Pivot To Asia: Russia's Foreign Policy Enters the 21st Century

By Alexander Lukin

Russia has historically been conditioned to exist within the European cultural tradition. However, its recent pivot to Asia poses a serious question to its cultural identity. How serious is this policy change for Russia and the world? Is the turn to Asia a long-term course or a mere repercussion of the current confrontation with the West? In this volume Alexander Lukin, a prominent scholar in international relations and Asian studies, seeks answers to these and many other questions related to Russia’s foreign policy and its relations with Asia. This collection of Lukin’s articles addresses a number of issues: Russia’s diplomacy and the place of the Asian direction in it, Russian Far East and its potential, the role of Russia on the international scene. This broad-ranging and detailed study will be welcomed by both students and policy makers as the first academic work in English to have such a wide coverage of this topic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9789385563454

Alexander Lukin

Alexander Lukin is Department Head, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, School of International Affairs, National Research University Higher School of Economics; Director, Center for East Asian and SCO Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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INTRODUCTION: RUSSIA LOOKS EAST

People have been debating for more than a century whether Russia is part of Europe or Asia. In Russia, opinions on the subject varied depending on the period and people’s political inclinations. Ancient Rus assimilated Christianity from the Byzantine Empire – the most advanced and closest geopolitical centre of world civilization at the time. Prior to the split within the Christian church, civilization was seen as a unified whole and the question of the division between Europe and Asia did not yet exist. From the time of Peter the Great – who cut a window through to Europe – and throughout the 18th century, Russia was officially considered a part of Europe. Catherine the Great even put it in writing in her Nakaz (Instruction) that stated: Russia is a European power.¹ Of course, the Empress was not referring to Russia’s geographic location. By emphasizing Russia’s connection to all European countries, she wanted to show the enlightened nature of her reign, that her country was part of the civilized world and that it was moving along the path of progress.

In the 19th century, the government of Nicholas I put forward a new official concept of Russia not as a European country, but as a special power based on the well-known trinity – Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality – and free from the struggle between classes and landed estates. That theory was intended to provide ideological justification for the emperor’s overriding policy goal: protecting the country from the spread of revolutionary influences from Europe and thereby preserving the immutability of the existing social system. Members of Russian society held differing views: pro-Western thinkers called for methodically building life according to the European model while Slavophiles criticized the government for causing Russian identity to take on an increasingly formal, bureaucratic and statist nature that did not consider the native Russian – or more precisely, Slavic tradition of self-rule.

That debate continued in Soviet times, although it took on a decidedly Marxist form. The theory of the so-called Asiatic mode of production meant that Russia was a part of Asia, and most ideologues argued that the Soviet Union, although travelling along a common path of human development, had taken the lead and was showing the way for others. At the same time, Russian emigrants put forward the now popular theory of Eurasianism that saw Russian civilization as the successor of some Turan (non-Slavic) Eurasian nations: Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Mongolian and others. This theory was spawned by frustration over the decay of Europe and as an attempt to explain – and, at times justify – rule by the clearly non-European Bolshevik regime in Russia.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, cooperation with Asia was no longer a theoretical question, but a practical one. The growth of the Asian economies and the geopolitical importance of the Asia-Pacific region elicited a wave of expert recommendations during the final years of the Soviet Union that called for Moscow to devote greater attention to Asian states. They managed to exert a certain influence on leaders, convincing them to pursue a normalization of relations with China. But the highpoint of the pivot to Asia came with the now-famous speech that Mikhail Gorbachev delivered in Vladivostok in 1986 in which he offered the first detailed description of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and introduced the task of forming a comprehensive security system there. That speech paved the way for subsequent steps for achieving that goal: the opening of the previously closed militarized city of Vladivostok to international cooperation and the resolution of differences that had prevented the normalization of relations with China. However, Gorbachev was inconsistent in implementing many of the recommendations he listed in that speech, and he was further hampered by the tumultuous events of the country’s political life.

The failure of the Soviet authorities to give proper attention to the development of their own eastern territories was a weak link in their Asia policy. As part of an ideology that called for the accelerated recovery of fraternal republics, they allocated significant resources to the Central Asian republics, even while failing to make the rapid development of Russia’s Siberian and Far East regions an important strategic objective.

