8 | FOREIGN POLICY AND THE PETROSTATE
For a long time, the main preoccupation of Russian policy makers, as well as the rest of the country, was with domestic issues. Unless there was a minimum of stability at home, unless it was clear who was running the country, unless the economy functioned to at least some extent, Russia was an object of politics, not a normal power pursuing its own interest. Gorbachev and Yeltsin had also been negotiating with outside powers, but their main assignment, as they saw it, was to limit the damage that had been caused; the Russian economy had collapsed, and the country urgently needed foreign help. A change came only gradually, a few years into Putin’s reign as president. Putin provided the minimum of stability that was needed, but this alone would not have been sufficient. It came not as the result of a spiritual awakening or because Russia suddenly regained its self-confidence and sense of purpose. It came for more prosaic reasons—the growing demand from world markets for oil and gas and the steeply increasing prices paid for these raw materials. Within a few years, Russia found itself strikingly better off. If instead of Gorbachev and Yeltsin (or another member of the reform party), Yegor Ligachev, once Gorbachev’s main rival, had come to power, he would have benefited from this turn for the better. The Communist Party and its leaders would have been praised in 2005 for achieving this turn in the fortunes of the country. The Soviet Union would still have collapsed, because the system was essentially rotten, and the fall of the regime could have come with even more devastating consequences. But it might have happened only two or three decades later in a world situation quite different from the one in 1991.
Striking misjudgments prevailed in both West and East concerning the events taking place in the Soviet Union, partly because everything happened so unexpectedly.
In Washington and the European capitals, there was enormous relief that the Cold War had ended. If it was not interpreted as the end of history, it was certainly seen as the dawn of a new peaceful era. With Russia on the road to democracy, the danger of war had been exorcised, military budgets could be drastically reduced, and Western countries could at long last devote their efforts and resources to tackling long-neglected domestic issues. Most observers followed events in the former Soviet Union with a mixture of goodwill and a steady decline in interest. Some Western observers thought that Russia’s road to freedom and democracy would be long and arduous, but this was by no means the majority view. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to explain this unwarranted optimism; given Russia’s past and present condition, it was rooted in wishful thinking. Very few considered the likelihood that the loss of empire might not have been the end of the story and that, as quite often happens in history, an attempt would be made to regain what had been lost.
The German precedent should have been remembered: Totally defeated in 1918 and powerless, Germany was able to return as a great power within a mere fifteen years. It should have been realized that when new tensions arose, they were not being provoked by Putin and the KGB. Like the German people in the early 1930s, a majority of Russians wanted not only a good life, but to be part of a great power, if possible a superpower. It would have been wrong to accuse the Russian leaders of keeping their true intentions secret. There had been complaints even by Gorbachev and Yeltsin that too much had been expected from the West and that Soviet concessions had not been reciprocated in the 1990s. Steps had been taken by the West (such as expanding NATO) that were considered a provocation in the Kremlin.
Some of these complaints were difficult to understand—for instance, those concerning purely defensive measures by the United States (such as installing radar and some other components of missile defense in Eastern Europe to deal with the Iranian threat). But the West failed to take into account traditional Russian fears and suspicions. Be that as it may, it was not true that the Russian leaders failed to make their position clear. This was done perhaps most clearly in some of Putin’s speeches. Nevertheless, up to about 2003 the key words as far as American-Russian relations were concerned were friendship, cooperation, engagement, freedom agenda, equilibrium, bilateral, pragmatic, and so on.
People in Moscow expected help from the West, but it was not clear in what way the West could have helped except by World Bank support. But there was also the suspicion, small in the beginning but steadily growing, that the West would take advantage of Russia’s weakness. Some went further and expressed the conviction that the fall of the Soviet Union had been engineered by Western imperialism. Zapadophobia (fear of the West) grew in Russia by leaps and bounds. There was a deep-seated conviction that any initiative that was good for the West was bound to be harmful for Russia and should therefore be rejected. The radical Right, which had emerged as a force to reckon with in Moscow, was praying for a revival of the Cold War. Russia faced bankrupcy more than once in the 1990s and the economy would have collapsed but for Western bailouts. But this fact was mentioned seldom if ever by Russian leaders.
During this period, the United States was still mentioned occasionally as a “strategic partner.” Russian leaders more often invoked the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as their new favorite partner. This was not taken too seriously in the West because the BRIC had little in common either politically or economically, nor was there much interest in a close collaboration with Russia. Moreover, some of them faced serious domestic and/or economic problems.
This Russian attitude found its concise formulation in a polemical speech by Putin at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007. It was a strong attack against unipolarity—meaning the United States, which had emerged as the sole remaining superpower. Under the cover of spreading democracy, the United States was using military force all over the globe, thus endangering world peace.
