Nikoloz Vashakidze

RUSSIA – PERSPECTIVES OF THE WESTERN CHOICE

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Disintegration of the Soviet bloc and Soviet Union ended 50 years of confrontation in Europe and minimized the threat of global nuclear war. Nevertheless, today, when the Cold War is already far behind, it is difficult to say that we live in more secure world than before. The international community has become full of new uncertainties and challenges, which were unknown in the tense but simpler Cold War political scene.

One of the most serious problems of the post Cold War world is the heritage of the Soviet Union. The path of development for many of the states, which emerged after the break-up of the Soviet Empire, remains unclear, and the most important problem here is undoubtedly Russia. The tremendous size and geopolitical importance makes the uncertainty of Russia’s future a real challenge not only for Russia itself but also for the entire international community. As Dr. Javier Solana said during his time as NATO Secretary General, ‘Russia may be a country of many contradictions; it may be uncertain in this emerging new Europe; but one thing is clear: there can be no security in Europe without a stable Russia’[1]. We can add that without a stable Russia there also will be no security in Asia and without a stable Europe and stable Asia there can be no security in the World.

The developments of the last ten years have presented Russia with an extremely difficult challenge. Tasks such as transforming an empire into a nation-state, fundamental political reform and the building of democracy, and transition from a state-owned to a market economy are very difficult. History shows how painful and often disruptive these processes have been for many states. Dissolution of empires, for those European countries, which had significant imperial possessions, was not an easy process, especially for France. History shows how difficult and complex the process of overcoming authoritarian traditions and building democracy can be – Latin America is a good example. Difficult decades of careful measures and gradual development have been necessary for China, while carrying out its market reforms, which are still very far from completion.

The originality of Russia’s case is that it has had to deal with all of these three extremely difficult tasks simultaneously, and in a short space of time. The post-imperial transition of Russia has faced a number of serious specific difficulties, which dramatically differ from most cases of post-imperial adaptation elsewhere:

1. Russia has had no experience and practice of being a nation-state. This problem is well described by Michael Mandelbaum: ‘Britain and France were nation-states that acquired empires. By contrast, the Soviet Union, and tsarist Russia before it, had no pre-imperial history as an ethnically homogeneous state. Russia did not acquire an empire: From at least the seventeenth century, it was an empire. So the end of empire, traumatic as it was in many ways for the two Western European countries, could not have as large psychological or political meaning for them as it has had for Russia’[2];

2. Geographical peculiarity of the Russian empire. Most of the European empires were separated from their imperial possessions by great distances and could resume their own lives without being obliged by geography to play a large ongoing role in the affairs of their former possessions. For Russia, as an empire that expanded over land and not across water, disengaging and distancing itself from its former possessions has been a much more complex and problematic issue[3]. There has been a permanent temptation to restore its influence over the neighbourhood areas once subordinate to it;

3. Imperial legacy of the Russian Federation. The imperial possessions of Russia did not include only those countries that received independence after dissolution of the Soviet Union. Current Russia is not a unitary state but a federation and its constituents are in part based on the principle of ethnic autonomy. These ethnic autonomies are governed by local elites and, as a rule, are acting to increase their independence. This creates a serious internal political problem for Russia, which is not settled yet. War in Chechnya is the most clear demonstration of this problem;

4. Post-imperial adaptation has been simultaneous with dramatic political and economic transformation, such as leaving behind communist ideology and a state governed economy, and building democracy and a market economy.

In this research the problem of Russia’s future is examined from the perspective of what Zbigniew Brzezinski called ‘The Dilemma of the One Alternative’. As he mentions in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’, ‘Russia’s only real geostrategic option – the option that could give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself – is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlantic Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO’[4].

THREATS ARRISING FROM THE POTENTIAL FAILURE OF RUSSIA’S STATE

It seems ironic, that while, for several decades, the strength of Russia’s communist empire was perceived as the main threat by the most of the developed world, now the weakness of the Russian state encompasses a serious danger for international stability.

As the future development of Russia is not clear yet, it is important to have a comprehensible vision of the threats that might arise from state failure and instability in Russia.

One of the main problems is the uncertainty that would result. This kind of perspective in such a tremendous and diverse country, which possesses territory of enormous geopolitical importance, presents an equation with a great number of unknowns, not many of which can be identified now. So, the uncertainty of many possible negative outcomes of instability in Russia would present a real challenge for the international community, which would be badly prepared to deal with them.

There are of course obvious threats and negative consequences that can be identified and, and many of them are tightly interlinked:

1. The threat concerned with Weapons of mass destruction. This threat can have several dimensions:

- An economic collapse, social disorder and deterioration of living conditions might result in the coming to power of radical, even odious, leadership. Control over strategic nuclear weapons by such a leadership would be a serious challenge for international security;

- Extreme financial difficulties might encourage Russia’s trade of WMD and relevant technologies with ‘rogue’ states;

- Even now economic weakness does not allow Russia to maintain its huge WMD capacities properly. Further economic decline would worsen this situation. Together with the technical dangers, this also presents serious threats concerning the smuggling of WMD to terrorist organizations. After September 11 it is difficult to overestimate this threat.[5]

2. The threat from international terrorism. A weakened and unstable Russian state unable to provide proper internal order and security could be a comfortable shelter for international terrorists, who can use its territory for escape and preparation.