Unlike Tsar Nikolas II’s prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, who saw the need for the geopolitical development of Siberia and considered it crucial to the country’s future, Soviet leaders took a more utilitarian view of the region. During Stalin’s rule, his system of forced labour camps was the primary source of economic development in Siberia and the Far East. Later, Nikita Khrushchev decided to develop scientific centres in the region. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet authorities established major military facilities in the region. Their presence and continued maintenance led not only to worsening relations with China, but also to the creation of new industries and social infrastructure in those territories. Even the construction of the famed Baykal-Amur Railway was motivated primarily by a military objective: it offered an important backup to the Trans-Siberian railway that ran uncomfortably close to the Chinese border. Meanwhile, that border remained on lock down, thereby preventing the Soviet Union from actively integrating with the growing economies of the Asia-Pacific countries.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of a number of its western territories, Russia, in a sense, moved geographically closer to Asia. Today, although the majority of its population lives in the European part of the country, two-thirds of Russia’s territory lies in Asia. However, opinion polls indicate that most Russians – even those living on the Pacific coast and near the Chinese border – feel that they are Europeans. Indeed, most Russians really are of European descent, but fate and historical circumstance have thrown them onto the Asian continent. But now having relocated, Russians must take stock of the situation – and not by promoting exotic theories about their Asian roots, but by recognizing that the future of the country depends largely on its approach to and relationship with its Asian neighbours.

Russians are not the first to have shed a purely European consciousness: Spaniards who wound up in South America in the 19th century had to accept that they were now part of life on that continent; and in the 20th century, the white South African minority had to come to terms with being a part of the African continent with all its problems, while Australians and New Zealanders had to face the reality that their countries were far from Europe and that they would have to establish economic ties with the much closer Asian states.

Such a change in consciousness did not require giving up basic European values such as democracy and human rights and did not necessitate a cultural or military and political shift away from the West and toward the East. Instead, it meant letting go of membership in the club of Western states in favour of representing and spreading Western values on other continents while also integrating with the economies of their adopted regions.

The continued growth of the Asian economies and the shift of the global centre of economic life to the Asia-Pacific region have made it an urgent practical necessity for Russia to develop relations with its Asian partners – and especially those in Central, East and South Asia.

The people of Central Asia, having long lived as part of the same country with Russia, have now become very close to the Russian people, and like Russians, are part of the same post-Soviet culture, with all of its pros and cons – even while they are also heirs to their own unique and ancient civilizations. The Central Asian states are either participants or potential participants in the Eurasian integration project that Russia is actively promoting. They are partners to Russia in various international organizations, foremost among them the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that also includes the region’s largest economic force – China. Like Russia, those states are extremely concerned about the situation in Afghanistan, from which the main threat to regional security is emerging.

East Asia is a dynamically developing region and the focus of the key economic and political interests of the international community, including Russia. The growth of China – that since 2010 has been Russia’s main trade partner – is both a great opportunity and a challenge. Russia is actively developing trade and economic cooperation with Japan and South Korea. The main problem facing Russia, especially its Asiatic territory, is the nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula that threatens to erupt in nuclear disaster. Russia is also slowly stepping up its interaction with ASEAN member states.

Finally, South Asia is a vitally important region for Russia whose potential for cooperation remains far from fully realized. Russia is intensively developing political relations with its traditional geopolitical partner, India, both in bilateral terms and within the framework of such groups as RIC and BRICS – although economic cooperation is developing slowly. In fact, Russia’s relations with India are extremely important because that country is rapidly developing, has a population of 1.25 billion, and more importantly, is a unique and independent centre in world politics and a country that wants to finally determine its own path and not kowtow to other power centers – and particularly not to the United States or China, with their complex bilateral relations. Other countries in the region are also important for Russia’s foreign policy objectives: Pakistan can play a key role in settling the Afghan problem, Sri Lanka has shown interest in cooperating in the fight against terrorism and was even granted status as a dialogue partner to the SCO, and Bangladesh – a highly populous country with a rapidly growing economy – holds significant potential for long-term trade and economic cooperation.

After several years of futile attempts to become part of the civilized West in the 1990s, the leaders of the new Russia have come to understand the vital importance of developing relations with their Asian neighbours and have begun gradually turning in that direction. What is the nature of that pivot? Its symbol is the old coat of arms adopted by the new state: a two-headed eagle that, according to Russian officials, now looks toward both the West and the East at once.

