case of the
New York bank, which amounted
to the wholesale
persecution of US bankers who worked with
Russian accounts. The idea was
to "teach" the Western business
community not to work with Russian
businessmen, who were indiscriminately viewed as corrupt operators or members
of organised crime.
The new president began by getting down
in earnest to foreign policy. Before Putin, Moscow
had one problem, which I described in this way: "...Suffice it to recall the
long list of summit meetings which Boris Yeltsin
was invited to attend and
the favourite 'pastime' of that era. We tried
to guess which would Yeltsin
do: refuse to attend, send one
of his numerous premiers or the foreign
minister, or wreck the meeting
at the last possible moment."
The new leader used this
situation to his advantage. Here are a few examples. In
the spring of 2000, Vladimir Putin, who was running
his election campaign, refused (rather like Yeltsin did)
to go abroad
and in this way created a long
list of foreign leaders who wanted
to meet him.
That spring, British Prime Minister Tony Blair came
to Moscow and subsequently signalled to his Western colleagues that Putin was
a man one could do business with.
The world media wrote at the time that the
unexpected style of the new president
helped him to become one
of the club of world leaders. That style was
described as boring, ineffective, soft, remote, calm and
unruffled. Putin was presented as a classical example of a Eurobureaucrat, acceptable to the likes
of him. It was said that
he had not worsened relations with any country but had won new friends
without losing old ones.
As for the possible isolation of Russia, it ended at the G7 meeting in Okinawa in 2000, where Putin arrived from
Pyongyang and thus became a key
and irreplaceable figure at the summit
- at least during the discussion of the Korean problem. Putin's trial of strength was over:
he was accepted
as not just a competent leader, but as "one of them," G7 leaders interpreted his calmness as an unwillingness to provoke a conflict and a desire to
co-operate.
The latter was graphically confirmed at the turning point in the history of Putin's diplomacy. This refers to
his intuitive decision to call George Bush with an offer
of assistance after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center. The call was logically
followed by a long line of events
that created Russia's current status on the world
scene, the status of a power that can refuse to agree with
its partners, be they NATO, the USA or Britain, without
discontinuing co-operation with them.
But, the shrewdness of Putin's telephone call and his personal
style aside, it is the substance of his diplomacy that matters. A new Foreign Policy
Concept adopted in the summer of 2000 incorporated amendments on the "economic" and "pragmatic" nature of the policy
that came from the new
president. It was not isolationism or foreign policy
modesty but the proclamation of a new position, according to which Russia's
economic development should be the end
goal of its foreign policy and a powerful foreign policy instrument. Before Putin, Russia was
seen as - and indeed was - a victim of inept reforms and financial
crisis, which made her an economic disaster zone. The beginning of Putin's presidency coincided with the beginning of economic growth.
Few people remember that Vladimir
Putin stressed at the APEC summit in Brunei in November 2000 that he represented
a country that would register year-end economic
growth of 7%. That shocking news did
not sink in immediately. The world refused
to believe it, thinking that it was a striking but unique achievement. However, economic growth continued in the subsequent years, in particular thanks to a calm
and conflict-free foreign policy.
As a result, Russia has attained a new status at the end
of Putin's first term. It is no longer an international patient. Last autumn
international research structures that report the world's
economic results recognised Russia as a record-setting country in terms of economic growth and one of the
brilliant four world leaders of the future - China,
India, Russia and Brazil.
It was a signal event promising
Moscow radical change. We can foresee new trials
and tests similar to the
ones China had to pass ten years
ago. When China was viewed
as a poor and problem country, it was hardly noticed. But when it became clear in the 1990s that the Chinese
economy would soon surge ahead
of the US economy, the world's attitude
to China changed dramatically. The US administration has stopped its trials
of China's strength, which lasted throughout
the 1990s, only recently. China has become one of the
accepted world leaders. Russia is only facing this
trial.
It is this, rather than Iraq
or Russia's internal events, the elections in the USA or the
expansion of the EU that can explain the strange pause
in Russia's relations with the USA and
Europe. They have not decided yet what to do with
Russia (or India and Brazil,
for that matter) as a leader of tomorrow - to help
it or hinder its development.
The Russian mindset is marked by certain inertia,
too. The psychological shift from disease to
health, from the siege mentality
to international leadership takes time. The main foreign
policy problems of Putin's first term
were connected above all with
this inertia, with the psychological
unwillingness of departments
and major corporations to accept the new
situation, Russia's new role in the world, the fact
that they lag behind changes
in the world, and their inability
to think ahead.
This is why the foreign policy
of the next presidential term will be most probably
focused on a different set
of tasks than those he tackled
during his first term.