Some Western leaders were shocked by the fierce tone; they should have been grateful to Putin for clearing the air. They should have been aware that, as Angela Merkel put it in a talk with President Barack Obama at the time of the Ukraine crisis, Putin lived in a different universe. This was true. However, they had been mistaken in assuming that their universe was the norm and Putin’s the outdated exception. They had also been mistaken in their belief that given its demographic and other weaknesses, Russia was no longer important; this was probably true from a long-term perspective, but it was wrong with regard to the next decade or two, given Europe’s weakness and America’s apparent desire to reduce its activities in world affairs following Afghanistan and Iraq. As far as Washington was concerned, Russia was still in a position to cause a great deal of mischief.
Putin had given due warning. Why did the Europeans not invest more in the Russian economy? He could have blamed the Chinese even more when they took a hard look at the Russian economy and decided not to invest, but this he could not do. He upbraided the West for its “colonialist attitude.” He expressed his anger on various other occasions. And it was not only the mood of one person: He had the support of public opinion, the majority of the people. It found its expression in a variety of political documents, such as “The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept” (2013) and the Plan Oborony (the new military doctrine of 2010). These documents were hardly noticed in the West, on the assumption that if important changes were taking place in Russian thinking, they would hardly be discussed in detail in official documents of this kind.
But on this occasion the Kremlin was quite outspoken. It emphasized the international power shift from West to East, from Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Whereas previous such documents (2005–06) discussed the need to liquidate the remnants of Cold War attitudes, this was now ignored. In earlier documents, the possibility of interaction with NATO had been considered, but this too was no longer part of the agenda. Instead, the need to establish closer relations with China and India received high priority. In contrast with isolationist trends in America and European foreign policy, Russian foreign policy grew more expansive, something many in the West failed to see. New problems and new opportunities turned up, including interest in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Since Russia had become stronger, it could take the initiative in various directions.
Russian foreign policy makers, needless to say, would not discuss all their foreign policy problems in the limelight; there was a limit to glasnost. At least some of them must have known that the whole Eurasian concept was a dubious and windy one (as a prominent British diplomat put it). Russia was part of Asia, but not a very important and welcome one, and the countries of Asia were not waiting with bated breath for its appearance. Russia was not welcomed with great enthusiasm in Asia; it was considered essentially a European country.
Furthermore, the shift from West to East in world politics was a mixed blessing from the Russian point of view. If Russia did not move with great caution, it would end up as a junior partner, playing second fiddle to China. In its anger about the West, Russia was strongly tempted to ignore this, given the traditional suspicions concerning Western policies. Russian emotions could easily prevail over sober, critical judgment. It was the old story of Russian policy makers detecting threats where none existed or were not of great importance. Perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps Russia needed the lesson of being a junior partner in order to free itself from concepts and prejudices of a past age?
If the Eurasian concept had at least a weak base in geopolitical terms, what can be said about the orientation toward the BRIC countries? In a Russian concept paper about the participation of the Russian Federation in the BRICs, there were many pages about the great benefit of the strategic objectives of such an alliance, about strong support for generally recognized principles and norms of international law, of the Russian Federation standing in favor of positioning the BRICs in the world system as a new model of international relations overarching the old dividing lines between West and East and North and South. Declarations of this kind were showing that Russian diplomats had mastered the United Nations political gobbledygook. But what had it to do with the realities of world politics? What strategic benefits were likely to accrue to Russia from a close collaboration with Brazil and South Africa?
The realities of world politics were the deterioration of relations with the United States. Ukraine was a constant bone of contention well before the Crimea crisis of 2014, Georgia, Syria, the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in the United Kingdom, the fate of some adopted Russian children in the United States, the Iranian nuclear bomb, and the defector status given in Moscow to Edward Snowden (the American revealer of secrets who had been told by Putin in person that in Russia such practices did not occur). These and other irritations bedeviled relations between the two countries.
President Obama was still moderately optimistic, talking about a reset in relations and promising President Dmitry Medvedev that if and when reelected, he would be able to devote much more energy to a reset to improve relations. But it all came to nothing. The Russians tried to explain to the Americans that their concept of (sovereign) democracy—with the emphasis on sovereign rather than democracy—was different from the Western and especially the American concepts. “Sovereign democracy” was an invention of Vladislav Surkov, the leading idea man in the Kremlin and also Russia’s best piarchik (public relations expert); not for nothing had he been president of the all-Russian advertising agency.
As far as many Russians were concerned, democracy meant disorder, if not chaos. The Russian system had to be authoritarian at least to some extent, and to harp on democratic values and human rights in these circumstances was pointless and counterproductive. But this did not register for a long time in Washington and other Western capitals. Perhaps it could not be accepted, if only because it was needed as a counterweight against the permanent anti-American propaganda of the Russian media.
Russia and the European Radical Right
Why did Russian relations with the West go wrong? A Russian version by Maxim Bratersky published in Global Affairs (2014) is interesting and superficially, at least, partly plausible. It certainly gives an indication of the ideas underlying the conduct of Russian foreign policy at the present time and in the years to come.