That means that strengthening relations with Asia should not be considered an alternative to cooperating with the West – especially with Europe, with which the Russian people largely identify and share historical ties as well as political, trade, economic and cultural interests. In a more utilitarian sense, cooperation with the West – as it is broadly defined and where most advanced technologies are found – remains a key condition for solving Russia’s strategic goals of modernization and achieving a breakthrough in domestic development. However, without increasing cooperation with Asia’s rising economies, Russia will also fail to achieve that goal, along with another strategically important objective – that of developing the economy of Siberian and Far Eastern territories.

Thus, by pivoting to Asia, Moscow is not turning away from Europe, but giving Asia a level of attention commensurate with Russia’s practical interests and the realities of the 21st century. More generally, the experience of the 20th century showed the futility of Moscow’s attempt to pursue an anti-Western course by allying with the Asian giants, and of its efforts to align itself exclusively with the West.

In the initial years after Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia continued out of inertia to focus primarily on Europe, at least in trade and economic terms. Russian leaders were still under the illusion that they could speak with the West on equal terms and reach satisfactory agreements through mutual concessions. That is why President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to call U.S. President George Bush and express his condolences after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, agreed to reduce the Russian military presence in Cuba and Vietnam and carried out a number of other friendly measures. However, it turned out – as it had during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin – that the West perceived such concessions not as acts of goodwill, but as signs of weakness, insisting always on its own terms and relentlessly advancing its military machine closer to Russia’s borders even while trying to convince Moscow that such developments were in Russia’s best interests.

Russia’s relations with the West have heated up on several occasions: in 1996 during the bombing of Yugoslavia, in 2008 as a result of the war in Georgia, but that ultimately reached a settlement, and with the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 when the West tried to include Ukraine – Russia’s closest partner and the country with the closest cultural ties to the Russian people – within its zone of military and political control. This time, the open confrontation with the West largely contributed to the acceleration of Russia’s pivot to Asia because Moscow now began to seriously view Asian countries as not only additional trade and economic partners, but as a possible alternative to existing ones. That marked, at most an acceleration of those efforts, but not the start of that process. The long overdue changes in foreign policy and foreign economic policy – aimed at avoiding a one-sided dependence on the U.S. and Europe – began gaining in speed and depth, but had started long before the crisis in Ukraine and the use of sanctions by the West to attack Russia. The understanding of the need for these changes and the building of a more balanced policy – while not falling under the influence of other centres of power – is based on the recognition that Russia is unique and geopolitically and culturally different from European states.

Russia is too big and its culture is too unique to completely merge with Confucian authoritarianism or, conversely, with the anti-religious liberalism of Europe. Thus, even from the cultural and civilisational perspective, it is necessary that Russia establish its own, independent place in the world. At this stage, Russia can best achieve this goal by developing relations with its Asian partners to at least the level of those it has held until now with Europe.

The articles of this book give a more detailed discussion of the issues mentioned above. The first part is devoted to the current international situation and Russian foreign policy strategy in the post-bipolar world – that is viewed as a transition from the unipolar period that immediately followed the collapse of the Soviet Union to the current multipolar model. Under those conditions, Russia gradually shifted from a unilateral orientation toward the U.S. and its allies to an attempt to create its own, independent centre of power on the basis of Eurasian integration. Therefore, the primary focus in this regard is on formulating a new Russian policy on Asia.

The second part is devoted to the development of Russian-Chinese relations and the establishment of a Russian-Chinese strategic partnership as the most important factor in Russia’s pivot to Asia. At the same time, this pivot to Asia is viewed not as an attempt to strengthen Asian policy as an alternative to relations with the West, but as an attempt to achieve a balanced foreign policy and to give relations with Asia no less significance than those with Europe so that Russia can create its own independent center of world politics.

The third part deals with Russian policy toward the Central Asian states – countries that are essential for the development of Eurasian integration as well as the formation and development of the most important Eurasian international organization – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The fourth part analyzes Russian policy concerning the most contentious issue in the Asia-Pacific region – nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, as well as Russia’s relations with the two Koreas.

The author hopes that this book will be of interest to specialists in international relations, Russian foreign policy, the international situation in Asia and to all those who are interested in these issues.

The author wishes to thank Anastasia Pyatachkova for assisting in working on this volume.

Alexander Lukin

March 2016

Moscow

1Yeya Impertorskogo Velichestva Nakaz komissii o sochinenii proekta novogo ulozheniya[Her Imperial Majesty’s Instruction to the Commission for Composing a Project of a New Code of Laws] (Moscow, 1767), p. 4–5.

