Highlights of Speech by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov at a Meeting with Faculty of World Politics Students of Lomonosov Moscow State University, December 11, 2006
Unofficial translation from Russian
Dear colleagues and friends,
I am glad to welcome the representatives of the country's leading institution of higher education, Moscow State University (MGU), to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I myself, like the majority of my diplomat colleagues, in my time received a start in life at MGIMO. But now graduates from many other Russian universities and colleges are also successfully working at the MFA, including, of course, MGU and its Institute of Asia and Africa. We have a keen interest in seeing well trained, thinking young specialists join the diplomatic service. We welcome the opening of your faculty and await fresh blood from you.
I already said this at MGIMO and don't mind repeating it. Work at the MFA is becoming a thankful job - primarily in the professional and moral-psychological regards. We again have a great country behind us, on whose position a lot depends in the world. This work is directly associated with the internal strengthening of Russia at a time when the world is becoming ever more interdependent and the distinction between the internal and external means for provision of national security is getting erased. For you to conceive better what the diplomatic service concerns itself with, let us have a talk about contemporary international relations and the place and role of Russia in them.
In the decade and a half since the end of the Cold War the world has radically changed. And although in its cast of mind some prejudices and intellectual inertia of the past still manifest themselves, including attempts to impose a hypertrophied significance of the factor of force, the green shoots of the new are ever more confidently sprouting around the world.
With the two-bloc standoff having receded into the past, the room for confrontation has objectively narrowed in international relations. The globalization of possibilities as well as the challenges to security and sustainable development leaves no place for national egoism and civilizational exclusiveness. There has come to take the place of the two systems' rivalry a competition of market development models overlapping the previous dividing lines. The democratization processes encompass not only some or other countries, but international relations as well. There is a growing understanding that only the world community's joint response to the key problems of modern development can be truly effective.
The demand for single-power leadership is falling as a result, and the "old" allied commitments, bolstered by ideological and civilizational solidarity, are getting devalued. It is not the cumbersome traditional alliances with fixed commitments, but temporary goal-oriented alliances of interests with a variable geometry that correspond to the requirements of our time of change to a greater extent. As never before, there is a need for network diplomacy that makes it possible to build a flexible structure of bilateral relations and participation in diverse multilateral formats which would, to the greatest possible extent, ensure the sturdiness of the international position of a country regardless of the external conjuncture.
The world has not become safer. Rather, quite the contrary. The root cause is the costs of globalization: the increasingly uneven development engenders conflicts on social-economic, interethnic and religious grounds; a part of them turns into hotbeds of terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking. The security deficit for all states, big or small, creates relapses of unilateral actions of force. Disarmament stagnation exacerbates the menace of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The conflict space in world politics is expanding, particularly in our closest geopolitical encirclement.
Lingering uncertainty about a future world pattern has from the outset been largely due to the weakening of Russia as it embarked after the disintegration of the USSR on the path of unprecedented economic and political transformation. Its other source is the syndrome of "victory" in the Cold War. It has received its material embodiment in NATO's bombardment of Serbia in 1999, in the new strategic concept and eastward enlargement of NATO, including the US military action in Iraq, in the striving to monopolize Afghan settlement as well, and generally in the craving for reideologization and remilitarization of international relations.
A new stage in world development is coming in. Many things are clearing up, including the limits of the possible in unilateral response and the use of military force. Stronger Russia is a catalyst for change, now able on a par with the other leading powers to participate not only in realizing, but also in shaping the global agenda. Without Russia and against Russia, not a single international problem of any significance can be solved today. We are all returning to the expectations that were associated with the end of the Cold War fifteen years ago. It may be said that in some respects those were lost years. But anyway we are all wiser now, taught by our own and other people's experience. The main thing is that all members of the international community should draw lessons from this experience for themselves.
The emergence of new global centers of influence and economic growth, and the more even distribution of development resources lays the material basis for a multipolar world order. The task of providing access by a wider range of countries and regions to the advantages of globalization and of building up its social component is also being tackled.
It is the totality of such factors that determines in the first place the incipient transition to a new stage of world development - the "post-post-Cold War" phase. Its main distinction from the previous one lies in the growing awareness of the commonality of all states in the face of the challenges and threats of the 21st century, which transforms itself into a tendency for the establishment of collective and legal principles in world politics. Legal - because the absence of clear-cut "rules of the game" only diminishes the sense of security. It is equally important that all these conclusions are now drawn from the experience of the last fifteen years, including attempts at international legal nihilism, unilateral response and reliance upon force.