The reasoning in brief goes as follows: Russia’s 2012 presidential elections were a watershed in relations between Russia and the rest of the world. Integration into Western structures as an ideology was replaced with preserving Russia’s independence and turning toward partners in the east and south. The goal of dissolving the national economy into the world market was changed for ensuring the country’s reindustrialization, laying the foundation for its economic independence, and establishing an economic association of its own.
The strategy of looking for compromises with Western leaders gave way to restructuring the world system in cooperation with non-Western countries, where Russia would be one of the leaders. In Russia’s foreign policy philosophy, the values of the naïve liberalism of the 1990s were replaced with ideas of realism and statism. The vacuum in Russia’s foreign policy ideology was filled with an idea of gathering the Russian world and giving priority to the protection of traditional Christian values. This development was more or less inevitable, because the West believed that Russia had lost the Cold War and from the beginning followed an anti-Russian policy. It wanted to turn Russia into a semicolony technologically and financially dependent on the West.
The West was strongly opposed to the preservation in Russia of a political regime that could concentrate resources on politically prioritized areas. In the 2000s, such a form of integration stopped suiting Russia, and it raised the issue of a “big bargain,” including (among other things) a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU. In the mid-2000s, the EU began to limit opportunities for productive investment in Europe by Russian capital.
Contradictions between the West, above all the United States, and Russia came to a head in 2008 after the Georgian-Russian conflict provoked by Atlantic initiatives and by a deadlock in negotiations for a strategic cooperation agreement between Russia and the EU. In 2009, after the G20 summit in London, Russia came to the conclusion that the existing financial and monetary system controlled by the West was at variance with its interests. The idea of integration with the West was finally sidelined because of an information war launched by the West against the Sochi Olympics, the Syrian crisis, and an acute conflict that broke out in Ukraine.
This briefest outline of the Russian version of events. It raises many questions: For instance, unprejudiced readers might be interested to know in what way the two wars in which Russia became involved during the last decade against Georgia and Ukraine/Crimea protected Christian values, as claimed by the Kremlin. They might want to know more about “the information war” in connection with the Winter Olympic Games and whether “gathering” could be a synonym for imperialism. Such quibbling, however, will not take one very far toward an understanding of the doctrine underlying Russian foreign policy.
The truly interesting aspect is the chronology, or rather chronological sequence, of events. While the Bratersky article argues that a basic change in Russian policy occurred in 2009 or at the latest in 2014, an article by Yuri Afanasiev, published in Perspective in February 1994, entitled “A New Russian Imperialism,” provides a different timetable and explanation, based on the official “Russian military doctrine” of 1993. Among the basic principles, it mentions a strong Russia as the most effective guarantee for the entire territory of the former Soviet Union; assumption of the role of peacemaker in all territories; the obligation to protect Russians in the near abroad; opposition to the extension of NATO; and defense of the interests of Russians at home and abroad. This the author says could be well-founded, but it created concern because the article states that Russian interests extend not only to the entire territory of the former Soviet Union but also to the countries of the former “socialist camp,” even if they believe they had freed themselves from Moscow’s control and have no desire to return to it.
In the 1990s, Russia was more than once close to bankruptcy and not in a position forcefully to pursue its aims. It depended on bailouts by the West by way of the World Bank. However, in the years after, following increased demand for oil and gas, the change in situation enabled the Kremlin to conduct a more aggressive policy. The author also mentions the assumption that this course of action was determined at least to some extent by a feeling on the part of the authorities of the “loss of past greatness” and the suffering from an inferiority complex. It is the voice of a country that “feels humiliated and insulted now that it is no longer listened to as in former times.” In brief, there was no dramatic change in 2008 or 2010, only a change in circumstances that enabled Russia to pursue its foreign political aims.
These comments are of interest, partly because they were prescient and also because they are relevant with regard to the question of whether another policy by the West might have prevented present and future tensions with Russia. It is possible that the West could have helped Russia regain its former position as a superpower, even if it meant acting against the wishes of the regions and republics that did not want to be part of the Soviet Union; but it is not clear why it should have done so. Furthermore, given Russia’s deep suspicion of the West, the Russian “ultras” would likely have believed that such Western help was in some hidden, unfathomable way aimed at hurting Russia. Any favors extended by the West were a priori suspect.
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IF relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated after 2006 to reach a nadir in 2014 with the Crimea/Ukrainian crisis, there was a similar process in relations with the European Union. Europe, in contrast to America, was heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies and Russian imports from Europe, especially of luxury goods. The Russians could threaten Europe with all kinds of countermeasures, but not too bluntly. An interruption of gas and oil supplies would immediately have reduced Russian earnings and induced the West in the long run to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas.