PART 1

RUSSIA IN THE POST BIPOLAR WORLD: FROM WESTERNISM TO PRAGMATISM

POST-BIPOLAR WORLD: PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE OR CHAOS?

¹

At the turn of the 21st century, the world entered a new period of development. The customary bipolar system that prevailed after World War II had collapsed following the self-destruction of one of its poles. One can long argue why this happened, but it is clear that the Soviet communist project was unable to compete and failed. In fact, Soviet ideology had cornered itself. Born of the Western secular enlightening tradition, it inherited its idea of technological progress and satisfaction of people’s physical needs. But Soviet ideology vowed that faster progress would be achieved not by enhancing self-rule and respect for individual rights and private property, but by concentrating resources in the hands of the state, nationalizing property, and ensuring its fair distribution. This project proved economically unviable. Also, the Soviet Union pursued a policy that was based on the ideological goal of spreading its system to as many countries as possible and eventually to the whole world. This wasted considerable, albeit not limitless, resources and exacerbated economic problems.

The world’s first-ever bipolar system of global confrontation between the two centers of power had its positive and negative sides. Control exercised by the two centers over large parts of the world and the rules of the game they set in international relations provoked occasional conflicts on neutral territories, and virtually any local outbreak in the Third World turned into a standoff between the two main centers, with each supporting one of the conflicting sides. In addition, people living in countries and territories controlled by the Soviet center enjoyed very little freedom and had to struggle with social abnormality of totalitarian regimes.

But those conflicts could hardly compare with the horrors of world wars. There were international rules after all, written and unwritten, and both the Soviet Union and the West showed their ability to find consensus on them (the Helsinki accords, nuclear non-proliferation agreements, and documents reducing and banning weapons of mass destruction are the most vivid examples of that).

The West

The collapse of the Soviet center of power, caused not by war but by pressure and internal problems, was followed by the triumph of the West which had overestimated its strength, though. Having sought global control, its leaders lost much of what they could otherwise have achieved.

The situation in the early 1990s was marked by strong, if not decisive, influence of the United States and its allies on international developments. Their victory in the confrontation with the Soviet camp had made the Western political and economic model more popular. Some of the former Soviet associates sought to join the West, others, including Russia itself, had elected leaders who were sincerely showing their appreciation for the West. The United States and its allies were also unparalleled in terms of military capabilities.

However, the breakup of the Soviet camp did not affect other key tendencies in global development processes. Such non-Western centers of power as China, India, Brazil, and others continued to rise and become stronger. They tried to solve their problems and protect their interests, at least near their borders. Being interested in cooperation with the West, they sought no confrontation with it, as they had no means for that, but at the same time they did not share many of the West’s goals, to different extent and for different reasons, and were actually quite worried about some of them.

The former Soviet empire was a blend of different attitudes. While some of the Eastern European countries (excluding Serbia, which had not been part of the Soviet empire) had unconditionally agreed to join the Western system as its junior partners, the new Russian authorities hoped for equal cooperation based on the common understanding of global development goals. Central Asian republics feared a drive for Western-style democratization, and some of them were gravitating towards Russia, others tried to balance between Russia and the West, while still others had chosen autarchy.

In that situation, the United States and its allies could have pursued a balanced policy to keep, wherever possible, much of their influence through improved relations with major global players. For example, Russia could have been integrated into the Western system to a large extent either by admitting it to NATO, as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker had repeatedly suggested,² or by carrying out a flexible policy combining real assistance (a new Marshall Plan) with due respect for Moscow’s interests and concerns. This could have produced a close partnership with Moscow without any formal alliance with it, in much the same way it had been done with Mexico or Egypt under Sadat and Mubarak.

This was a realistic scenario, but it required some concessions and compromises, which, however, were not necessary for achieving ideological goals that were pursued more and more vigorously by Western politicians. Intellectuals in the United States and Europe had long been swaying towards the ideology of democratism, a one-sided mixture of political liberalism, the concept of fundamental human rights, enlightening secularism, and colonial theories of Western supremacy. As a result, as it had often happened in history before, the West tried to impose upon the world its own model as a universal solution.

