On the issue of restarting Russian foreign policy in a situation of growing external threats
The authors of this article have repeatedly spoken out about the inferiority of the concept of “soft power”, adopted recently by Russian diplomacy. We are sure: the policy of “soft power” - in the form in which it is recorded in official documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and in a situation when all sorts of bloody events are increasingly unfolding near Russian borders - not just nonsense, but a crime against Russia and its people. In particular, the recent events in Syria, as a result of which the world has once again approached the dangerous line, is another argument in favor of the need for a cardinal review by Russian diplomacy of all its foreign policy doctrine.The adoption of the imitative and contentless-amorphous concept of “soft power” was due to Russia's lack of foreign policy strategy as such: Gorbachev's restructuring destroyed the system of foreign policy priorities of the Soviet leadership, while at the Kozyrev and subsequent “reforms” of the Russian Foreign Ministry an adequate understanding of the new priorities arising from national interests of Russia, and not only from the interests of its bureaucracy and oligarchic corporations, could not be achieved by definition.
The approval by the leadership of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation and the leadership of the country of the doctrine of “soft power” was the first attempt of Russian diplomacy to abandon foreign policy at least at the level of elaboration of specific strategies. But the named doctrine turned out to be an odd job and a fake - a fig leaf, which the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs some time ago shut up the inability of the new political class of Russia to determine the strategic vision of its foreign and any other policies ... But today it is time to build international arena, which would fully meet the national interests of the Russian Federation, and also corresponded with the strategies of defense, migration, national integration translational and other national policy of Russia, which, as you know, today is also not correspond to existing challenges and threats due to the dominance in these sorts of liberal and pro-Western ideas and clichés.
What should be, from our point of view, the main directions (contours) of the new foreign policy doctrine of the Russian Federation?
First, it is obvious that the basis of an effective Russian foreign policy strategy should be the abandonment of the liberal methodology (hiding behind the notion of “soft power”, in which all content comes down to the first word, meaning soft, toothless, passive, cowardly, and in general - no policy ) making decisions based on all sorts of flirting with supposedly democratic countries, unilateral concessions to their foreign partners and reducing the entire foreign policy to the pigeon-ostrich tactics of late and sluggish reagents iition to external stimuli. The rejection of Russia's liberal policy in the international arena should occur in favor of a pro-national content, pragmatic in methodology and consistently tough in form to a new foreign policy concept, which can (by analogy with the well-known evolution of American diplomacy) be called a "smart power" policy, but it's better to do without imitation and define it as a doctrine of "protecting Russian and Eurasian interests."
Secondly, the protection of Eurasian interests should become the prerogative of not only Russia, but groups of allied countries interested in the sovereignty of their development. In this sense, it is necessary to develop the formats of collective and parity responsibility of a group of Eurasian countries for ensuring security, at least in the Central Asian, small Asian and Caucasian areas.
Third, the harshness of foreign policy should be understood not as the use of violence towards its opponents, not the radical position and, especially, the harshness of rhetoric (so beloved by some irresponsible Russian politicians from among, above all, populist deputies - such Russian mini McCains), but the rigidity of the execution by diplomats, officials and other participants in foreign policy processes of the instructions of the head of state, the Security Council and the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.
Fourth, Russia’s new foreign policy doctrine should pursue the achievement of fundamentally new goals: not stating all sorts of liberal nonsense in the post-Soviet space, such as promoting the “ideals of freedom and democracy” of the American-European model (and, in fact, the values of consumerism, multiculturalism and globalism, tolerance to terrorists and religious radicals in case of intolerance to distinctive national cultures and political regimes, etc.), but effective and uncompromising protection of national interests of Russia and its allies in the CSTO, the Customs Union, the SCO, the CIS and other priority formats of integration and interaction.
Fifth, the position of the Russian side in any foreign policy process should be active, preventive, proactive, formative, consistent, in a word - strategic, which implies that the foreign policy and law enforcement agencies have the appropriate institutions for analysis, forecast and information influence, as well as a mechanism in the country making and making strategic decisions.
Russia is obliged to develop its own and long-term agenda for each region of the world and actively push its position on all imaginable and inconceivable international platforms - not only in the UN Security Council. Russia should take an active part and take an offensive position in key international organizations such as the IAEA and the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons) and international groups of experts involved in the investigation of war crimes and cases of the proliferation of certain types of weapons - not only nuclear or chemical weapons, but also, for example, DRONES. This is all the more necessary in a situation where the American establishment has officially proclaimed - through the mouth of Barack Obama - the exceptionalism of the United States, and such a position is becoming a real threat to Russia, Eurasia, and the world as a whole.