European investments in Russia also remained well below Russian expectations, partly because of doubts about the health of the Russian economy, but also because of political uncertainties. There were frequent irritations. The Russians were unhappy about the Kosovo situation, the British complained that Moscow refused to extradite a person thought to be involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the KGB defector. Russia had high hopes with regard to relations with Germany, its historical partner in many ventures. What had happened between 1941 and 1945 had been forgiven; Putin had good memories from his years in Saxony. Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor, became an employee of Gazprom, the leading Russian oil company. Schröder declared that Putin was a 100 percent democrat, a statement that probably embarrassed Putin a little because he had tried hard to make it clear that he was a sovereign democrat, not a democrat in the Western sense. There is no reason to doubt Schröder’s statement that he and Putin were close friends. But could the fact that he was employed by the Russians have also been a factor of some relevance?
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EUROPEAN interests as far as relations with Russia were concerned were not identical with American. Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies quite apart (about a third of total requirements), there were traditionally Europe’s closer trade relations. Hence it came as no surprise that European countries dissociated themselves from certain American initiatives with respect to Russia that were considered too harsh and aggressive. The imposition of sanctions following the Crimea/Ukraine crisis was one example, but there were others. On the other hand, there was no unanimity inside Europe; the countries closer to Russia, such as Poland and the Baltic republics, felt themselves more directly exposed to Russian pressure and therefore in greater need of protection. At the same time, no European country wanted to divorce itself entirely from American foreign policy. Russia tried to make the most of the differences between the European Union and the United States, but with limited success. For if there were deep-seated suspicions of the outside world in Russia, there was no great trust in Russian intentions in Europe, either. Suspicions increased whenever Russia acted provocatively even on relatively minor issues such as a Russian cyberattack against Estonia. Russia regarded Europe as a continent in decline, but not to be written off entirely in view of its economic importance. Russia had obvious misgivings with regard to European plans to achieve greater integration, whether it was through establishing a European army or enacting a European foreign policy or approving a common energy policy. A united Europe would have meant a stronger Europe, and this was the last thing Russia wanted. A divided Europe meant a weaker Europe and many opportunities for Russia to play out one country against another.
There were several EU attempts to draw Russia closer to Europe before the crisis of 2014. Most ambitious was media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s project to make Russia a full member of the European Union. Berlusconi, who served three times as Italy’s prime minister, had established a close personal relationship (he believed) with Putin, but his constant problems with the law in Italy made it impossible for him to pursue his project. More modest were the projects aimed at ENP (European Neighborhood Policy) and common economic and other spaces. But Russia did not favor projects of this kind; it preferred to have Europe join its own pet scheme—the Eurasian Union. In this, Europe had very little interest.
In addition, Russia has been cultivating several potential Trojan horses in the ranks of the European Union. This refers above all to Hungary, where an antidemocratic policy has become the new official state doctrine; and to Greece, which ideologically is not particularly close to the new Russia but is in an almost desperate search of friends and sympathizers in view of its weak economy and great domestic difficulties. It applies in particular to Bulgaria, where the pro-Russian Plamen Oresharski government—consisting of a coalition of formerly left-wing and far-right parties, exceedingly corrupt by any standards—managed to hang on to power for more than a year in 2013–14. The Russian search for allies is understandable, and as is the fact that it cannot afford to be choosy in its pursuit. But it is still remarkable that it ended up with an array of the least savory forces in all of Europe.
It seems a long way from the class struggle to solidarism, from historical materialism to a philosophy of idealism, from militant atheism to the Orthodox Church, from proletarian internationalism to staunch nationalism and chauvinism. But as Russia has shown, the transition is by no means impossible, even within a short time.
Once upon a time, there had been a Communist International, and Moscow could count on the sympathy and support of the radical Left in Europe. But those days are gone, probably forever, and if Russia wants allies in Europe, it must look in a different direction. As Sergey Baburin, Vice Speaker of the Russian Duma and one of the leaders of the Far Right, put it, succinctly if somewhat bluntly, in an interview with Sergey Ryazanov in Svobodnaya Pressa entitled “Our Fifth Column in Europe,” Russia has strong potential allies in Europe—namely, the forces of the extreme Right. The old slogan “Workers of the world, unite” has been replaced by “Nationalists of all countries, unite.” They are anti-American, anti–European unity, and anti-NATO and can be counted upon to support Russia in various ways.
This idea had occurred to Russian leaders for a number of years as Russian policy at home and abroad had become more and more right-wing and nationalist, both ideologically and in political practice. The European Left, especially the Communists and former Communists, had been very slow in realizing this. Some of them were still thinking of Moscow as the bulwark of progressive mankind, socialist in orientation. Why this happened is not easy to explain. In part, it was probably genuine ignorance of the changes in Russia; in part, such reluctance to accept these developments may have been psychological, mere wishful thinking.
Leaders of the European extreme Right had been invited to the Russian capital well before the Baburin interview. The French Naitonal Front was even given a Russian loan to finance its campaign. As support for these politicians and ideologists (some of them quite close to neo-fascism) became stronger, largely as the result of a growing aversion against Brussels, the European ultranationalists gained political importance. The European fans of Putin were attracted by his religious inclination and his image as a critic of such decadent Western ways as homosexuality and of course as a leading anti-Americanist.