The object imposed varied from one historical period to another: the genuine Crusade-era Christian faith gave way to the supreme civilization of Colonial Times, which, in turn, was replaced by weirdly understood notions of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’ But the essence of power policy never changed. The Occidental-centrism of Western policy is actually quite common. Many big civilizations, such as Chinese or Greek, considered everyone else except themselves barbarian. But not all had tried to impose their notions upon the rest of the world by force. Before the collapse of the bipolar system there were two such totalitarian ideological systems (meaning the totality of ideology, not the political system): Soviet communist and Western democratic. Soviet ideology vanished together with the Soviet Union, but the ideology of democratism, which got a new impetus after the Soviet empire’s disintegration, had not only survived but started to acquire increasingly palpable totalitarian features.

The underlying principles of foreign policy based on the ideology of democratism are quite simple. Western political ideologists, who set foreign-policy trends, believe that the best way to integrate backward nations into the world of freedom and democracy is to submit them to political influence through economic and political alliances. For this to happen, they need leaders who understand that this will benefit their countries (that is, Western-leaning ones) and who will therefore work towards this end. Even if these forces fall short of democratic standards, it will not be a big issue. Once they submit economically and politically, they will be pushed up to the required level with Western prodding.

The course chosen by the West after the Soviet Union’s breakup was based on this ideology rather than realism. Infatuated with victory, its leaders saw no reason to show any regard for the interests of other countries: the whole world will soon be at their feet anyway as all nations cannot wait to melt into the West on the basis of its universal values, the only correct ones. This idea was expressly stated by Francis Fukuyama. But the biggest part of the world rejected, not without good reason, most of these universal values as an ideological smokescreen for the West’s attempts to impose its hegemony. Many of those values also were at variance with the traditional cultures and religions prevalent in other major civilizations.

The West had overestimated its abilities both politically and culturally. The world was more complex and its values more diverse than Western leaders had thought, being intoxicated by their success but restricted by their ideology. The attractiveness and objective possibilities of the West were dwindling due to the economic and political rise of the non-Western centers of power and due to demographic processes. Western capitals, and especially Washington, continued to act as if history had come to an end, using pressure, and often force, to assert their own vision of the world and even internal life in other countries and whole regions that did not want to westernize. This policy produced chaos in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Ukraine.

Some Western observers have eventually noticed this tendency, in hindsight. American foreign-policy analyst Richard N. Haass writes in his The Unraveling that the U.S. actions have exacerbated global disorder: The post–Cold War order was premised on U.S. primacy, which was a function of not just U.S. power but also U.S. influence, reflecting a willingness on the part of others to accept the United States’ lead. This influence has suffered from what is generally perceived as a series of failures or errors, including lax economic regulation that contributed to the financial crisis, overly aggressive national security policies that trampled international norms, and domestic administrative incompetence and political dysfunction.³

Haass further says: "Order has unraveled, in short, thanks to a confluence of three trends. Power in the world has diffused across a greater number and range of actors. Respect for the American economic and political model has diminished. And specific U.S. policy choices, especially in the Middle East, have raised doubts about American judgment and the reliability of the United States’ threats and promises. The net result is that while the United States’ absolute strength remains considerable, American influence has diminished.⁴"

While Haass explores foreign-policy flaws, Henry Kissinger points to the growing degree of ideologization in American policies as one of the reasons for their failures, but uses a different term: "The celebration of universal principles needs to be paired with recognition of the reality of other regions’ histories, cultures and views of their security. Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America’s exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course. But nor does it assure success for the most elevated convictions in the absence of a comprehensive geopolitical strategy.⁵"

Europe, too, has recently, and belatedly, been criticizing the policy based on the end-of-history ideology. One of the reports issued by the European Council on Foreign Relations says that the way of life the European Union has adopted as a universal model for the whole world to use in the future was actually an exception for that world: "The new European order was different from all previous post-war settlements… The remaking of Europe took the shape of extending Western institutions, most of them created for a bipolar world. The unification of Germany became the model for the unification of Europe… Europeans were aware of the distinctive nature of their order but they were also convinced of its universal nature. From the World Trade Organization to the Kyoto Protocol, and from the ICC to the Responsibility to Protect, European norms seemed to be in the ascendant. Europeans were convinced that economic interdependence and converging lifestyles would be the dominant source of security in the world of tomorrow. Intoxicated by its own innovations, the EU became increasingly disconnected from other powers – and saw only where others fell short of European standards rather than try to understand their different perspectives. This applied to the EU’s neighbors, other great powers such as China, and even to allies such as the United States. And the claim of the European project to be, at one and the same time, exceptional and universal made it impossible for Europeans to accept any alternative integration projects in their continent.⁶"

