It Just Looks Like Foreign Policy

It Just Looks Like Foreign Policy
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, 9 February 2001

As long as President Vladimir Putin keeps flitting off to America, Europe and Asia practically every week, analysts will be busy trying to interpret and explain the new directions of Russia's foreign policy. He visited North Korea? That signals a return to totalitarianism. Putin's in France? That means Russia is "playing the European card". England? We must be putting a new emphasis on our Atlantic connections. In reality, the very quantity and frequency of the president's state visits testify to the total absence of any Russian foreign policy at all.

Experts know that serious preparation for any state visit demands anywhere from several months to several years of work by low-level diplomats, depending on the complexity of the issues involved. Normally, one summit meeting is prepared by as many as a dozen preparatory visits by the foreign minister. What we have seen over the last year is exactly the opposite (if one doesn't count the foreign minister's trips abroad as a member of the royal suite).

Obviously, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has no time for independent work. He is too busy carrying Putin's suitcases. Nonetheless, the president has the temerity to criticize the Foreign Ministry for not coming up with a coherent foreign-policy strategy!

When is the ministry supposed to find time to develop strategy? The president's incessant trips have reduced it to nothing more than a travel agency.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to think that there is no method to all this madness. You just have to look for it not in the sphere of foreign relations, but in the realm of domestic politics. In a word, the president's travels are dictated by the needs of Kremlin propaganda.

The authorities are seeking to create the image of a new dynamic government that is taking a leading role on the world stage. How better to do that than by constantly showing Putin against the background of some high-profile summit meeting? The value of any state visit lies exclusively in the amount of coverage it generates.

That (and not any authoritarian tendency) dictated, for instance, Putin's visits to North Korea and Cuba. After all, so few people go to Pyongyang that that trip guaranteed a flood of news coverage both here and abroad. And Castro is such an expert image-maker himself that there was no doubt that he would arrange Putin's visit for maximum propaganda effect.

Of course, the Moscow intelligentsia is going to shout "Totalitarianism!" but that's OK. The more publicity, the more attention the government gets. It's like the discussion of the national anthem: The point isn't the substance of the discussion, but the fact that a lively, serious discussion is taking place.

Liberal commentators love to warn against the dangers of returning to a Soviet foreign policy. Russia today just doesn't have the resources to be a superpower and play by the same rules that the Soviet Union played by, they love to point out. Do they really think the Kremlin doesn't know this?

The Kremlin today doesn't intend to play the role of superpower. It doesn't intend to play any international role. Its attention is focused exclusively on domestic matters. And that is why it is expending such efforts to create the illusion of a lively foreign policy.

The only state agency working properly these days is the propaganda service. It dictates all else, including the work of the Foreign Ministry. To the pundits on the left and the right, I have just one thing to say. Russia does not have the resources to be a superpower. But this doesn't mean that it cannot have an independent foreign policy. The analysts are telling us the we must be either a master or a slave. I say that we can play the role of a free actor, independent and responsible for its own actions.

Copyright 2001 The Moscow Times