Russia and the European right-wing extremists certainly have common enemies, but to what extent do they have common values and beliefs? It would be too facile to dismiss this new budding alliance as a pure marriage of convenience. Russia has moved to the right and to a significant extent very far to the right. How far it will eventually move, only the future will tell. But since old-style conservatism is no longer very attractive (or effective) in the modern world, it needs a good measure of populism, and this is bound to bring it fairly close to fascism. Could it manage in the long run without a single state party, without a leader and a leadership cult, without a heavy propaganda machinery and repression? Only if it proves to be very successful and popular. In the long run, this is not at all certain.
An alliance between Russia and the European Right is in no way unprecedented. It had been part of European politics for a century—from the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) to the Russian Revolution. The Soviet connection with the European Far Left has been of shorter duration.
Russia had always been on the lookout for friends and agents of influence in Europe, mainly to embellish its image in Europe, which had not been as good as it wanted. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the outlook seen from Moscow had been promising: Russia had defeated Napoleon, the anti-Napoleonic forces, the nationalists and patriots—especially those from Germany such as Baron vom Stein; Karl August von Hardenberg; Johann Yorck; August, Count Neidhardt von Gneisenau; and Ernst Moritz Arndt who had congregated in Russia or cooperated with the Russians. But soon after, a countermovement developed. Russia stood for oppression. In a number of conferences (Olmütz, Karlsbad), it coordinated the ban on freedom of expression. Agents of influence such as August von Kotzebue and Leopold von Gerlach were operating, but Kotzebue was assassinated, and for public opinion, especially democratic opinion, Russia was the enemy par excellence. Alexander Gorchakov, the Russian foreign minister, followed, broadly speaking, a pro-German line, just as Bismarck was pro-Russian.
But public opinion was bitterly opposed to Czarism; Russia’s only friends were on the Right. Admiral von Hintze, a confidant of the German emperor, wrote in a report to Wilhelm II a few years before the outbreak of the war that there was a common interest in holding down the Poles and the Jews. This trend became particularly pronounced toward the end of the century with the anti-German Triple Entente. The main task of Russian diplomats and the agents of the Okhrana (the Russian secret police operating inside the country and abroad) was to try to create a climate at least somewhat more sympathetic toward Russia.
Russia found a number of talented agents, such as Olga Novikoff in London and several ladies in Paris—some operated out of conviction, others because they were paid well. French newspapers and periodicals from the leading dailies to the Revue diplomatique and the Revue des deux mondes received substantial subsidies. Alexander Benckendorff, a Russian diplomat in London, sent a list of the newspapers with whom he had established contact to his ministry. It was a very impressive list, and the newspapers for whatever reason played down the importance of the 1905 revolution and the pogroms as well as other unpleasant occurences. The situation today is similar. Russians not only buy The Independent and the Evening Standard in London but also newspapers in Paris. In Germany, the conservatives were divided as far as the attitude toward Russia was concerned. The arch-conservative Kreuzzeitung was in favor of Russia, but after Bismarck’s resignation, the voices calling for a preventive war became louder. It is reported that the situation at the present time is not dissimilar except that financial support is now provided not by embassies or secret agents but by corporations and business offices.
Russian-Chinese relations are now among the most important aspects of Russian foreign affairs, in both the short and the long run. They have improved considerably over the last twenty years. Most of the sources of immediate conflict, such as the border disputes, have been removed. Nevertheless, there is a yawning gulf between the extravagant rhetoric on partnership and the limited realities of cooperation. There are common interests, especially in the field of energy supply with Russia as a supplier of oil and gas, but these interests are seldom coordinated. This would be in neither the Russian nor the Chinese tradition of conducting foreign policy, which is dictated more by suspicion than by goodwill. In a wider perspective, China needs Russia less than the other way around. The balance of power between the two countries has changed profoundly and will continue to change. Fifty years ago, there could be no doubt as to which was the stronger of the two countries. Today, the population of China is about ten times larger than Russia’s, and this trend is bound to continue as the one-child policy in China has been virtually abandoned. The disparity in GNP is becoming more striking, and changes take place far more quickly than is realized by most. In 1993, the economy of the two countries was about equal. Today, the Chinese economy is four times larger.
Ten years ago, Russia was of importance to China in providing advanced conventional weapons systems and some limited missile defense cooperation. Today, most of what China needs is produced at home. Russian fears of China getting too strong militarily might be one reason its arms exports to India have grown substantially, but in view of Sino-Indian tensions, this may cause political problems.
