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Alexei Bogaturov,
D. Sc. (Political Sciences) (MGIMO (U),
RF Foreign Ministry)
THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE U.S.S.R. HAS
CHANGED INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, BUT
DID NOT MAKE THEM MORE HARMONIOUS
The global system has actually been developing in a unipolar world for the past twenty years. Although, theoretically the potential of mutual nuclear containment of the U.S.A. and Russia in the military sphere still exists, its international political significance has dropped sharply. First, because the political will to use nuclear weapon in a large-scale war has greatly weakened in both Moscow and Washington, as compared with "Soviet times." Secondly, because such war is simply incredible. Thirdly, as a result of the emergence of a wide range of new ways and means of using force in the past twenty years, which allow the technologically advanced countries to attain practically any necessary political results with the help of non-nuclear instruments.
The emergence of high-accuracy weapons, a gigantic leap forward in space reconnaissance, a qualitatively new level of controlling military operations, the use of charges with depleted uranium, and other types of the latest weapons have considerably altered the character of wars. Planned wars and those being waged in the post-nuclear epoch have become smaller in scale and more complex
in organization and control. The classical pre-nuclear and nuclear wars have been imagined, above all, as an armed struggle with a view to crushing the enemy and forcing it to accept the conditions of the winner.
Wars in the post-nuclear epoch, beginning with the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, have become international political campaigns, just as military ones. The new strategic logic was now based not on the idea of destroying an enemy state, but that of submitting it politically and economically to the interests of the winner. The meaning of the war has now changed from defeating the enemy by force to "changing it to the order of the attacker." In the 2000th and the 2010th the political component of wars became equal to the military one, or sometimes even greater in terms of the expenditure of organizational, political, ideological, information, financial, economic, and other non-military resources.
The strike force of war now comes not as its culmination, but as its preamble followed by the stage of resource expenditure during which the military are unable to score victory by their own forces. As a result, wars now engulf more civil specialists of non-traditional profile than before - experts on public relations, religion, political technologists, psychologists, sociologists, and managers of various types.
On the other hand, there is the need for a military commander of a new type - not simply a talented strategist and tactician, but also administrator capable not only to win military campaigns and organize peaceful life in a conquered country, but also to obtain changes in that country according to a definite political design-project which has been prepared by the attacker beforehand. The ideal commander of today is not a general of Marshal Zhukov or Generalissimo Suvorov type, but rather a general-reformer like Douglas Mc Arthur, who not only "conquered" Japan, but also designed and established the foundations
of its new political system during the American occupation period from 1945 until 1951. This type is represented today by General David Petreus who carried out a pacifying mission in Iraq captured by the United States and is now trying to do the same in Afghanistan.
The new type of war, just as the new type of military commander, is a product of the changed meaning and purpose of military operations. In classical epochs the main purpose of wars was the establishment of direct control over a definite part of land surface with its resources. In our age the political aim of attack is not so much the destruction of the enemy, as the acquisition of a partner. Naturally, not an equal partner, but a junior, minor, dependent and influenced by the stronger partner.
Asymmetrical partnerships existed in earlier times, too. Such were the relations of the United States with all NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia. But these partnerships were taking shape gradually, on the basis of common problems in the sphere of security, and they were formed on a voluntary basis by diplomatic means.
The new experience of the 21st century lies in that the United States switched over to the formation of such partnerships through a war. Washington (and Brussels?) intends to make such partners from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There is not enough empirical material so far to judge whether such policy of forced partnership will prove effective. However, evidently, it begins increasingly to determine international behavior and practice inasmuch as the world's strongest power, the United States, actively contributes to its implementation almost everywhere.