Of course, no one expected that uncertainty and unpredictability in international relations, specific to the recent past, would go away overnight. But the contours of a future world pattern are beginning to emerge. There goes the accelerated crystallization of major international factors, including Russia, the European Union, the US, China, India, and the Asia-Pacific Region as a whole.
We have earlier been able than many others to comprehend the lessons of the Cold War, giving up ideology in favor of common sense; we are pragmatists, proceeding from life, the real requirements of people, the interests of their security and well-being, which are what ultimately makes up the national security and prosperity of the country. Russia is open for constructive dialogue and equal cooperation and has been firmly and consistently, but without confrontation upholding its national interests, which it does not separate from the interests of the world community as a whole. Such principles are increasingly gaining currency in the world. The forces gather weight that are keen to see a strong and independent Russia. Assuming, of course, that the notion of the strength and greatness of a state is defined otherwise than in the past: mostly in terms of the so called soft force, by which is understood, among other things, its foreign policy attractiveness, its team-play ability and its readiness to promote a positive agenda across the entire spectrum of international problems.
There is no state or group of states in the world today which we could regard as our adversary. We will not allow ourselves to be set at loggerheads with the Islamic world and will not participate in any new "holy alliances." As to the "European choice" of Russia, by this we mean, among other things, the striving of Russians for the socially-oriented economic development model intrinsic to Europe. That model was once a response to the "social challenge" of the Soviet Union, therefore we can regard ourselves as its coauthors. But the Russians' strivings were never limited to Europe. Russia for centuries lived at the junction of civilizations, developing as a multinational and multifaith state. Hence its unique role in the maintenance of intercivilization harmony, which not only terrorists but also those preaching tough ideologized approaches to world affairs try to test for strength.
A typical manifestation of that approach is the desire of the US administration to tie the effectiveness of counteraction against terrorism to the establishment of its own ideals of a social system around the world. Russia has gained freedom and democracy through suffering and will not swerve from this path. The artificial speeding up of the democratic process in any country can throw it back and undermine the legitimacy of those forces standing behind this undertaking. Neither can we agree with the attempts to take value guidelines beyond competition, which is acquiring a civilizational dimension.
Another characteristic example of the ideologization of international relations and unfair competition is the energy espionage accusations leveled at Russia, behind which the West's intention is visible to gain access to Russian energy resources while not forgoing anything in return. We are ready for a search of mutually acceptable solutions, for the closest cooperation, but only mutually advantageous. We will not give up our natural competitive advantages despite any pressure. It seems that the talk is about elementary business, which only recently they wanted to teach us. There's a problem again, which I think is that it's difficult for many to perceive Russia as an equal partner and have dealings with us on this basis.
The foreign policy independence of Russia is our chief achievement. In the contemporary globalizing world far from all can afford this. And for us it is a key question, the question of sovereignty. Without this, there is no sense of our own country. Russia is not suited for being directed from the outside.
We do not conceal the existing differences with the partners, but do not dramatize them either. In Russian society there is no place for anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism. The still lingering caution regarding the West diminishes as Russia becomes an increasingly self-confident power, a needed ally in tackling the tasks common to all, and an attractive economic partner. The West also well understands that there are far more aspects uniting than dividing us. We have enormous heaps of joint work before us. It is mutual engagement in the UN and the Group of Eight, the Russia-EU partnership and dialogue in the Russia-NATO Council, bilateral agendas and many other things.
Now and for the future, the UN remains a uniquely legitimate forum working out binding solutions to pressing international problems. As such, the UN serves the foreign policy interests of the entire world community. Herein are realized its universal character and central role in the international system of collective security. The reformation of the UN must help the further enhancement of its efficiency and be carried out on the basis of the broadest consensus of member states.
The G8 is an effective instrument for agreeing the approaches of leading states to major problems of world development. The priorities of the Russian G8 Presidency now drawing to an end, and the central themes of the St. Petersburg Summit, such as international energy security, the combating of dangerous infectious diseases and the promotion of education, correspond to the interests of all countries. Russia did and is doing a lot in terms of building up the political component of the Forum's agenda, only recently dominated by financial and economic problems. We're witnessing the transformation of the G8 into an increasingly significant factor of the formation of collective leadership in the world. Civil society is being drawn into this joint work, and the format of dialogue is expanding with the partners, among them big international organizations and interstate associations. The CIS has joined it this year for the first time.