3. The Domino effect. Instability in Russia can be rapidly transmitted throughout its large, and vulnerable neighbourhood, particularly to Central Asia, Caucasus, Ukraine and Byelorussia. That would create a serious source of danger for Southeast and South-West Asia and Eastern Europe with far-reaching consequences.

4. Problems concerned with security of European energy supplies. Russia is one of the main suppliers, and a key transit country for the EU’ s energy sources. Thus, instability in Russia contains a serious threat for the security of European energy.[6]

5. Loss of transit routes and markets. An unstable Russia (and its ex-soviet neighbourhood, which most probably in this case also will be unstabile) won’t be able to serve as a valuable trade partner. Neither will Russia be able to serve as a transit territory. Instability there will break existing and projected Euro-Asian transit routes (including those for energy sources). This would mean serious economic losses, primarily for Europe.

6. Rise and proliferation of criminality. Russia has already become infamous for its criminality and powerful mafia. State failure and instability will promote greater and more rapid growth, as well as international proliferation of such lawlessness.

What gives grounds for thinking that such state failure in Russia leading to the abovementioned consequences might be possible? Some quite weighty arguments suggest that the relative stability of Putin’s government is still based on rather unsteady ground:

1. One of the main problems of Russian economy is its lack of diversity, and as a result lack of equilibrium. The main source of Russia’s state revenues is mineral fuels, which compose 54.3% of Russia’s exports[7]. Such strong economic dependence on a single type of commodities is rather dangerous – a sudden fall of oil prices (which is common in the world economy) can cause a deep economic crisis with dangerous social and political consequences and explode relative and fragile internal stability in Russia;

2. The Russian leadership does not have a well thought-out economic policy and well-organized and coordinated macroeconomic management; in return it has got reluctant and even hostile to reforms bureaucracy[8]. In situation when prominent economic decisions are to be taken this factor contains a serious danger of grand failure[9];

3. Russia has serious internal political problems, which in the Northern Caucasus have taken the form of a serious crisis. Experts estimate that the situation in that region is very dangerous. They consider economic decline and poor living conditions, caused in a big part by war in Chechnya, as the main sources of this crisis. According to their prognosis, if urgent political and economic measures are not taken (which in the current condition of the Russian economy is almost impossible) in a few years there will be an intense escalation in religious extremism and separatism. This will have grave consequences for Russia’s internal stability and for sub-regional stability as well[10].

4. The Russian population, much of which pins big hopes on Putin, composes the same people who suffered during Yeltsin’s reforms. They have placed their trust in Putin as a just and ‘true’ leader. The failure of a second wave of reforms would cause great disappointment and mass resentment.[11]

This overview leads us to a clear understanding of the great importance of Russia’s future. It is evident that building an economically and politically healthy, democratic Russian state is a vital task not only for Russia itself but also for all countries and international institutions able to contribute in this process.

RUSSIA AND THE WEST, HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL GROUNDS FOR INTEGRATION

Current economic and political realities bring on to the agenda the issue of Russia’s intensive cooperation and integration with Europe and in broader terms – with the West. This introduces urgency to the old traditional question: ‘what is Russia and is it compatible with the West or not?’

The question is not new. But while, as a Christian nation and neighbour of other European countries, Russia has been developing its links and cultural exchange with the rest of Europe, it has frequently been considered by many Europeans and by many Russians as remote, and sometimes as even alien to other European nations. This perception comes from Russia’s vast size, specific history, geographical position, ethnic diversity and the peculiarities of national behaviour and culture. Seventy years of communist isolation and confrontation with the West have strengthened this sense of difference. Rodric Braithwaite, UK Ambassador to Moscow from 1988 to 1992 describes this perception even this way: ‘for foreigners (here most likely Europeans are considered aut.) Russia has always been a barbaric mystery wrapped in an almost impenetrable enigma. For Russians the outside world has usually seemed unremittingly hostile’[12].

The question of Russian-European compatibility in conjunction with contemporary internal developments in Russia, its international relations and its prospects for the future, cannot be answered properly without considering the historical perspective. The history of emergence of the Russian nation and state and their development gives many clues to understanding what is going on in Russia now.

The history of Russia begins with formation by East Slavs of the first Russian state named Kievian Rus. The twelfth-century Chronicle of Nestor describes how in the 860s local Slavs invited the Vikings or Varangians to take on the rule of the land: ‘And they went over the sea to the Varangians, to the Rus, for so were these particular Varangians called, as others are called Swedes, others Normans, others English and Gotlanders. The Chud, the Slavonians, the Krivichi and the Ves said to Rus: ‘Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come and rule and reign over us’. And three brothers were chosen with their whole clan, and they took with them all the Rus, and they came’[13].

Thus, Vikings and Slavs formed a kind of tribal superalliance, with its centre in Kiev. Vikings led by the elder of the above mentioned three brothers – Riurik founded a tradition of princedom, a default form of Russian statehood and formed a core of Russian noblemen (Russian grand princes and royal dynasties take their roots from Riurik himself[14]).

So the Russian nation was founded by people common to many other European nations ancestors – Vikings and Slavs - and the formation and development of Kievian Rus is similar to many European states[15]. Kievian Rus was ‘a prosperous state which adopted Christianity earlier than some of its western neighbours ¼ [its] political arrangements were not noticeably more primitive than those of other early medieval countries. It had a flourishing culture, and many diplomatic and trade links with the rest of Europe’[16].