It is not accidental that the phenomenon of forced partnership has come into being within the past fifteen years. It would not have emerged if the relatively weak countries had had a choice. Today the international situation is such that a state which, by any reasons, is
attractive for the United States in the role of a "junior partner" has very few chances to avoid turning into such without risking its sovereignty and security. The reason for the absence of any alternative is the hegemonic position of the United States in the world alignment of forces, and such state of affairs is a direct result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Under the bipolar order it was more difficult to recruit new satellites. To seize an attractive country was rather dangerous, for it could turn for help to the rival state, and this was fraught with definite risks. After the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. the risks have disappeared. Some "socialist brothers" have become NATO allies, which was advantageous to them. It took the United States less than ten years to include their resources in a pool opened for its use.
Later it became clear that it was not enough, or the quality of these resources was not high enough. Anyway, the Euro-Atlantic region with its entire potential seems too small. NATO became interested in Asia. And inasmuch as the idea of voluntary transition to the ranks of "subordinate American partners" was not too popular among Asian countries, it became necessary to resort to compulsion to partnership.
Of course, one could argue about "multipolar structure," "multiple-vector," BRICS, China, and even about the non-polar structure of the world. But it would be nothing more than intellectual games or nostalgic hypotheses. The point is not theories or poles, but the type of international behavior. And the type dominating now is the American - NATO, offensive, ideologized, carried on from the position of overall superiority and seldom agreeing to compromises. If the structure of the world is changing (this process is indeed going on), it can barely be noticed at the level of the behavior of certain states so far. Structural changes should not be ignored, but their real significance should not be exaggerated either.
A drop in military-political competitiveness of the international medium has led to changes in the sphere of resolving armed conflicts, where one-sided methods now prevail. Almost all serious regional conflicts in the bipolar epoch were prolonged ones and, apart from direct participants in them, several strong and medium powers were directly or indirectly also involved in them. A case in point was Cambodia, the south of Africa, Central America, or Afghanistan at the time of Soviet invasion. Accordingly, these conflicts ended with broad multilateral solution which, in a number of cases, was termed "national reconciliation." Except Afghanistan, such reconciliations were quite satisfactory.
The situation today is quite different. Solutions as such practically never happen. During the past twenty years there has been only one more or less viable solution on a multilateral basis, that is, national reconciliation in Tajikistan. It is indicative that participation of the West in it was purely symbolic. Thus, it was not completely symmetrical. This means that symmetrical solutions have ceased to work in the conditions of a unipolar world, and asymmetrical are not very positive and effective because they are not based on compromise, and the interests of a weaker party are suppressed by those of a stronger one.
Hence, a noticeable increase in the number of "frozen," unresolved conflicts - the Karabakh, Dniester, South Ossetian and even Israeli-Palestine conflicts. And solutions of the Kosovo, Abkhazian and North Cyprus problems can hardly be regarded diplomatically optimal or satisfactory. Stronger parties force their solutions on weaker ones, but fail to secure the necessary international political support to them. The one-sided type of regulation prevails. The sides use equal substantiations for their actions, but the model of their behavior is equally uncompromising.
It's worthy of note that the viability of such solutions should cause serious doubts, but reality is different. Such uncompromising and unresolved solutions demonstrate relative durability. Apparently, they can now be regarded as a kind of unrecognized norm, a new working variant of conflict solution and management in the 21st century.
The absence of a counterbalance to the West in the person of the U.S.S.R. has led to a principal change of the type of solution of international conflicts, having made the conditions of these solutions less balanced and more one-sided, but nevertheless rather durable sometimes. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to acknowledge the objective character of this change and stop wasting time and resources on resolving problems which have already passed the stage of "self-regulation" (as, say, in Kashmir) or have already be solved by force with the definite preponderance of the interests of only one side, but thoroughly and reliably enough (Bosnia, Kosovo, Karabakh, Abkhazia)?
There is another aspect of present-day conflicts. The above-mentioned conflicts have begun as local quarrels without participation of big countries, whereas conflicts in the 2000th broke up as a direct consequence of the attack of the United States on relatively weak Asian countries. The conflicts of the 1990s look like a result of more or less spontaneous manifestations of enmity or misunderstanding between adjoining ethnic groups or peoples. The wars of the 2000th have been planned by one country and seem to be submitted to the logic of one center.
