Russia’s new global outlook

Expulsion of Russia from G-8 has created an even greater distance between Moscow and the West.

In the article last week, I suggested that Pakistan should not only develop its foreign policy based on bilateral relations, it should also keep in mind the development of multinational relationships around its borders. Two of these, each involving four nations, were of particular importance for Islamabad. The first quadrilateral came into being in rather unexpected ways. It got created by the move by Russia aimed at consolidating its hold on what was left of the eastern part of the once extensive Soviet empire. Russia, in other words, is the central player in this informal grouping. Its actions will give it shape. But the consequences of this development will go beyond Europe; it will impact large parts of the Asian continent.

In economic terms, Russia has not mattered much for Pakistan in the past. If it did, it was used by the policymakers in Pakistan to draw closer to Washington during the Cold War years. The only significant economic contribution Moscow made was to help Pakistan build a steel mill near Karachi. Pakistan’s trade with Russia was estimated at only $343 million in 2012-13. However, the political aspects of this relationship may change as Moscow, under President Vladimir Putin, begins to assert itself not as a European and Westernising power as the Western capitals had hoped, but as a large country with global ambitions. As Anne Applebaum wrote for The Washington Post, “openly or subconsciously, since 1991, Western leaders have acted on the assumption that Russia is a flawed Western country… that sooner or later… would join what Mikhail Gorbachev so movingly called our ‘common European home’”.

That movement has been put on hold by the exercise of what Western scholars and policy analysts have begun to call “Putinism”. Michael A McFaul, who served as the US ambassador to Moscow, noted the tensions that mark the current Moscow approach towards the world that resulted from the country’s efforts to reform itself and become a part of Western society. “Some Russians pushed forward on this enormous agenda of revolutionary change,” he wrote in a recent newspaper article. “And they produced results: the relatively peaceful (so far) collapse of the Soviet empire, a Russian society richer than ever before, greater protection of individual rights and episodically functioning democratic institutions. But the simultaneity of democracy’s introduction, economic depression and imperial loss generated a counter-revolutionary backlash –– a yearning for the old order and resentment of the terms of the Cold War.” That is now what is unfolding in Russia’s relations with the world.

President Vladimir Putin has a different vision for Russia’s future. His ambitions have already resulted in redrawing the map of Europe by the quick assimilation of the Crimean peninsula into the large Russian geographic space. The Russians interpreted their move as throwing off the cloak of defeat in the Cold War.

Meeting on the sidelines of a conclave held to discuss nuclear security issues in the Netherlands, the G-7 nations decided to exclude Russia from the club it was invited to join in 1998. In 2014, Russia was to be the host of the summit. This would have been the second time that it would have acted as the host, this time at Sochi.

With Russia thrown out, the remaining G-7 agreed to go ahead and hold their meeting in Brussels, the capital of the European Union. According to one analyst, “Mr Putin took membership in the group so seriously that he went all out when it came time for Russia to host the annual meeting for the first time. He rebuilt a broken down czarist-era palace outside his hometown, St. Petersburg. The work at Sochi was also done with the 2014 G-8 summit in mind. Expelling Russia from the group created an even greater distance between Moscow and the West, leaving the former to act on its own and towards the achievement of its own goals in the areas of the world in which it has abiding interests. That includes Central Asia and within Central Asia, Afghanistan. For Pakistan, the immediate consequence will be the revival of Russian interest in Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th, 2014.

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