Naturally, there are some tactical disagreements between the United States and Europe (European Union). As the strongest Western power an ocean away from Europe, America is barely concerned about the consequences of its actions in this part of the world. Theoretically, Washington advocates purer implementation of ideological tenets, European costs notwithstanding. Its strategy of broadening the scope of its military activities around the world and brewing various threats allows the United States to consolidate its dominance over Europe. The latter has both pro-American forces and those that want it to be an independent, or at least autonomous, center of power. Confrontation with other centers of power is not needed for that and would actually be harmful. In addition, downright anti-American and anti-integration forces (both ultra-right and ultra-left) are gaining more influence in Europe.

In general, the United States and Europe, as well as faraway Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Japan, should be viewed as one center of power cemented together by the common totalitarian ideology of democratism, that is, the desire to impose their model upon the rest of the world. In the foreseeable future, the policy of this center of power, which remains the strongest in the present-day world, will be defined by the gap between growing ideological ambitions and dwindling relative capabilities. Faced with both external (rising influence of non-Western centers of power) and internal (changing demographic and political situation) challenges, the West is objectively losing its influence in the world.

The popularity of the Western model and ideology was based mainly on the assumption, quite common among many non-Western nations, especially after World War II, that the Western political model could secure the highest level of well-being. Freedom is attractive, of course, for a certain part of people in not-so-rich and autocratic states, but along with well-being, not instead of it. The majority of countries have always sought to adopt the Western model as the one that guarantees a more prosperous life. The rapid economic rise of China at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, and the economic and political failure of many countries where the United States and Europe had tried to impose their model of development (Russia in the 1990s, Iraq, Libya, etc.) led many to question the universal effectiveness of the Western slogans of democratization, market economy and free trade. The Western policy of diktat and constant bombing showed that the ideology of democratism was often used to cover up for attempts to establish political dominance. This understanding seriously undermined the West’s soft power and at the same time added popularity to other models, primarily the Beijing Consensus, as an alternative to the Washington one.

The West has failed to understand that the expansion of its model has reached cultural and civilizational limits. The Western system could be easily spread in Eastern Europe where countries tired of Soviet control sought to join Western alliances for political and cultural reasons. The system was established or restored there relatively easily (although not everywhere). But this model is culturally much more alien to North Africa and Eurasia. Islam and Orthodoxy, which are gaining popularity in the post-Soviet space, reject Western democratism, with its increasingly vague social roles of men and women, euthanasia, surrogate motherhood, same-sex marriages, and the like, not only for political but also for moral reasons. And they oppose it so strongly that are ready to fight against this onslaught of sin. The conflict in Ukraine, where the cultural and civilizational dividing line has cut the country into two, just as growing anti-Western movements have split up the Islamic world, was largely caused by these factors.

Something like this happened before to the Soviet totalitarian ideology and the Soviet Union’s soft power after World War II, especially in the 1970s-1980s. Communist ideals, once popular in the world, including Europe and the United States, particularly during anti-fascist and de-colonization campaigns, lost their luster when it became clear that the Soviet model was not working economically in the Third World and was only breeding dictatorships, corruption and stagnation. The deployment of Soviet troops in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979 threw into doubt the sincerity of Moscow’s intention to build a better world, and changed the perception of Soviet ideology which began to be viewed as a smokescreen for geopolitical interests.

But geopolitical goals both in the Soviet Union and now in the West can hardly be separated from ideological ones. All totalitarian ideologists believe that their best and most advanced political model guarantees prosperity and happiness and can effectively be realized with the brotherly help of progressive states (to use the Soviet political jargon), that is, under their political supervision. This is why the goals of establishing political control over as many countries as possible and bringing them happiness by imposing the only correct model of development are inseparable in this political frame.

When the West says that Kosovo and Crimea cannot be compared, it is not surprising. In terms of democratism, this is not a case of double standards. In fact, Kosovo separates from Serbia, a backward non-Western state, to join the world of freedom and progress. But Crimea is different because non-Western Russia is drawing it into the world of regress and dictatorship. It would be hopeless to use formal logic to argue with Western, Soviet or any other ideologists for that matter.