After ten years of negotiations, an agreement was reached in May 2014 about Russian oil and gas supplies to China. This was an important step for both countries, for Russia because of the need to reduce its dependence on the European market, for China because of its enormous and permanently growing energy needs. But in view of recent and coming breakthroughs in the field, such as shale gas production (China having perhaps the greatest reserves in the world), the importance of an agreement of this kind should not be overrated. Paradoxically, with the widening of cooperation and the emergence of new common projects (such as the three concerning Sakhalin oil fields), the more formidable the Chinese presence in the Russian Far East and Siberia, the greater the political implications. This at a time when the question of whether Russia will be able to hold on to its territories in Asia is becoming more topical. With U.S. withdrawal from Central Asia and Europe’s standing in world affairs becoming weaker, potential conflicts between Russia and China will loom more strongly than in the past, when cooperation between Russia and China was rooted to a considerable extent in the perception of a common Western (American) danger. As this danger is beginning to recede, the base for cooperation is shrinking.
The main emphasis of Russian policy in Asia (and particularly regarding China) is on economic relations—Russian exports to China, Japan, and South Korea amount to $150 billion, and a further expansion has been predicted. But for this to happen, Russia needs substantial investments to strengthen its infrastructure, mainly in the field of transport. China will help in this respect, but it is driving a hard bargain, as with its negotiations over the price of oil and gas in the 2014 agreement, and this will not change in future.
In 2014, Chinese commentators uttered surprise about the lack of Russian interest in Chinese investments in economic initiatives in the border regions. Whereas the Chinese had been showing little interest in investing in major central enterprises in Russia, they were willing to invest in the Asian border regions but had always encountered difficulties and resistance on the part of the Russian bureaucracy—this despite the fact that such Chinese investment was needed. For the Chinese, this was not a matter of overwhelming importance, but they seemed to have been peeved by Russia’s resistance.
Since the 1990s, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been in force, encompassing Russia, China, and several other countries and providing a framework for cooperation in various fields. Annual meetings and various confidence-building measures followed. Eventually, in 2001, a more permanent mechanism was established, which was meant to deal primarily with security problems (including antiterrorism maneuvers). They provided protection to the Central Asian republics against “color revolutions” such as happened in Ukraine or protests against local governments such as that in Tiananmen Square. In other respects, the SCO has not been put to a test. There has been much talk about a comprehensive strategic partnership, but little action. Russia and China have common interests in Central Asia—for instance, if a serious terrorist threat were to emerge. But while moving cautiously, they remain rivals in this region both economically and politically.
The Chinese likely have no wish to become directly involved in the administration of the territories in Asia at present under Russian control. But the situation in future is a little more complicated. If Russians truly believe that the relationship between the two powers will not be affected by the fact that the population of one of them is about ten times larger than the other, and the disproportion with regard to the GNP and industrial output almost as striking, they may be in for a surprise. One of the main Russian complaints about Europe and the United States during the years after the breakdown of the Soviet Union was that they were not treated as equals. It will be fascinating to observe how much equality there is likely to be in future between two countries as unequal in most respects as Russia and China.
The relationship between China and Russia has become more that of an elder to a younger brother. During a recent international conference, an Asian scholar referred to Russia as the most recent but also the weakest power on the continent. Russia, needless to say, wants to be a partner rather than a brother, especially not a younger brother. The question arises as to whether it can escape this kind of relationship. Probably not, as long as the United States is considered the main threat by the Kremlin. It is the price Moscow will have to pay short of a fundamental political and psychological reorientation.
Russia’s relations with the republics that seceded when the Soviet Union collapsed is an issue that has featured prominently in the media and need not be discussed in great detail. The belief among Russian nationalist ideologues that their country cannot exist except as a great empire is deeply rooted and goes back a long time. To many Russians, a number of the regions that were lost (such as Ukraine) are still considered to be parts of Russia proper. Moreover, millions of ethnic Russians now find themselves outside Russia.
True, the Russian Empire had not existed for millennia, contrary to what numerous Russians believed. Many acquisitions were of relatively recent date. Crimea joined Russia under Catherine the Great in 1783, Georgia in 1813, Azerbaijan in 1813. The conquest of the Northern Caucasus took longer; the natives found in Shamil a talented guerrilla warlord and the fighting took about two decades.
Moldova had changed hands and was divided countless times and became part of Russia only in the nineteenth century. The majority of those living in the Baltic countries had been German-speaking for centuries. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had been independent for a short time only between the two world wars. Today, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians live there, but they (or their parents or grandparents) had arrived there only under Soviet rule after World War II. Siberia had been explored beginning in the sixteenth century, but it was sparsely settled only in the nineteenth century. Vladivostok was founded by a lieutenant and twenty-eight sailors in the 1860s. Even in those days, half of its residents had not been Russians. Novosibirsk, the largest city east of the Urals, is just over a hundred years old; Irkutsk, which comes next, was founded earlier, in the eighteenth century.
Central Asia became part of Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russian settlers began to arrive around this time, but primarily just to northern Kazakhstan and the big cities. The Russian protagonists of conquest were named von Kaufman, Georg Steller, Przewalski, Martens, Mannerheim—which indicates that they were not descendants of Rurik. Their message to the Russian public was that the locals of Turkestan (as it was then called) were dying to become part of Russia, but not everyone agreed. Alexander Blok, in a famous poem about the Scythians wrote:
You are millions, we are hosts, hosts, hosts.