Colossal (including labor) resources are concentrated in the Commonwealth space, and a considerable part of our compatriots abroad live in it. We are united by our common history, the intertwining of human destinies, our complementary economies, the shared transport corridors and many other things. All of this, including the common cultural and civilizational resource, is our competitive advantages. Hence the priority of this thrust in our foreign policy.
The potential of the CIS was not exhausted by the "civilized divorce" after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The prospects for streamlining the Commonwealth were examined at the recent summit in Minsk. Our approach is to find an optimal balance between renewal and continuity, preserve what yields dividends, and move forward in an ongoing fashion. Raising the effectiveness of the joint work is possible only to the extent that all the partners are ready for this. Those ready to go further cooperate in small integration formats on the basis of coinciding interests.
Russia bears the brunt of peacekeeping in the Commonwealth space, is keen on building up the humanitarian dimension of the CIS, and intends to develop relations with its neighbors on sober economic calculation. This is also going to benefit our relations with the extraregional powers actively working here. It is the openness which we await from each other.
The regular, eighteenth Russia-EU summit held in Helsinki on November 24 has borne out the strategic character of our interaction and the mutual interest in its further development and deepening. We, like our partners, attach priority significance to implementing the roadmaps for the four common spaces and to sectoral dialogues, particularly in the domains of transport and energy. We again conveyed to the EU that we will not ratify the Energy Charter Treaty in its present version, but do not object to elaboration of uniform rules for energy cooperation on the basis of the principles set into it.
We are pulling up issues directly affecting Russians' interests into the center of the dialogue. This concerns, in particular, contacts in the fields of science and education, student and scientific exchanges, and transition to a visa-free regime for mutual trips of citizens. We are ready for talks on a new basic agreement between Russia and the EU. We hope that the European Commission will soon receive the appropriate mandate. The deideologization of our discussions and a mutual choice in favor of transferring our cooperation onto a pragmatic basis and finding a well-considered balance between common values, whose interpretations inevitably differ, and common interests would be helpful in relations with the EU. All the rest will come by itself - as cooperation skills for joint work are developed.
Within the Russia-NATO Council, we are accumulating the potential for practical cooperation in the struggle against common security threats and challenges. At the same time we firmly raise the questions which we have about the transformation of NATO, the alliance's plans for enlargement, the reconfiguration of the US military presence in Europe, the deployment of elements of the American missile defense system here, and NATO's refusal to ratify the CFE Treaty.
The future of our relations largely depends on what direction the transformations in NATO will proceed in after the Riga Summit, and the extent to which the security interests of Russia are going to be considered. I will tell you frankly: NATO has yet to prove its viability in Afghanistan. We will see how Brussels will also react to our proposal on logical engagement with the CSTO in regard to the threats emanating from the territory of Afghanistan.
Among the priorities of Russian foreign policy is relations with the United States. A major recent achievement is the start of the implementation of the joint Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and of the initiative for multilateral cooperation in the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy, bearing in mind the creation of international centers for uranium enrichment in the context of nuclear nonproliferation. The bilateral protocol on Russia's accession to the WTO, signed this past November at the end of the meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush, is another proof of our capacity for compromises.
We are working on a permanent basis on such topical problems as counter-terrorism, WMD nonproliferation, the Middle East crisis, and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. A regular dialogue is being maintained on strategic issues. But there are, of course, some difficulties too, at times of a principled character. Bilateral relations are subject to the strong influence of the American internal political conjuncture. Where it does not work otherwise, we "agree to disagree," although Washington reacts to this sourly. But the illusiveness of the "unipolar world" is becoming ever more obvious, and the American side is having to get accustomed to the necessity to come to an agreement with the partners. We aspire to nothing more; we do not try to impose our approaches.
The rapid development of Asia has been one of the most important results of the collapse of the bipolar world. Russia's internal and foreign policy interests are conjugated in the Asian sector. In many respects we associate the development of Siberia and our Far East, without which it is impossible to ensure the reliable security of the eastern borders of the country, with Russian participation in the integration processes in the APR.