But the West will gradually change. What the United States will be like in twenty or thirty years from now, if a considerable part of its population becomes Spanish speaking? In Britain, entire cities become predominantly Muslim-populated; in France, polls indicate that Muslims make up about 10 percent of the population. What will its policy be like when their number reaches 30 or 40 percent? Will growing migration evoke a reaction from right-wing traditionalists? Their organizations like Stop Islamization of Europe in Great Britain are becoming increasingly popular in many EU countries. Western countries can respond to the migration crisis by shutting down their borders or taking other radical steps, but this will signify serious backtracking on many postulates of democratism and significant changes in foreign policy. In the foreseeable future, while democratism adapts to the new realities, the West can hardly be a source of peace and stability. On the contrary, its policy will continue to produce global conflicts that will most often erupt in territories that border on other non-Western centers of power with their own values. The main source of these conflicts will be attempts to impose the ideology of democratism on the population which is not willing to accept it.

Russia

The year 2014 was pivotal for Russia’s foreign policy. The crisis in Ukraine expedited its refusal to follow the West and led to confrontation with it. This essentially marked a dramatic turn in Moscow’s foreign policy pursued since 1991. Although the period between 1991 and 2014 saw both close cooperation and disagreements with the West, Moscow always made strategic concessions in the end. Today such concessions are highly unlikely, and only tactical arrangements can be possible since Russia has lost faith in the United States and Europe as political and economic partners and realized that it cannot establish friendly relations with them without its complete political submission. So Moscow has begun an actual, not only verbal (as was the case before the Ukrainian crisis), political and economic turn to the non-Western world.

What is the reason for this turn? The post-Soviet consensus between the West and Russia was based on their understanding that both sides would move towards closer cooperation, respect each other’s interests, and make mutually acceptable compromises. However, only Russia was following these agreements in practical terms. While not having abandoned the idea of national interests completely, it nevertheless demonstrated its readiness to give up some of them for the sake of cooperation with the civilized world in order to become its part. But the civilized world, despite encouraging rhetoric, kept thinking in Cold War-era terms and sincerely considered itself the victor. Having forgotten its promises (for example, not to expand NATO eastward), the West tried to make up for what it had failed to do during the Cold War because of the Soviet Union’s resistance: it drew more and more countries into its orbit and moved military infrastructure closer to the Russian border, including the territory of its historical allies. Russia strongly refused to accept this policy in 2014.

When it came to its closest partner, Ukraine, Russia could no longer control itself. Although it has not been able to take the strongest actions due to limited resources and economic dependence, Russia is doing and will be doing its best to stop the West’s power expansion towards its border. The new Russia has rejected Soviet and any other totalitarian ideology. It is not trying to force its political model upon other countries. Moreover, despite authoritarian reality, this model has been proclaimed conforming to Western standards, with certain characteristics of its own due to cultural traditions. In Ukraine, as anywhere else, Russia is fighting not for the right to impose a model of perfect society, but for purely geopolitical goals and mere survival. It simply wants to avoid being encircled and put under political control of the United States and its allies, and it wants its neighbors to remain friendly or at least neutral.

Speaking at a news conference on December 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin attributed changes in the country’s foreign policy not to the deteriorating relationship with the West but to global trends: "I often hear comments about Russia’s turn towards the East. Now, if you read American analysts, they also write about the United States’ turn towards the East. Is this true? Partly, yes. Why? Is this political? No. This stems from the global economic processes, because the East – that is, the Asia-Pacific Region – shows faster growth than the rest of the world. New opportunities open up. As for energy, the demand for resources is racing in leaps and bounds in China, India, as well as in Japan and South Korea. Everything is developing faster there than in other places. So should we turn down our chance? The projects we are working on were planned long ago, even before the most recent problems occurred in the global or Russian economy. We are simply implementing our long-time plans.⁷"

By and large, this is true, but there is a tactical element there as well. At any rate, political problems with the West clearly make Russia’s turn towards the East more practicable, with no viable alternative to consider.

The United States and the West in general view the conflict with Russia as local albeit extremely dangerous in that Moscow’s actions undermine the West’s global development project designed to gradually engage all countries on its own terms as subordinated pupils diligently trying to live up to Western standards. It is local because Russia is not the most dangerous challenge on the way, although the most trenchant one for the time being. In fact, the West is much more worried about the prospects of seeing a multi-polar world emerging in the future. It has no idea how to westernize vast China, and things are not going quite smoothly with India, Brazil, and many other centers of power.