Their formal ideological and political background is democratization with the help of force. This chimera surpasses the Marxist dogmas of the export of socialist revolution. But the ideology of forcible democratization is a disguise. The strategic result of the conflicts of the 2000th is an unsuccessful attempt to consolidate part of
the international periphery under the aegis of the United States on condition of its turning into a zone of predominantly American influence. The absence of rivalry for influence in this international political area makes the process of this consolidation fully dependent on the will and resources of the United States. In the absence of the Soviet Union neither China nor Russia can, or wish to, prevent Washington to lend this area a configuration the most advantageous to it.
A loose, uncompetitive international media provokes the American establishment to gain advantageous positions in the continental part of Eurasia with due account of a possible rivalry with China. Solution of conflicts with the participation of the United States is not a proper solution. It is actually a forcible suppression of the seats of resistance to the expansion of NATO against important Asian territories.
This suppression has been of a preventive character for twenty years already. It is effected under the pretext of the need for democratization of the world in any spot of the planet, if control over it seems necessary to the American establishment for the strengthening of its global superiority, which the United States wishes to preserve as long as possible in the absence of the U.S.S.R.
It is not accidental that Washington reacts to Iran's cussedness -a strong and outspoken enemy of the Americanization of the Middle East and northern parts of South Asia. Iran has not been included in the system of American "submitted partners," it is hostile to the United States and a breach in the belt of the states friendly to Washington from North Africa to Central Asia and borders with the PRC.
After 1991 Russia has retreated on all parameters of international strength and has not reached the status of the Soviet Union during the past twenty years. Non-western countries have gained from that change
not less than the West. China and India have been able to realize the advantages which they acquired in the 1990s when the United States, encountering no opposition on the part of Moscow, began to give much more attention to those states, wishing to prevent their return to blocking with Moscow against Washington.
The international reorientation of India looked especially contrasting, as compared to the epoch of bipolarity and non-alignment. The objective course of the socio-economic development of India brought it to the boundary in the 1990s when it urgently needed an influx of advanced technological experience, foreign investments and broader and closer ties with the most developed and prosperous states for further progress.
The Soviet Union, even if he had continued to exist, would have been unable to provide India with what it needed at the time. On the contrary, the more than half-century orientation of New Delhi to Moscow was an obstacle for the development of its ties with the West. The collapse of the U.S.S.R. removed it at once and proved absolutely painless for India.
About that time it became evident that the heritage of traditional Gandhi-ism became exhausted. A bipolar political system took shape in the country. New people came to head the Indian National Congress, who did not want to break up with the traditional Nehru-Gandhi values, but were able to revise them without being accused of revisionism. New political figures paid tribute to cooperation with Moscow, but realized that the country's priorities were not connected with it.
India has joined the economic globalization processes. Thanks to outsourcing Indian science-intensive enterprises began to work for American corporations, enriching themselves, earning profit to overseas corporations and augmenting the Indian production and technological potential. An economic-production base of Indian-American
rapprochement has come into being and the two countries have begun to display greater political interest in each other.
Pakistan has helped India in this respect, perhaps, contrary to its will. Weakened by the inner struggle between the military and civil elites, confrontation between tribes and their separatist tendencies, as well as the struggle of the secular authorities with Islamic extremists, Pakistan ceased to be a bulwark of American policy in South Asia in the 1990s - 2000s.
What was worse, the acquisition of nuclear weapon in 1998 combined with internal instability has created a threat of the "Islamic bomb," which contributed to the United States and India drawing closer. Indian diplomacy was able to wrest from Pakistan the role of a privileged partner of the United States in regional affairs. Washington took a favorable position to India concerning its "illegal nuclear status" and recognized New Delhi's stand on a number of international issues. Thus, the situation of American-Indian partnership has taken shape, atypical of the bipolar epoch, which replaced the traditional scheme of the American-Pakistani alliance.
