Russia in Global Affairs

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RSCI Scopus

No. 1

2002 December

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Contents

New Security Challenges and Russia

The Burden of Responsibility

Prevention vs Punishment

Vladimir Dvorkin

Back to the Concert

Vyacheslav Nikonov

The Russian Bridge Over the Atlantic

The 21st Century: Diverging Paths of Development

Leonid Grigoriev

To Outmaneuver Competitors

Alexei Mordashov

The Middle East: Enforcing Peace

A Marathon Election Campaign

Irina Ya. Kobrinskaya

On the Threshold of Modernization

On the Way to a World Government

Anatoly Adamishin

From Understanding to Alliance?

Vladimir Kolosov, Nadezhda Borodulina

Articles

New Security Challenges and Russia

September 11, 2001 and the events that followed brought major changes to the world and prompted a review of the threats to stability. It became evident that many approaches to global and national security are either outdated or simply inadequate. How are the world leaders reacting to the new challenges? How should Russia use its foreign policy resources in this situation? These are the problems addressed in the latest report of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.

The Burden of Responsibility

The Earth may be faced with bloody conflicts in the coming decades. They will be caused by the contracting living space due to the population explosion and climate changes. We cannot control the laws of physics, but at least we can do our best to minimize the negative consequences of human activities. The survival of the world community depends on whether the leaders at all levels exhibit a willingness to compromise, tolerance and responsibility.

Prevention vs Punishment

To persuade or to bomb? The advent of transnational terrorist organizations on the international scene compels us to change our attitude to countries suspected of developing mass destruction weapons. Being slow in their disarmament means risking that the most deadly weapons might one day turn up in the hands of extremists.

Vladimir Dvorkin

Back to the Concert

A concert of powers in which European nations performed throughout the 19th century provided for peace and tranquility on the Continent for almost a hundred years. Today, in an era of overall domination by one country and collapse of the former international architecture, it is time to recall the principles of that Concert. But now the Concert will have to be played according to global scores of the new millennium.

Vyacheslav Nikonov

The Russian Bridge Over the Atlantic

Many hastened to delete Russia from the world players list but it was given a unique chance to serve as a bridge uniting the two parts of the Western world. The coasts of the Atlantic increasingly diverge in their basic values: the Old World believes in the absolute rule of law, the New World relies on force and resolve. Thanks to its special relationships with Europe and America, Russia can become an intermediary between them.

The 21st Century: Diverging Paths of Development

The developing world, now Russia included, will not catch up with the developed countries. At the turn of the millennium the growth rates of the three main groups of states evened up. This means that the gap between them is being preserved rather than narrowed and that their drawing closer together is practically impossible. The chance to make a breakthrough by channeling the resources made available by the end of the Cold War was lost. .

Leonid Grigoriev

To Outmaneuver Competitors

The debate on accession to the World Trade Organization is overdramatized in Russia. The heat of the discussion is surprising: after all, the entry into the WTO is fully in line with the logic of Russia’s development over the past decade.

Alexei Mordashov

The Middle East: Enforcing Peace

Is there any chance to settle the Middle East conflict politically? The Russia in Global Affairs Editorial Board gathered together leading Russian Middle East experts in an attempt to answer this question by making a situation analysis, a method used earlier exclusively for the USSR leadership. The rigidly ruled brainstorming was chaired by Academician Evgeny Primakov.

A Marathon Election Campaign

Preparation for the new parliamentary and presidential elections began more than a year and a half ahead of the elections. Why so early? Because at stake is not only or largely the outcome of the elections as the development of the country in the next four years. One of the key issues in the election campaign is foreign policy whose various aspects are analyzed in this personal review.

Irina Ya. Kobrinskaya

On the Threshold of Modernization

In his survey of Russia’s domestic political scene the author holds that Russia today is about to enter a new stage in its post-Soviet development. The destructive stage that was part of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency was superseded by a stage of stabilization providing the substantive foundation for the first years of Vladimir Putin in power. Today, however, the stabilizing factors have spent themselves. A new stage in development, a stage of modernization, becomes an urgent necessity.

On the Way to a World Government

The world is becoming less and less governable as globalization is superimposed on another tectonic historical shift, the disintegration of the former system of international relations. If humankind is to meet the challenges of the 21st century, it must develop a universal code of behavior.

Anatoly Adamishin

From Understanding to Alliance?

The need to accommodate the views of different population groups has been one cardinal change that occurred in Russia following the collapse of the Communist regime. An analysis of a number of nationwide opinion polls in Russia clearly demonstrates how the Russians assess Vladimir Putin’s “new foreign policy” vis-б-vis the West. Among other things, one can see the response of public opinion to the use of force on the international arena, most of which are linked with the global policy of the United States.

Vladimir Kolosov, Nadezhda Borodulina