Russia in Global Affairs

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RSCI Scopus

No. 4

2013 October/December

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Contents

Successes and Reflections

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

Face to Face

A Lop-Sided Power

Sergei A. Karaganov

New Contours of U.S. Foreign Policy

Andrei A. Sushentsov

Strategy XXI

Rise of the Regions

Vladimir Ryzhkov, Rostislav Turovsky

Property and Law

Leonid Grigoriev, Alexander Kurdin

Russia as a National Project

What Are Modern Nations Like?

The North Caucasus: The Value and Costs for Russia

Sergey M. Markedonov

Together or Apart?

Who Stands to Win?

Ukraine’s European Illusions

The Choice and Challenge of Eurasian Integration

Timofei V. Bordachev, Ekaternia Ostrovskaya, Andrei Skriba

Global Processes

A War of the Future

Andrey Baklanov

A Middle Eastern “Rubik’s Cube”: Solution Problems

The Moscow Model for Korean Unification

Shepherd Iverson

Modernization of the Energy Charter

Articles

Successes and Reflections

The year 2013 is considered to be a year of Russia’s foreign policy successes. A string of events – from the breakthrough in settling the chemical weapons issue in Syria and the hard line on the Snowden case to contribution to the settlement of the Iranian problem to the convincing explanation to Kiev as to why it should refrain from signing an association agreement with the EU – made the world speak of Moscow’s potent capability to achieve its goals.

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

A Lop-Sided Power

The main reserves for Russia’s foreign policy and its influence in the next decade lie more than ever in internal development. And this is also where the main threats are, fraught with the risk of losing political weight in the international arena and the status of great power.

Sergei A. Karaganov

New Contours of U.S. Foreign Policy

The United States is backpedaling – reducing the range of tasks, gathering the resources of its allies, separating the timeframes for reaching its goals. An authentic review of the priorities of American policy will occur if and when the resources of adaptation strategy are exhausted.

Andrei A. Sushentsov

Rise of the Regions

The regions are hindering Russian progress by their loss of initiative, interest in independent development, parasitism, betting on shadow lobbying, and fear of sanctions by the center. Excessive centralization results in numerous and inevitable administrative errors.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, Rostislav Turovsky

Property and Law

Russia is in a precarious position: although formally enshrined in legislation, quite legal private property very often is not considered to be legitimate. The “unfair” procedures that brought about the emergence of mammoth private wealth during the privatization period breeds distrust in the authorities, the laws it adopts, and the measures it takes.

Leonid Grigoriev, Alexander Kurdin

What Are Modern Nations Like?

Some political scientists believe there is no common nation in Russia, precisely because of ethnic and cultural diversity. Those who deny the existence of identity in Russia point to the absence of civil society and democratic institutions and, consequently, of a civic nation.

The North Caucasus: The Value and Costs for Russia

While previously developments in the North Caucasus were primarily looked at from the viewpoint of inter-ethnic relations and regional policies, today this theme has expanded to a pan-Russian scale. It is not Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Dagestan per se that matter; rather, it is how the Russian heartland perceives those regions.

Sergey M. Markedonov

Who Stands to Win?

The European bureaucracy, a new political force with interests and leverage of its own, is behind the emerging EU trend to politicize the ongoing integration. A constructive way out of the growing contradictions between the alternative integration processes in Eurasia would be to de-politicize them into mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

Ukraine’s European Illusions

To enter a world where there is a highly developed mentality and infrastructure for a country that is not even relatively highly developed is to doom oneself to becoming a resource, to being subject to cynical use by European civilization, which is past the heyday of its intellectual development and strength.

The Choice and Challenge of Eurasian Integration

None of the integration projects in history has ever encountered so strong resistance from both East and West. Its intensity denies the publicly declared thesis that the project is artificial, immaterial and even doomed.

Timofei V. Bordachev, Ekaternia Ostrovskaya, Andrei Skriba

A War of the Future

New defense technologies often create the illusion of a possibility of “victorious” wars, which provokes ever new conflicts and wars. The number and scale of conflicts in the world will hardly decrease in the coming years, while the arms race will serve primarily the needs of the development of new areas and the goal of expanding the resource base for production.

Andrey Baklanov

A Middle Eastern “Rubik’s Cube”: Solution Problems

Attempts to solve the Middle Eastern “cube” have continued for decades. Sometimes it seemed that just one final move was needed to achieve the desired harmony of colors and proportions, but no. Yet it is hard to expect a result when several people manipulate the cube simultaneously.

The Moscow Model for Korean Unification

As in Soviet Russia, a reunification can be achieved by changing the incentives for all North Koreans, and by offering its leaders a safe, honorable and beneficial way out of the deteriorating situation. The Moscow model for Korean unification is a detailed proposal to secure this result.

Shepherd Iverson

Modernization of the Energy Charter

While the Energy Charter has faced its own crises during the last two decades, it is now time to take the opportunity of further strengthening the organization. The Energy Charter is up to the challenge and we are now only beginning to realize its potential of becoming a 21st-century governance power in the energy investment field.