ISSN 2618-9844 (Online version)
ISSN 1810-6374 (Print version)
Twenty years ago, on November 6, 1992, newly-elected US President Bill Clinton phoned his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin.
Russia’s foreign policy is largely bureaucratic. Moscow maintains contacts only with ruling regimes but not with counter-elites and societies – and this is especially fatal in the Middle East. This is why Moscow supports even doomed regimes to the uttermost.
Russia will have a chance, if it quits the existing institutions before they crash down to ruin it. In that case it will be able to give an example for other countries of the world to follow. But that will happen only if Russia’s internal political collapse will occur before the global crash.
The gravitation towards the Soviet past has not only psychological but also social causes, linked with the interests of a considerable part of the ruling elite. In actual fact, there is the same Soviet elite of the Brezhnev time, which has rid itself of the party and ideological control that restrained their desire for unbridled wealth.
Direct benefits from participation in integration projects with Russia most often outweigh “birds in the bush,” promised “at the end of a long journey,” after the aspirant has fulfilled an endless and arbitrarily changed list of conditions.
Sooner or later the international agenda will include the possibility for re-orienting Russian foreign policy from servicing the interests of the state to lobbying for the positions of specific economic and political players.
The degree of accord among the economic, political, and religious elites over national ideology is even more significant in today’s world. A well-functioning and attractive state model secures a place for a country in the global competition of values.
The current developments in the world can best be described by the word ‘uncertainty.’
The U.S. faces an increasingly complex international environment, and the candidates do voters a disservice by failing to articulate their foreign policy visions.
Despite eight years of horrific conflict, and over 500,000 thousand deaths, a stable peace in Syria remains elusive.
The presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened for their fourth summit on Syria in Russia’s southern resort city of Sochi on Feb. 14. Earlier leaders of the “guarantor countries” of the Astana process met in November 2017 in Sochi, in April 2018 in Ankara and in September 2018 in Tehran.
Anyone who has at least some idea about the theory of international relations should remember the oft-quoted formula put forward by the father of British geopolitics, Halford Mackinder: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
Relations between the US and Russia are at their worst since the end of the Cold War, China and the US have tense relations, India and China are trying to stabilize relations after a period of acrimony. The major powers appear today to be like the unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘Each unhappy family (major power in this case) is unhappy in its own way.’
Freedom of movement and freedom to choose a place of residence can be ranked among the category of freedoms which, as part of the Global Commons, have been restricted to varying degrees at the level of communities, states, and international associations.