China

In the long term, rising China will be a much bigger challenge to the Western ideology of global dominance than Russia which still remains quite weak. China, the second largest economy and the most densely populated country in the world, poses a threat not because of its military power that still falls short of the American and even Russian capabilities. But because Communist China succeeded where the Soviet Union had failed – it built an effective and attractive economy that is not based on the Western political model. And this is much more dangerous for the West as it makes people and governments in many countries doubt its fundamental postulate that economy can be effective and generate prosperity only if a country accepts the ideology of democratism. Moreover, the Chinese economy has become so much interdependent with the American and European economies that it would be very hard to deal with Beijing in the same way Russia was dealt with. The West depends on China economically just as much as China depends on the West. And if there is an open confrontation, the united West may eventually rein in China, but the costs will be too high for the world economy to bear.

Rapidly developing China has lately been pursuing a more vigorous foreign policy. Initially, it sought to convince its neighbors and the whole world that its strengthening would not endanger their interests. This is the main message contained in the peaceful rise concept put forth in 2003 during Hu Jintao’s presidency. However, the word rise caused concern and was replaced with peaceful development and harmonious world theories.

Under Xi Jinping, Beijing pushed forward with ambitious plans to launch the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road projects. While their economic aspects remain vague, their political meaning it quite clear: China offers its own development concepts, alternative to Western ones, at least for some of the Asian regions (the former project targets mainly Central Asia, the Near East and partly Russia; the latter one, Southeast and South Asia and Oceania). They should create a common framework for the economic, and possibly political, future of these regions. What Beijing offers to these countries is basically a concept of co-development supported by substantial material resources. Its message reads: join the Silk Route space, not the area of democratism. The fact that despite Washington’s objections, some of its allies have already joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank proposed by Beijing is a clear indication that Chinese projects are quite appealing.

Another sign of China’s enhanced role in foreign affairs is frequent calls for revising the Tao Guang Yang Hui concept (keep a low profile and bide your time) put forth by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1990s as a beacon in chartering the country’s foreign policy course during the period of reform and openness⁸. Igor Denisov, one of Russia’s leading experts on Chinese foreign policy, comes to the conclusion that China’s present-day political discourse clearly reveals both the continuity of foreign policy (with emphasis on such constants as peaceful development, protection of key interests, soft power) and attempts to make Chinese diplomacy more initiative-driven so that China could eventually become one of the states that set the rules of the game in accordance with their increased interests (as vividly borne out by China’s ambitious program to become a naval power and by its military diplomacy whereby it revises approaches to the use of its troops abroad).⁹ Although during Xi’s rule strategic planning continues to be restricted by the country’s key interests, the area of these key interests keeps expanding. While under Deng Xiaoping, it focused only on the issue of Taiwan and control over Tibet and Xinjiang, today it has been broadened to include the protection of China’s positions in territorial disputes with Japan over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands and in the conflict in the South China Sea. Some Chinese experts also insist that the list of key interests should include the need to secure a worthy place for China in the world in general.

It is widely believed in China that the main obstacle on this way is the United States. The majority of Chinese analysts insist that as a world power that is losing influence but struggling to keep it, America is trying to contain China as its main competitor. The United States, with the assistance of its allies and friendly states, is trying to encircle China military and strategically, antagonize its neighbors and blow the Chinese threat out of proportion. Military analyst Dai Xu says in his book C-shaped Encirclement that China has been encircled almost completely except in Russia and Central Asia¹⁰.

Although some experts suggest taking more action to break through this encirclement, for example, by building naval bases abroad or tasking the army with protecting Chinese entrepreneurs’ investments in other countries, the official Chinese position is much milder. Chinese analysts’ attitude towards the idea of global governance is quite indicative in this respect. While considering the current global governance theory and practice a Western scheme designed to protect the U.S. and European dominance around the world, Beijing does not want it to be undermined or scrapped, but overhauled so that China and other non-Western states could get proper representation and voice in it¹¹.

So China is generally not interested in confrontation with anyone or in revolutionary changes in the existing world system. But it is determined to press for its evolution in a way that would benefit the country. In this respect, China’s response to the idea of the Group of Two put forward by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 2009 is quite interesting. Brzezinski’s proposal was fully in line with the ideology of American dominance. He basically offered the role of a junior ally to China that was supposed to solve American problems where Washington could not do so on its own. These included assisting in the resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, helping the United States deal with the global crisis, getting directly involved in the dialogue with Iran, mediating in the Indo-Pakistani conflict, and even joining the Middle East settlement process.