We actively used our participation in November's APEC summit for the advancement of our economic and political interests. Reflected in its outcome documents are the proposals put forward by us regarding improvement of the protection of energy facilities from terrorists and the forging of dialogue between cultures and civilizations. The partners unanimously backed up the intention of Russia to assume the APEC presidency in 2012.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is getting ahead of its time. Essentially it is an organization of a new type: not an alliance, but an instrument for the conjugation of interests and the solution of common tasks. Its activities are directed towards the formation by common efforts of an environment of stability and prosperity based on the principles of openness, consensus, mutual benefit and respect for the diversity of cultures and traditions. The increasing number of aspirants to partnership attests to the attractiveness of this format of cooperation.
Our relations with China and India are developing successfully. Positive economic and energy interdependence lies at their base. The trilateral dialogue is being consolidated, it has recently reached the level of heads of state. Cooperation has begun in the format of BRIC: Russia, China, India and Brazil - the world's leaders in rates of economic growth.
We are convinced supporters of politico-diplomatic settlement in the Near and Middle East and perceive no reasonable alternative to the search of comprehensive solutions involving all the states concerned. The Arab countries of the region adhere to the same position. The Europeans are pondering it. But the Americans so far do not depart from the present scheme of selective movement on individual issues. As a result, in tackling the Palestinian-Israeli problem, we come up against problems on other tracks. Involving Iran and Syria in dialogue and settlement is being put off.
We continue to be convinced of the necessity to convene an international conference on the Middle East. We consider that an international conference on Iraq would likewise not go amiss. We continue working in this direction. We hope that Washington will take the report of the Iraq Study Group of James Baker as an opportunity for a realistic policy change. All would benefit from this - the peoples of Iraq and the US, the region and the world as a whole.
The once widespread perceptions of the place of Latin America and Africa somewhere in the world's backyard even in the past did not correspond to reality; today they are an absolute anachronism. For Russia cooperation with the partners on these continents means a lot both from the viewpoint of the construction of a new world order and in terms of support for domestic business, ever more confidently developing foreign markets.
To sum up, I would like to stress that the fundamental principles of our foreign policy remain invariable at this stage. They are pragmatism, multivectorness, predication upon national interests with the abandonment of confrontation, and the building of equal, mutually advantageous relations with all partners. At the same time the changes that are taking place call for a comprehensive analysis of the international situation and our line in individual sectors of work and on concrete issues as well as for substantiated forecasts. That work in accordance with President Putin's instruction is being finished by us in the framework of the Foreign Policy Survey.
In conclusion I would like to dwell on the importance of the study of the history of international relations and of the diplomatic history of Russia. Experience, including the contemporary experience, shows that, for all the uniqueness of concrete situations, there are always some parallels between them, elements of commonality, which are a serious mainstay in foreign policy analysis. You have enough time ahead to take up this subject. I will give a couple of examples to confirm what I said.
In our internal development after 1991, in the foreign policy tasks that then arose before the country, there is much in common with the state of Russia at the period following its defeat in the Crimean War. The main thing is the priority of internal strengthening of Russia. All the rest must be subordinated to this key task. Chancellor A. M. Gorchakov, summing up the first decade after the Paris Peace, wrote: "Russia will be able to occupy that position only by developing its internal resources, which as of now are the only real source of political might of states; ... the primary duty of Russia is to complete internal transformations; ... the main attention of Russia must be persistently directed towards accomplishing the job of our internal development, and the entire foreign policy must be subjected to this principal task." These truths are fully applicable to our present situation and the tasks we are tackling within the country and in foreign policy. The Chancellor's words do not even require stylistic editing.
Other aspects are connected with imperial construction now and in the past. Characterizing the fatal turn which European history took after Germany's unification under the power of militarist Prussia in the second half of the 19th century, Henry Kissinger in his "Diplomacy" noted that Europe had been doomed to sliding towards war by the absence in the German establishment of a tradition and culture of moderate policy, that is the ability and desire to come to an agreement. In fact, it was the chase for the chimera of absolute security, even if achievable, then only at the expense of all other states, that led to the First World War. The historian Arnold Toynbee brought into scholarly circulation the notion of "suicidal statecraft," explaining the collapse of all the past empires. Moreover, militarism and confidence in one's own infallibility played the decisive role in this regard. Unfortunately, one has to observe all this repetition of the past in contemporary international relations.
December 11, 2006