Pakistan has not simply lost its former principal position in the system of American priorities in South Asia. Scenarios began to be evolved in the United States, according to which Pakistan could become a hypothetical enemy of American policy in the region due to internal cataclysms (seizure of power by religious fanatics). In any case, India has turned to be the privileged regional partner of the United States. However, India does not look like a junior partner of Washington. Meanwhile, it is a well-known fact that American foreign-policy tradition does not recognize equal partners. This is one of the main reasons why it has been impossible to build a system of partnership of the United States with Russia. This is why the partnership of New Delhi and Washington is a rather specific
phenomenon in which the element of partner relations is balanced by elements of India's independence. Although India has become closer to American economy and policy, it does not allow its foreign policy "to dissolve" in American one and become its emanation, like foreign policies of Britain, Japan or Poland.
From the point of view of American tradition, American-Indian cooperation cannot be regarded partnership, inasmuch as India retains its foreign-policy independence in its relations with the United States. Perhaps, the relations of Washington and New Delhi represent a new type of "partnership at a distance," detached partnership," as it were.
It is indicative that India is more successful in its relations with the United States than Russia. True, the specific feature of New Delhi's partnership with Washington lies in that India gains more than loses from it. This distinguishes it from the quasi-partnership relations of the United States with Russia, in which Moscow now loses part of freedom of actions, which used to be almost boundless previously.
"Detached partnership" allows India to preserve positive, constructive relations with the U.S.A. and at the same time participate in BRICS meetings and other diplomatic and economic maneuvering. The disintegration of the bipolar world and the collapse of non-aligned policy did not prevent India from using new features of the global situation for its benefit. India hardly has any nostalgic feelings toward the former U.S.S.R, although it is, perhaps, thankful to it not only for its historic services in the matter of strengthening India's independence, but also for the objectively greater international maneuvering, which became possible for them after 1991.
China is another matter. In contrast to Russia and India, it has not proclaimed its desire to establish too close relations with Washington. Beijing cherishes discretion. Partnership for the United States is a sort of a regime of American patronage toward somebody who agrees to it.
Whereas partnership Chinese way is "partnership of symbols and farther goals": "we are friends and partners in view of a certain danger," but each of us cherishes friendship and maintains partnership as he thinks fit. The only necessary thing is that his actions should not contradict the proclaimed aim of friendship. This is an original, but effective version.
Such was the logic of Chinese-American and Chinese-Japanese partnership against the "hegemony of one power" (of course, the U S S R.) from 1972 to the time of the 12th Congress of the CPC in 1982. At the time there was a host of frightening hints and statements and ostentatious, almost stormy, diplomatic maneuvering, but.. .almost no really concrete actions.
In the 1990s and later the rhetoric changed, but the logic seemed to remain the same. It was Chinese diplomacy that introduced the term "strategic partnership" in international parlance. But no expert in the PRC, Russia or the U.S.A. knows for certain its precise meaning. Although it is known that China is connected by this "partnership" with a broad range of countries, big and medium. Among them are the United States and Russia, Central Asian countries, Japan and South Korea, and some countries of the European Union and Southeast Asia.
This partnership allows Beijing to develop relations with Russia, the United States and India pragmatically, without any complications of a political or ideological nature. Chinese diplomacy does not bother itself by searching for any common denominator. The PRC cooperation with each of these countries develops as if in parallel worlds. If it should quarrel on the subject of Syria at the UN Security Council, then its priority will be a diplomatic bloc with Moscow. If trade preferences and investment regimes in East Asia are discussed, pride of place is given to interaction with the United States and Japan. If another series of quarrels around Taiwan is in the offing, the common approaches of
Moscow and Beijing to the problem of the territorial integrity of states come to the fore. Thus "strategic partnership" turns out to be the common decision "to remain friends for a long time" without burdening oneself with obligations to render practical help.
