Russia in Global Affairs

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RSCI Scopus

No. 4

2006 October/ December

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Contents

What We Know About Post-Soviet Countries

Cuba: The Final Act

Carlos Alberto Montaner

The Strategic Dilemma of Central Asia

Farkhod Tolipov

U.S.-Russian Relations: An American Perspective

Growing Pains or a Paradigm Shift?

Roderic Lyne, Strobe Talbott, Koji Watanabe

Assessing Russia’s Energy Doctrine

Mikhail Delyagin

Neo-Con Plans and the Sober Reality

Russia’s «Energy Key» Strategy

Mikhail Dmitriev

Real Sovereignty and Sovereign Democracy

Andrey Kokoshin

From Nationalism to Nation

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

Labor Migration – Factors and Alternatives

Sergey F. Ivanov

Uncompleted Transition

Leonid Grigoriev, Marcel R. Salikhov

President Putin as Prince Hamlet

The Conflict of Civilizations: What Is in Store for Russia?

Mikhail Demurin

Islam, the Way We See It

Alexei Malashenko

Non-Islamic Extremism in Today’s Russia

Nikolai Mitrokhin

Kondopoga: A Warning Bell

Alexander Dugin

Articles

What We Know About Post-Soviet Countries

Throughout the post-Soviet space, at the helm of political, spiritual and all other kinds of power, there comes nationalism. Nationalism may vary from soft political to rigid ethnocratic, but one way or another, states that have seen the rise of their statehood, regard their national idea not as something shameful but as a long-formulated ideology.

Cuba: The Final Act

For three generations, the Cubans
have had to adapt their behavior to the arbitrariness, pressure and abuse of a totalitarian dictatorship and, as with all the other countries that have
abandoned Communism, those conditions have created in society
some negative habits that will be very difficult to eradicate.
It will take time before the Cubans discover that life in freedom is different.

Carlos Alberto Montaner

The Strategic Dilemma of Central Asia

The Central Asian countries are now objects of global politics. Their transition from being "objects" to becoming "subjects" is possible only through full-fledged regional integration. Clearly, strategic partnership must be established, above all, between the states of the region themselves. Perhaps, this is the best way to solve the strategic dilemma in Central Asia.

Farkhod Tolipov

U.S.-Russian Relations: An American Perspective

The source of the challenge is whether Russia is (or soon will be) too strong or too weak. In fact, Russia is both. The tendency of leadership in both countries to waver inconsistently between the two images, rather than deal candidly and carefully with the way the two are conjoined, gives to narrow, near-term irritants a heightened resonance.

Growing Pains or a Paradigm Shift?

There is no denying that the Cold War left a legacy of suspicion which can all too easily, albeit irrationally, be reawakened. Responsible leaders should refrain from playing on that legacy and reopening old wounds. Paranoia makes bad policy. If, as it seems, we have entered a period of turbulence, there will be a need to exercise restraint, built on the many things which bind us together, and focus clearly on our long-term goals and best interests.

Roderic Lyne, Strobe Talbott, Koji Watanabe

Assessing Russia’s Energy Doctrine

Objectively, Russia's strategic goal is to gain full control over the gas and oil pipeline network across the post-Soviet space. Presently, the main priority of Russia’s energy strategy should be to block – at any cost and by any means – the implementation of a gas pipeline project from Kazakhstan to Turkey bypassing Russia, as well as all other projects that threaten to cut Russia off from vital gas sources.

Mikhail Delyagin

Neo-Con Plans and the Sober Reality

For Russian neo-cons, the idea of entering the energy markets of the largest Asian powers – China and India – is cast almost as an economic basis for a global geopolitical revolution. Russia will restructure its energy supply system away from Europe, leaving it with an acute energy shortage, while providing economic underpinnings to the BRIC as a global geopolitical alternative to the West.

Russia’s «Energy Key» Strategy

If Russia concentrates its energy exports solely on Europe, we would do so without receiving markets for our high-value-added exports in exchange. We may just not find such markets in Europe. But if we want to receive promising markets in China and India, we must understand that the “energy key” is the easiest way to open them.

Mikhail Dmitriev

Real Sovereignty and Sovereign Democracy

Rational and realistic views of democracy as a system of governance that ensures greater efficiency are not yet widespread in Russian society. Russians pinned too much hope on democracy as an ideology, especially in the late 1980s-early 1990s, and idealized its attributes. No doubt those sentiments flourished under strong external influences of various kinds.

Andrey Kokoshin

From Nationalism to Nation

On the eve of the 15th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union, it has become particularly obvious that Russia has not only failed to overcome the consequences of that dramatic event, but has even failed to rethink them.

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

Labor Migration – Factors and Alternatives

Although Moscow has repeatedly declared that it views ethnic Russians in the ex-Soviet Union as the main reserve of immigrants into Russia, it still does not have an intelligible strategy for attracting and assimilating these groups, while the existing rules for granting Russian citizenship remain highly restrictive.

Sergey F. Ivanov

Uncompleted Transition

Inherent weaknesses of the newly independent countries include not only high social costs and poor product quality, but also a shortage of managerial capital with the experience and abilities required to successfully compete on the global market.

Leonid Grigoriev, Marcel R. Salikhov

President Putin as Prince Hamlet

A society that lacks the ability to live in a democracy, as well as having no alternatives to it, produces the sort of political system that has taken shape in Russia. It is a system of presidential power disguised in the vestments of democracy. Yet such a system does not stem from malevolent intent, but rather emerges on its own.

The Conflict of Civilizations: What Is in Store for Russia?

It would be better to avoid any more labor migrants, whose inflow has reached a scale likely to jeopardize the ethnic and cultural balance in Russia’s major cities and in the Russian Federation on the whole. Furthermore, their presence serves to provoke an increase of tensions between different ethnic groups.

Mikhail Demurin

Islam, the Way We See It

Russia’s attitude to Islam and Muslims also fits into the general context of xenophobia that in the first half of the 1990s was considered to be a hangover of post-totalitarian thinking; 10 years later, however, it has turned into a core element of the public consciousness.

Alexei Malashenko

Non-Islamic Extremism in Today’s Russia

The Russian elite has made a choice in favor of a right-wing conservative and isolationist ideology and policy, which is reminiscent of the era of McCarthyism in the United States. The authorities and large national capital defend their property and domestic market from strangers and occasionally expand, if need be.

Nikolai Mitrokhin

Kondopoga: A Warning Bell

The events that exploded to the surface in that small microcosm of Russian society reflect the country’s situation on the ethnic, professional and psychological plane. Kondopoga may blaze a trail into the abyss for all of us, as the road of interethnic tensions will only lead to Russia’s collapse, to a finale where it will lose its leading positions in global geopolitics.

Alexander Dugin