Another View of the Cold War

The Chairman of the Praesidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Sergei Karaganov offered his take on the re-emergence of the Cold War. The accepted understandings and further analysis are so different from received views seen elsewhere they provide not just another, but a complex other world view, narrative, and future policy possibilities.

Russians traditionally chose between Europe - modernisation, individualism and freedom - or Asia, associated with traditionalism, collectivism, and tyranny. Now they stand poised between a democratic but stagnant Europe which is culturally important, and the rapidly developing, but authoritarian or semi-authoritarian Asia. When communism collapsed it was thought there was only one road map to development, via liberal-democratic capitalism; for countries in the process of development, a category which still includes Russia despite recent economic successes, the Asian model of development now looks at least as promising.

The authoritarian model of development has been accompanied by 'a weakening of international power positions in the West;a redistribution of control over energy resources from consumer to producer states, crisis in traditional ways of managing the international financial system, a decline in the efficacy of international governance, and the consolidation of the state and statism after decades of liberal development and weakening of state power.' Who is now defining the international agenda for the future has also begun to shift, in part due to 'too much self serving rhetoric' and too many mistakes, particularly from the US, and specifically in Iraq. Russia's renaissance from near failed state status in 1998-9, which was accompanied by persistent political efforts to change the rules of the game set at the time of its greatest weakness, has coincided with these adverse changes for the West, indeed Russia has become a symbol of these unfavourable changes for the West, although it is not the cause. Seen as part of an ascendant Asia - as a fast-growing semi-authoritarian state - it looks like a successful model of authoritarian capitalism, providing relative wealth and a 'palatable' level of personal freedoms. Not only is Russia's energy wealth no longer to be at the West's disposal as it seemed only a decade ago, Russia has the third largest currency reserves in the world, and a great part of the country's economic growth is generated by the non-oil and gas sector.

Now that on the whole Moscow is satisfied with its new stature and influence, it is turning its attention to its relative backwardness, demonstrated by an obsolete and decaying infrastructure, corruption, poor medical and social services and an economy yet to move to the post-industrial and post energy-export stage. For this agenda of profound modernisation of the economy and society, Russia turns towards the West and its social and political cultures. Russia has long feared Asia.

Yet 'Asia' is a creation of European culture and political thought. There are at least three Asias: China and Japan, India, and Central Asia and the Middle East. Tha Asias of China and India mean Russia should not now form an industrial policy in the old sense, it cannot compete with Asian production any more than can the West. Russia too has a very expensive and small workforce and can only compete in a tiny area of advanced industrial production. It must build an advanced, knowledge-based economy.

The problems of Russia's relations with the third Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, are different. Despite the influx of petrodollars, it lags behind in development, and is at odds too with the increasingly affluent East and South Asia. The 'conflict of civilisations' is not just along the Islam/Christianity divide, but has an Islam/Buddhism-Shinto-Confucianism divide as well. It is the only 'Asia' that presents the same concerns as it always has and here Iran plays a crucial role. Relatively successfully developed with good prospects, it is a key to the modernisation of the entire "Greater Middle East'.

All three Asias have been shedding Western economic as well as political postulates as they develop. The 'Washington Consensus' and western institutions are no longer accepted, although there is no anti-western path, rather cooperation if on new terms. After all, the West is for free trade and investment flows and is their main trading partner.

Russia should systematically reorient much of its trade investment and energy supplies to the growing Asian markets so that it does not become merely a materials source and eventually political appendage of China, the next great power. At the same time the modernisation of Russian society must remain the primary agenda and Russia's transformation into a knowledge economy must take place in step with the continuous modernisation of its political system to prevent any slide into stagnant authoritarianism while using semi-authoritarian state capitalist methods to achieve the knowledge economy while times are favourable. Russia must strengthen, too, its European orientation and reassure the Europeans on energy supplies, perhaps by exchanging some of Russia's oil and gas fields for some of Europe's distribution networks in a European energy consortium. Nato must be strengthened by cooperation on many international security issues - not used as a threat to Russian interest by its constant expansionist pressures along the arc of Russia's borders. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation should transform into a new comprehensive alliance in order to fill the political security vacuums in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Russia should build cooperation with leading nuclear powers to deal together with the greatest imminent nuclear danger - a destabilised Pakistan.

Here is seen a wholly different view from Moscow. Asia is no longer experienced as a threat but provides an alternative model of development and an economic opportunity; capitalist development itself is no longer tied to liberal democracy; the resolution of European energy problems, whch precipitated the stand off in Georgia, can be secured by some exchange of resources between supply and distribution. The notion of an 'alliance of democracies' seems not to fit the newly emerging powers in Asia or the new models of economic development being so successfully applied (in terms of growth and providing rising living standards) there. Not just Russia but the West faces adjustment in its notions of ways to economic success.

However, it is worth quoting these words in full in their expression of Russia's double reinvention, economic and cultural, of itself after the failure of Communism:

'There is no alternative to social or political rapprochement with Europe. Europe is the cradle of what is best in Russian civilisation and the source of social modernisation. Without Europe we are not Russians; we will lose our identity.'
It could be added that without Russia, Europe would be a lesser, poorer, weaker and sadder place.