Dmitri Medvedev will be the next president of a Russia, which must be prepared for the long run with regards to foreign policy with the United States.
Russia is proving herself quite capable of competing economically with the west. This is important because the Soviet collapse was based upon Soviet Russia’s inability to do so. Russia also invests very heavily in military capability and the ability to project power outside her own border. Russia has gained, somewhat quiety, Superpower status once again.
Whoever the next president of the US is will need to have a realistic view of Russian preeminence in Eur-Asian geopolitics. Russia owns a great deal of energy and production resources upon which Asian nations depend, but her strength is going to be in Europe.
Russian, state-owned corporate monoliths such as Gazprom are already shifting their focus abroad. While many are in denial that there is an emerging, if not already present, cold war scenario here - that this will only be an economic soft war like the US had with Japan - are missing the forest for the trees. Putin himself is providing the backdrop for my point. His speech in Munich this past March is easily the most aggressive a head of state could make - ala Hugo Chavez.
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. Mr Teltschik mentioned this very gently. And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?
In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate.
And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.
The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.
Putin, who has projected geopolitical power - militarily, through the use of cover federal security apparatus, and through the insertion of the Russian nose into the internal business of sovereign nations - has spoken the words above. This is highly reminiscent of Soviet leaders’ speeches.
While we focus our attention on the appeasement gene of those who don’t understand the Islamist psyche, we need to remember that Putin was a highly-placed KGB official. That wasn’t simply a job - it was the professional manifestation of an ideology. And the Russian people love him.