In the case of admission to the UN Security Council, the PACE, etc. Any draft resolution affecting Russian-Eurasian interests, our diplomats should have their own version of the draft resolution prepared ahead of time. Russian diplomacy should not stand on ceremony with politicians like Francois Hollande in the event that their actions are directed against Russia, and no politician or official who committed a crime against the Russian Federation (like Saakashvili) will escape responsibility for the crimes he has committed. Accordingly, none of the actions of foreign intelligence services (and even more so the intelligence services of countries such as, for example, Qatar) should not remain without an adequate response from the Russian security services.
Sixth, Russia should not lose sight of the long-standing problems like the advancement of the US missile defense or the militarization of Kosovo to the brakes. Acting on the principle of "Carthage must be destroyed," the Russian leadership must tirelessly hammer the world community with reminders and warnings about the aggressive nature of US military projects. By the way, given that the pretext for installing American missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland was the “Iranian threat”, and just the other day the West began to reset relations with Iran, Russia is simply obliged to raise the issue of dismantling these systems.
Seventh, the Russian Federation is obliged to intensify its policy in promoting its economic projects abroad. And this applies not only to the sale of Russian arms on world markets without regard to the decisions of American courts or to knock out debts from the new anti-Russian governments of the debtor countries of Russia, but also the position of the Russian Federation on hydrocarbon markets. So, if Western players are “ordering” Gazprom to Greenpeace, protesting against the development of Arctic deposits, then Russia should take an extremely tough position with respect to supposed oil development by Western companies in various parts of the world. For example, with regard to Ukraine’s plans to start oil development (with Shell’s participation) on the Black Sea shelf, which can lead to even more disastrous consequences than drilling in the deserted northern seas.
Eighth, a serious reorganization of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense of Russia and other structures is required for the new tasks related to achieving strategic goals and ensuring the protection of the Eurasian space from the penetration of subjects of hostile action.
Today, there is a danger that, under the pretext of “improving the efficiency” of power structures in anticipation of the escalation of military conflicts in the Middle East and their spread to the countries of the Caucasus region, the reorganization of the power unit will be limited to structural rearrangements (merging of SVR with the FSB, etc.), which will only weaken the power unit . The main direction of modernization of the power unit should be the formation of a long-term state order for the power departments to carry out specific tasks, as well as strengthening these structures, restoring the capacity of the GRU and some other special forces of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation ... Of course, increasing the efficiency of the power structures is impossible without their personnel cleaning - and you need to start with the adoption of specific and public punitive decisions against the former Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation V. Serdyukov and his co-workers.
The Middle East and the southern direction as a whole should become the key testing ground for a new foreign policy doctrine, since it is from here that terrorist and other infections are spreading in the direction of the Russian borders. It is precisely in the southern areas (Middle East, the Caucasus, Central and Small Asia) that Russia must move from a tactic of reacting to current events and processes to a strategy of actively promoting its geopolitical interests.