It is difficult to say now whether such attitude of the PRC to partnership will be temporary or principal. Sometimes it seems that China agrees with the American understanding of partnership as one of the leader with the object to be guided. Simply, China is not yet ready to lead too many countries. Beijing realized earlier than Moscow that partners to be led are a burden (this is related to the question of Russia's relations with its CIS neighbors).
"Deng Xiaoping's school" has taught the Chinese to measure their desires by possibilities. So far Chinese diplomacy acts on the platform of "easy partnership based on desire and possibility." It is called strategic. In short, it is partnership as non-aggression.
China's attitude toward present-day Russia is closely intertwined with its relation to the Soviet heritage. On the one hand, Russia is the legitimate successor to and owner of a great historical heritage whose value it cannot assess properly enough. On the other, it is a country which is unable to become strong enough in order to pursue a policy worthy of a great power. Or to preserve such independence in international affairs as China does and at the same time be as attractive economic partner as China for the countries which are suspicious of Russia, above all the United States.
Then again, that country, respected and accessible as it is, is an object to be used in the interests of China, which wants to find ways for the peaceful development of Russian resources without entering in an open contradiction with it and at the same time taking into account all drawbacks and vices of the Russian state organism and society.
Russia: Power as an Instrument of Drawing Profit
Deceived by Boris Yeltsin, who himself had been deceived by Leonid Kravchuk, Russia disavowed the Soviet Union in the hope to become rich as quickly as possible, having got rid of the need to subsidize the Transcaucasian and Central Asian lands. Twenty years later the international-political losses of this have become quite clear.
Above all, the foreign-policy resource of Russia has diminished, and it has not yet reached the level of the U.S.S.R. First, the material foundation of diplomatic work has not been compensated. Not a single Russian embassy in the CIS countries is equipped as it is fit for the Soviet mission abroad in terms of comprehensive security, including the protection of information. Meanwhile, the special services of many states are engaged in thorough intelligence activity in all CIS countries.
Secondly, the organizational resource of Russian diplomacy has also diminished. Many experienced diplomats have retired or left the diplomatic service due to too low wages. As to the influx of new young people, the latter reason proved decisive for them too.
Thirdly, the cultural, psychological and ideological influence of Russia has greatly decreased. Changes in the cultural-psychological image of Russia, which make it comfortable for people of some of the CIS countries or those of Asian origin, lower the attractiveness of the Russian way of life for those who are used to western tastes and standards.
Fourthly, the three rulers of Russia have failed to take Russia off the oil-and-gas needle during the past two decades. The state has concentrated enormous power in its hands, but the effectiveness of efforts to create science-intensive branches of the national industry is blocked by the system of the distribution of the means of the budget in the interests of the elites both in the center and provinces. The system of enrichment of the elites after 1991 has been based on drawing
incomes in alliance with any business, no matter how shady. Patriotic tasks play no role any longer. State power has become an instrument of drawing profit - such is the principal specific feature of the Russian
political system and one of its systemic vices.
* * *
From the point of view of Russian national consciousness, the main result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the reduction of the foreign-policy potential and weakening of the international positions of Russia. With due account of the development of the Russian political system in a vicious circle, there is no grounds to believe that this weakening is reversible. The disintegration of the bipolar structure of the world combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union has given the world order an unbalanced character and not contributed to harmonization of international relations. The U.S. attempt to use the historical chance and bolster up the unipolar structure of the world to its liking has not been successful either. It was partly due to Washington's foreign policy, partly due to objective reasons - a very complex character of the world economic, cultural, ideological, migration, demographic and political processes, which could hardly be regulated by the resources and will of just one country, even so powerful as the United States. There should be alternatives in the world. However, not a single great country can, or wants to, offer them.
"Rossiya v globalnoi politike", Moscow, 2011, No 6, November-December, pp. 58-71.