Nevertheless, even if of recent date, by the nineteenth century Russia had become an empire, and its loss in the late twentieth century was a painful blow. It should have been clear that attempts would be made to recover as much as possible of the past glory if the opportunity arose. Many wondered, however: If the United Kingdom and France had accepted the loss of empire, why couldn’t Russia? Perhaps because of Russia’s conviction that it could not survive except as a great power.
As the Russian economy recovered following the oil and gas boom, the invasion of Georgia took place (2008), Crimea and eastern Ukraine were regained, and attempts were made to recover the initiative in other directions.
For their part, the Central Asian republics indicated a willingness to establish normal, even close, relations with Russia—provided Moscow did not intervene in their domestic affairs unless asked to do so. And such an arrangement may suit Moscow: These are poor countries and with the exception of Kazakhstan have few prospects for substantial improvement in the foreseeable future. Direct rule by Moscow would generate a conflict with China, provoke domestic resistance, and above all commit Russia to invest heavily in these parts without any hope of a quick return.
The United Kingdom and France had realized in the twentieth century that from an economic point of view, the ownership of an empire involves few rewards and a heavy price. The Soviet Union had a similar experience in the 1970s and 1980s. There were constant complaints even under Brezhnev that the Central Asian republics were not pulling their own weight but constantly needed financial help. The new Russia has to pay a heavy price for Chechnya and Dagestan, and the moment Crimea was recovered there were urgent demands for immediate financial support. In brief, empires were no longer a bargain.
Why should the Kremlin engage in a policy of expansion at a time when it faces serious problems at home? The impression was gained among outside observers that the Russian leadership was not aware (or at least not fully aware) of the danger of losing Siberia and the Russian Far East in view of the demographic issues and the disparity of economic power between China and Russia in these parts. But such an impression was wrong: The Russians were quite aware.
Back in 2001, Alexei Kudrin, the outspoken Russian finance minister, had spoken about the need of urgent and massive Russian efforts to improve the situation in these areas. Otherwise, China and other Asian countries would steamroll Siberia and the Russian Far East. When Dmitry Medvedev was president, he declared in a speech in Kamchatka that unless Russia made substantial progress developing the economy in the Far East, it would turn into a raw materials base for more-developed Asian countries, and if efforts were not speeded up, Russia could lose everything. Similar declarations were made by other Russian leaders, and Putin also promised much-needed assistance. But very little happened: Immigration of Chinese, legal and illegal, continued; for political reasons, the Russian authorities may have found it impossible to take drastic action against it. Siberia and the Russian Far East became progressively more dependent on Chinese services, imports, goods, and labor.
Something akin to a Siberian separatist movement developed, and two concessions were made by the Kremlin. The first was that residents of Siberia were permitted to give “Siberian” rather than “Russian” as their nationality in their internal passports. Second, in May 2014 Putin appointed General Nikolai Rogozhkin as his envoy plenipotentiary in Siberia. Unfortunately, Rogozhkin, however loyal and talented, specializes in the field of internal security not economic development, having neither the experience nor the financial resources to deal with economic development. And since Putin was preoccupied with the fallout of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, this new appointment was unlikely to solve the problems of Russia in Asia. Three months later, meetings by citizens considered Siberian separatists were banned, even though their demands were quite moderate.
Anatoly Antonov, a nationalist demographer at Moscow State University, published a number of projections the same month Putin appointed his new representative for Siberian affairs. According to Antonov, Russia’s population will halve within the next fifty years. Applied to Siberia and the Russian Far East, this would mean a decline from about forty million to twenty million. Given such a prediction, could Russia hold on to the vast territories between the Urals and Sakhalin? Migrants from Central Asia arrived in Russia in great numbers after 1990. But they were not warmly welcomed by the local population and after 2010 many of them returned to where they had come from.
A paradoxical and from the Russian point of view unexpected situation may develop. With the American exodus from Afghanistan and to a large extent from the Middle Eastern countries, Russia will face competition from China. The Kremlin would like to evade a situation of this kind, but it is difficult to see how this can be achieved. Suspicion of America and enmity against the West have been an integral part not only of the Russian security forces, but of the population at large. Following a lull in anti-Western propaganda in the 1990s, it became fairly strong in the decade after. A return of America and other Western countries to Central Asia or the Far East is most unlikely. This means that wherever in Asia Russia will try to strengthen its position, it is bound to confront China, not the West. In these circumstances, any attempt to pursue a strong anti-Western line would be recognized as an act of desperation. To avoid relinquishing its Eurasian fantasies, Russia may be forced to accept its reduced status as a “younger brother,” playing second fiddle to Beijing.
If Russia is willing to behave as expected by Beijing, being a reliable supplier of oil, gas, and other raw materials at reasonable prices, China may well abstain from more direct intervention in what is now Russia in Asia. The demographic balance is very much in China’s favor, but no one really wants to settle in Siberia.