Accordingly, based on the example of the current situation in the Middle East (around Syria) and the corresponding actions of Russia in this region, all of the above implies:
the intensification of the foreign policy actions of the Russian Federation in this region in all areas - from diplomatic actions to intensification of intelligence, information and other operations in the countries of the Middle East region;
- strengthening the fight against the terrorist underground in the North Caucasus and changing the strategy for the socio-economic development of the region with the transition from pumping the North Caucasian republics with budget money to implement “development projects” in them under the control of federal state corporations; placing under the control of the special services the movements of Russian citizens along the Russia-Turkey routes — the third country and back with the corresponding investigations of such movements;
- implementation of joint “development projects” in the South Caucasus countries and, in particular, the “Big Investment Plan” of the Customs Union in the Republic of Armenia; connection to the implementation of this plan of Iran and other states of the region; - —- Formation of proposals for joining the Customs Union and / or the Free Trade Area of the CIS also to Georgia and Azerbaijan;
- declaring the post-Soviet space a zone of “collective responsibility of Eurasian countries” and the creation of a security belt near the southern borders of Russia through bilateral agreements with neighboring countries and the formation of multi-profile closed territories in a number of Asian countries;
- support of various formats of the Asian countries independent of the US dictates of the dialogue and, above all, the format of the “Islamic Four” (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran) as a way to independently search for solutions to political and other problems in the region by the leading powers of the Islamic world;
- supporting the idea and practice of the Slavic-Turkic civilization unity, for example, in the format of expanding the composition of the Customs Union at the expense of the Turkic-speaking and Slavic countries and the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union with the participation of countries not only from the near but also from abroad; the establishment of the capital EurAsEC in conjunction Astana-Omsk (by analogy with the capital of the European Union in Brussels-Strasbourg) and, thus, the formation of a unified transport and logistics metropolitan area, a single Eurasian communication and educational system and the International Center for Eurasian Cooperation - a kind of "Eurasian UN";
- the inclusion of the countries of the Middle East and Asia Minor into the system of active bilateral relations with the Russian Federation and the intensification of Russia's interaction not only with real allies like Iran and Syria, but also with potential allies, partners and counterparties playing the role of leading regional players and, above all, with Turkey, Israel and Egypt (you need to understand that the elites of these countries are split - and this should be used to form and maintain anti-Western forces in these countries) - up to proposals for the conclusion these countries (such as Israel) all sorts of integration agreements;
- creation of a system of collective responsibility and interaction of the countries of the Central Asian region, Kazakhstan and Russia in the Afghan area;
- active actions of Russia in the Slavic and Orthodox areas - without regard to the position of the European "partners" and the Vatican, in particular - the promotion of the concept of the Slavic Cultural Union with the capital in Kiev developed by the Ukrainian branch of the EurAsEC Institute;
- supporting the proposal of the President of the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublika Yevgeny Shevchuk regarding the accession of the PMR to the Customs Union, announcing the start of the procedure for the accession of the TMR to the CU and the CIS Free Trade Zone in the case of Ukraine and Moldova entering the EU;
- revision of Russia's foreign policy in the European direction - going beyond the crafty thesis about the formation of the “Greater Europe” from Lisbon to Vladivostok (considered by European politicians in a truncated form: as space from Lisbon to the Urals) and promoting a different formula - the formation of the Eurasian Union from Vladivostok to Belgrade;
- intensification of Russian diplomacy in the Pacific area, including through the intensification of Russia's work in the SCO, BRICS and APEC; development and implementation of “bundle projects” (Khabarovsk-Harbin and Vladivostok-Sapporo) in Chinese and Japanese directions;
- the beginning of training in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and in other security agencies of special forces capable of carrying out effective counter-terrorist actions, including those outside of the territory of Russia;
- Ensuring the coordination of actions from a single center of state-owned media with offices in Middle Eastern countries, an increase in the number of these offices and bureaus and their respective material and personnel support.
It is clear that these and some other directions of Russian foreign policy should be rebuilt as a single and consistent whole and be confined to the reorganized Russian Security Council and the group (or several groups) of strategic analysis and planning specially created for it.
It is also clear that the growth of the effectiveness of Russia's foreign policy is impossible without achieving dynamic economic growth and the implementation of qualitative changes in domestic policy. The leadership of Russia will not be able to enter the regime of effective protection of national interests in the international arena, if it does not change course from the liberal-comprador to the patriotic-modernizing one; although the adoption of a new foreign policy doctrine, in principle, can be a catalyst for a change in the domestic political course.
There is no doubt that the policy pursued by the Government of Dmitry Medvedev does not correspond to those new priorities in Russia's foreign and domestic policy, which are becoming a response to new and growing external and internal threats. The current composition of the Government is not adequate, not only because of the liberal decision-making methodology prevailing in it, but also because of elementary inefficiency and corruption, and therefore needs serious personnel modernization. From our point of view, the most important condition for launching a new Russian foreign policy strategy (and, as a result, aligning with the growing threats to the internal policy) and its first step should be the fundamental cleansing of the security forces and the Foreign Ministry from liberals and other "agents of influence" of foreign intelligence and transnational corporations. Otherwise, none of these areas will work, and Russia will be forced to continue to drag at the tail of events, losing one foreign policy height after another and persuading world gendarmes - from the positions of a forced "peacemaker" - from the use of force, first against Syria, then Iran, then some Central Asian or Caucasian countries, and then with respect to Russia itself, exchanging its strategic interests for the achievement of short-term and dubious benefits and respite.
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