President Putin’s world view

BRICS must help end East-West rift

S Nihal Singh

WHILE the world is still analysing Russian President Vladimir Putin's combative take on the state of international affairs in the annual dialogue, this time in Sochi, his speech marks a water mark in a situation when East-West relations have sunk to a new low in the past three decades.

Mr Putin was making several seminal points. First, the West led by the United States had taken the break-up of the Soviet Union as its victory and had decided to play the world according to its own rules. Second, to cement its primacy, Washington had brought the Cold War alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), to Russia’s very borders.

The Russian President reminded the US that conducting international affairs was a two-way street, implying that the days of Moscow’s weaknesses, symbolised by Boris Yeltsin, were over. He pointedly referred to American interventions in third countries without United Nations approval. This was, in a sense, a rebuttal of Western criticism of the Russian annexation of Crimea, which was once part of the Soviet Union.

Mr Putin did not give a direct answer to Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine — officially, Moscow does not acknowledge it has sent its soldiers there — but elaborated at length on how an elected president of Ukraine was dethroned in what amounted to a coup. It was only last Sunday that Ukraine voted — without the rebel-held enclaves in the east taking part - for an elected parliament expectedly won by pro-West parties.

Beyond making his points, the Russian President was offering an olive branch in the form of talks on a new basis for East-West relations. This is now being analysed in Western capitals because the situation in the Middle East in particular, with the ominous rise of ISIS, now morphed into the Islamic State, needing essential Russian inputs.

Besides, resolution of the Iran nuclear issue and the implied threat of regional proliferation, requires Russian co-operation. The earlier American “pivot” to Asia has been overshadowed by US President Barack Obama’s decision, however reluctant, to re-engage militarily in Iraq and Syria. The dangers represented by ISIS were simply too great for the West and the world to ignore.

Despite the fact that the US prefers to deal with China as the emerging great power in a changing world, Moscow remains an important element in the world, particularly in Europe, but also beyond it. Western sanctions on Russia following its policy towards Ukraine have hurt Russia as it has Western interests, but as Mr Putin choreographed the issue, it is part of the broader picture of how the West has treated Moscow after the Soviet break-up.

One Russian criticism one can infer from Mr Putin's exposition of the current malaise is that the United States cannot play the world by its own rules while denying the same privilege to Moscow. On the one hand, the West claims the right to expand its Cold War military alliance to Russia's borders in what it declares as a new world order. On the other, it denies Russia the room to safeguard what it sees as its vital national interests by co-opting the adjoining mass of a country closely tied up with Russia.

At least some of the Western participants in the Sochi dialogue thought anti-Russian sanctions were counter-productive and the sooner they were withdrawn, the better. But there are no immediate signs of a Western change of direction because the underlying feeling, piquantly voiced by Mr Putin, was that the West had won the Cold War.

However, for much of the world, President Putin has put the present turmoil in the world in perspective. What he is seeking is a new East-West entente in which the Cold War concept of who has won or lost should be given a burial. Much of the emerging world will agree with his hypothesis, which is less ideological than what Washington seems to believe in.

Perhaps the BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, can play a part in an East-West rapprochement because continuing bad blood between Washington and Moscow will make it that much harder to resolve the world’s problems.

Many analysts in the West have surmounted the first hurdle in going beyond President Putin’s buster to look for the underlying message. The next stage will be to convince Western governments to test Moscow on how far it is willing to go to try to alleviate genuine concerns.

The Middle East is the first place to try to evolve a new East-West equation. To begin with, the rise of extremist forces is a common danger. Of course, Russia and the West are on different sides on issues such as opposition to the Syrian Assad regime and how Iran should be treated. But the dangers represented by ISIS are greater.

Ideally, Washington should take the first step in breaking the stalemate. Instead of aiming for something as dramatic as an Obama-Putin meeting, the situation calls for low-key meetings of sherpas of the two sides. One obvious place to start would be the dilution of sanctions.

Any basis of a future accord has to be based on an American understanding of Russia's vital national interests. Any impartial observer will understand that Moscow will not tolerate Ukraine's absorption by the West, given the history, religious affiliation, shared Russian language and kinship between what was once Soviet Union. Despite the victory of pro-West parties in the parliamentary election, Washington and Berlin must restrain their enthusiasm in “westernising” Ukraine.

For the former Communist countries in Europe, the bright lights of the West are a natural attraction. Indeed, Russia itself has moved towards some Western values. But despite the efforts of the so-called Islamic Caliphate, the world is still peopled by the Westphalian model of nation states and each country has its interests to protect. Frustrating these interests is asking for trouble.