Summitry, experienced practitioners of diplomacy warn, should only be used when the principals are called upon to make a decision, not merely as a photo opportunity. Otherwise it invites grave misconceptions like George W. Bush’s observation, after his first meeting with Putin: ‘I have looked into his eyes and I have seen his soul.’ Whatever the US president saw, there was many an occasion for Bush to doubt the wisdom of this remark later. But in today’s world leaders understand the benefits of being part of the PR circus and they know well that TV footage showing them in serious conversation with other world leaders brings prestige and popularity, hope and reassurance, signalling to onlookers at Heiligendamm, Kennebunkport or Sochi that the great and the good are holding the globe’s future in their hands. Whether in Paris, Berlin or Moscow, this is an irresistible tool of self-aggrandizement – though not necessarily an instrument to keep the world in balance.
The methodology behind Russian foreign policy would be almost incomprehensible to Soviet diplomats of the Gromyko – ‘Mr Niet’ – school. But it would be immediately recognizable for practitioners from the time of Prince Gortchakov, Bismarck and Disraeli. In the summer of 1878, new borders were drawn across the Balkans, spheres of influence delineated, the small countries told to behave, to sign and to keep silent; a shooting war between the major powers was avoided, for the time being, and the concert of Europe saved, by Bismarck the ‘honest broker’.
Today, the underlying methodology is fairly traditional, with some overriding concerns forcing the big powers together; this is no longer the spectre of communist revolution, now defunct, but the North-South divide, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But what about the substance and the strategic long-term guidelines determining Kremlin policy? Is there something like a discernible theory behind all of this? Something that would make the motives of Kremlin leaders more predictable and, somehow, more manageable?
Damn my principles
The heirs to the Soviet system might well be expected, true to their theoretical upbringing, to follow a predetermined course in order to avoid serious contradictions and impasses. But if so, the inherent logic is difficult to discern. In fact there is reason to doubt even the existence of a foreign policy masterplan. Under the overall imperative of the national interest – which, however, is not free of contradictions when spelt out and translated into realities on the ground – it is a system of trial and error, driven more by domestic needs than by any grand strategy in the international arena.
There is, though, one overriding leitmotif expressed time and again. If, as Putin told Time magazine in early December 2007, ‘one country starts to dictate an agenda in international affairs, this will not meet with understanding but rather resistance’. There was no need to name the United States of America, which was in for a few lessons in diplomacy: ‘Today’s world requires that we use other methods and instruments to communicate with one another, and other ways to fight against today’s threats…. We need to negotiate and find compromises. The ability to compromise is not just a diplomatic formality you reach with a partner. Rather it is respect for their legitimate interests.’
The containment of North Korea and its nuclear installations, effected after long negotiations around a six-pointed table with China in the chair, US and Russia co-chairing, Japan and South Korea footing the bill, is cited as an instance of successful crisis management and a model for future collaboration. Unrequited admiration for the sole surviving superpower is what lurks behind most Russian protestations.
Chess being the favourite national pastime, the layout of Russian strategy today, tomorrow and far into the future can be compared to the careful, risk-averse combinations an experienced player is contemplating, always watchful of his opponent’s movements, expecting the worst. The backdrop, however, is a philosophy of old-fashioned power politics. The ideologically saturated rules of Cold War times have mostly been relegated to the archives. Fundamentally, a country’s foreign policy is shaped by forces beyond the control of politicians: climate, size, resources, population, neighbours – the Kremlin after the Cold War being no exception. Russia today, leaving aside the vast expanse of the Russian landmass, is more of a normal country than it was throughout the Soviet period, the foreign policies of the Kremlin – using the Foreign Ministry as a subservient institution – driven by immediate needs, short-term combinations and personal preferences. But there are certain ground rules for the formulation of the foreign policy agenda, defined by the domestic power structure as much as by the long-term idea of how to shape what the Kremlin likes to call the ‘near abroad’, relations with major powers like the United States and the PRC, and power – blocs like the European Union.
New era of confrontation?
The nearest thing to a theory to come out of Moscow in recent months was published by Sergei Karaganov, not a new name in the Kremlin’s corridors of power, in fact a former adviser to Yeltsin and, in more recent years, to Putin. Karaganov also figures as the Director of the Europe Institute of the Academy of Sciences and dean at the State University for Economics in Moscow. He would not publish something completely objectionable to the Kremlin. In fact his ideas fit in very well with what the world has seen in recent months, especially since Putin voiced his anger at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007. In Moscow Karaganov is respected as an authority on the West in general, the US and the bilateral security equation in particular. What he wrote in a Russian periodical that is being published under his supervision and, in an abbreviated version, in the International Herald Tribune in May 2007 sounded like the theoretical underpinning three months after that Munich outburst.
Was Karaganov’s message directed at the Americans, or the Europeans? Publishing it in the op-ed pages of the International Herald Tribune would have been strange if it was directed exclusively at the Europeans. Perhaps the message to the Europeans contained another, hidden message to the Americans: if you don’t play with us, we can play with the Europeans, one by one or all together, just as conveniently. And if you play hardball, the Europeans will get nervous, and we will be nice to them, and you will be the odd man out. The Romans referred to this kind of approach as divide et impera – divide and rule.
Karaganov, for starters, wondered why the state of Russian-EU relations was so poor. ‘Misunderstandings and detail,’ he mused, ‘push aside major matters of common interest.’ Was it not vital to prevent the wider dissemination of weapons of mass destruction together, or at a minimum contain their proliferation? Or take the fight against terror ‘which, after the inevitable American retreat from Iraq will be even worse and indeed mushroom’? Last but not least it was paramount to deal with Islamic extremism – the Russians think of Chechnya and millions of Muslims throughout their southern provinces: to deactivate, to block, or to fight.