What could a Russian government do to reverse a trend of this kind?
If ethnic Russians at present living outside Russia were to return to what many consider their homeland, this would certainly slow the process, but it would not affect the situation in Asia. Putin’s policy of absorbing non-Russians, mainly from the Central Asian republics, and integrating them could be another step in this direction. But this is based on the assumption that there will be a readiness on their part to be integrated. Antonov believes that in another ten to fifteen years, the government in power, realizing that the fate of the state depends on demography, will promote the image of larger families. This would involve raising the salaries of men to a level that will allow them to support such families in comfortable homes. It would also imply about a tenfold increase in health care funding and also family incentives to European levels. It is by no means certain that funding for a policy of this kind will be available. Finally, historical experience has not shown that rising living standards lead to an increase in the birthrate.
Discussions on demographic problems may seem not to belong to an analysis of foreign policy. But it appears likely that considerations of this kind will have a direct and decisive impact on Russian policy with respect to the near abroad.
The energy sector is the key to Russian domestic and foreign policy. It is also the best-known, most thoroughly analyzed and documented aspect of Russian affairs, for which reason there is no need to discuss it in great detail. The contribution of oil and gas exports has risen during the last hundred years from about 7 percent to about 50 percent. The term “petrostate” has been applied to contemporary Russia not without reason, for the attempts to variegate the Russian economy have not been successful so far, and it is unlikely that they will be successful in the near future. It is Russia’s only major weapon in foreign policy. The popular support for the government, the stability of the country, the well-being of the population, the allocation for defense, and many other issues depend on the export (and the price) of oil and gas.
If so, then how to explain that oil and gas exports did not prevent the breakdown of the Soviet Union? Largely because global demand was less at the time and the price of oil much lower. If the Russian economy doubled in size between 2000 and 2008, it was owing to oil exports and the price of oil and gas. If there was a plunge in 2008, the cause was the decline in demand for oil and gas. At the same time, the export of oil and gas was an important political weapon. If Belarus had to pay only a fraction of the price Ukraine did, the reason was not economic. In the 1970s, Russia’s satellites in Eastern Europe had to pay much less than countries that did not belong to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The Soviet Union was in the fortunate position of being able to produce relatively cheap oil, but as time passed, production became more expensive, and prices for foreign consumers, even political allies, went up, which caused resentment abroad. The central political problem was Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas: Russia supplied about one-third of Europe’s needs.
Our concern in the present context is not with the history of Gazprom, one of the most powerful international companies, or the tug-of-war concerning the various pipelines, or the many other fascinating developments in this field that took place in recent decades. Our concern is limited to the likely political repercussions of oil and gas exports from Russia. Unfortunately, developments in the energy sector are largely unpredictable, although they will be of great importance for a long time to come for producers and consumers alike.
The European Union has been unable to agree on a common energy policy. With the centrifugal forces inside the EU having gathered strength, it is unlikely that this will change soon. There is, of course, a limit to the pressure Russia can threaten or apply—if the price of supplies is increased beyond a certain limit, consumers will look for alternatives in various directions. Furthermore, Russia will have a vested interest in European prosperity, for a downturn of the European economy will mean a decline in Europe’s demand for gas and oil.
How does Russia see its prospects? Russian authorities have always been stressing that they are willing to do business with all countries, that their main interest is to maintain stability, and that political considerations should not interfere with these fundamental economic interests. This is a perfectly sensible attitude, but in fact political considerations have taken precedence over economic issues. Is this going to change in future?
According to a report of the 2014 International Energy Forum, Russian experts envisage a growing demand from the Asian Pacific region. They also expect a volatile situation as a result of politics interfering with oil and gas supplies. The considerable impact of shale gas and shale oil supply has turned the United States from an importer to an exporter of energy. According to Russian experts, the unconventional fuels will also have a significant impact outside America within the next ten years, although no one can predict how great this impact will be, how this will affect prices, how it will influence European dependence on Russian supplies, or whether it will lead to greater use of renewable energy sources or other approaches.
Specific Russian problems include a reluctance on the part of international companies—for both political and economic reasons—to provide the massive investment Russia’s oil industry desperately needs. Furthermore, there is widespread belief that the prospects of the export of natural gas from Russia are more promising than the prospects of oil.
The dramatic decline of the price of oil in 2014 (and concurrently the fall of the value of the ruble) may well be temporary, but it points to a great weakness in the structure of the Russian economy and its political consequences. The price of a barrel of oil reached almost $150 at one stage (2008). As these lines are written it is at $52.
Putin had the good luck to come to power at a time of rising demand and rising prices for oil and gas, especially after 2004. Realizing the paramount importance of the export of oil and gas for the survival of the regime led him to renationalize the industry. This too is most unlikely to change. Even the most daring experts are unlikely to venture beyond these seemingly obvious predictions.