President Dmitry Medvedev’s first month in office has answered a question analysts have been asking after the change of guard in the Kremlin: will Russia’s foreign policy change? The answer is ‘no.’ Mr. Medvedev’s opening moves on the world chessboard have been perfectly in tune with the pragmatic and assertive policies of his predecessor and mentor Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Medvedev’s first foreign destinations — Kazakhstan and China — were chosen with pinpoint accuracy. Kazakhstan is Russia’s closest ally in pushing for economic reintegration of former Soviet republics, which is Moscow’s overriding objective in the region. The visit to Kazakhstan, as well as Mr. Medvedev’s planned trips to Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in coming months signal Russia’s unwavering determination to retain its dominant positions in energy-rich Central Asia.
China, where Mr. Medvedev headed from Kazakhstan, is by far the biggest, fastest growing and most important neighbour of Russia. Mr. Medvedev’s visit reiterated Moscow’s recognition of China as an emerging superpower and a key strategic partner in challenging the United States’ global dominance. A joint communiqué criticised the “expansion of military-political alliances” and denounced American plans to build a global missile defence. Russia and China reasserted their growing role as the pillars of a multi-polar world order. The two nations praised the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as “an exceptionally important factor in strengthening strategic stability [and] promoting multisided economic and humanitarian cooperation in Eurasia,” and vowed to further cement the grouping.
They also pledged to jointly promote the outreach countries’ dialogue with the Group of Eight, the BRIC (Brazil-Russia-India-China) dialogue launched last month in Yekaterinburg, and the Russia-India-China triangular cooperation. The BRIC and RIC meetings in Yekaterinburg were the first international events hosted by Russia after Mr. Medvedev assumed presidency.
For a moment it seemed that Mr. Medvedev was turning towards the East and away from the West. It was recalled that Mr. Putin’s first trip was to the West, to London. Mr. Medvedev’s next foreign visit, however, proved this conclusion to be premature. He went to Germany, Russia’s largest trading and energy partner and a champion of the European Union building closer ties with Russia. The visit showed that Russia’s integration with Europe is going to be the strategic direction in Mr. Medvedev’s diplomacy. In Berlin, the Russian leader unveiled his first major foreign policy initiative: reuniting Russia, Europe and North America, which he described as “three branches of the European civilisation.”
“Russia has come in from the cold” after it abandoned communism, Mr. Medvedev said quoting the British spy novel author, John Le Carre. It “has re-emerged from nearly a century of isolation,” and “has laid foundations for building a state that is absolutely compatible with the rest of Europe.” This is essentially a continuation of Mr. Putin’s idea of Russia embracing Europe. At the outset of his presidency, Mr. Putin called for uniting Russia and Europe into a “single space of stability, security and attainment of high economic results for the benefit of the people living there.”
Mr. Putin even floated the idea of Russia joining NATO. In a 2002 interview to an Italian newspaper, he said that after the end of the Cold War division of Europe “either NATO should disband like the Warsaw Pact did — but this is not an option — or Russia should be granted NATO membership … or some other mechanism should be set up to unite Europe into a single space of security and trust.”
The West rebuffed Mr. Putin’s overtures on the ground that under his rule, Russia had allegedly backslided to autocracy and imperialism. In his famous Munich speech towards the end of his term, Mr. Putin accused the United States and NATO of “trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us … that cut through our continent” and may take “decades and generations of politicians to pull down.”
Mr. Medvedev has revived the idea of Russia’s Euro-Atlantic identity. “It is my conviction that Atlanticism as a sole historical principle has exhausted itself,” Mr. Medvedev said in a keynote address at a meeting with German business leaders. “We need to talk today about the unity of the entire Euro-Atlantic region from Vancouver to Vladivostok.”
As a first step towards attaining this unity, Mr. Medvedev called for the creation of a sweeping new European security pact to replace the Cold War-era Helsinki Act. The treaty, he said, should define the role of force in inter-state relations and tackle the problems of arms control, terrorism, drugs and migration. Mr. Medvedev proposed holding a European summit to discuss the security pact. What the West expected from Mr. Medvedev’s first trip though were not so much new peace proposals but signs that he would swerve from the path of his tutor and predecessor. The western media applauded a “change of tone” they detected in the soft-spoken Russian leader.
However, even as he beamed a flashing and engaging smile in Berlin, Mr. Medvedev dashed western hopes that he would be a more conciliatory partner than Mr. Putin was. Voicing concern over the “narrowing mutual understanding” with the West, he drew a red line on NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia. If NATO continued to expand to the East, “our relations with the alliance would be undermined and drastically spoiled for many years to come,” Mr. Medvedev warned. “There will be no confrontation, of course, but the price will be high,” he said. “That will inflict a very serious damage.”
The first casualty of NATO’s further push towards Russia’s borders, Mr. Medvedev hinted, could be the railway transit for non-lethal supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan that Russia recently opened through its territory and a plan to use Russian military aircraft to ferry NATO cargoes to Afghanistan. The Russian corridor is a critically important alternative to the insecure Pakistani route NATO has been using so far, and its closure would be extremely painful to the alliance. “Do we need to jeopardise this cooperation by clinging to the inertia of bloc mentality” Mr. Medvedev asked pointedly in Berlin.
A few days later, Mr. Medvedev demonstrated the same tough line on NATO expansion during his meetings with the leaders of Ukraine and Georgia on the sidelines of a major economic forum in St. Petersburg. He bluntly told Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko that NATO membership would be at variance with the 1997 friendship treaty between Russia and Ukraine. In the treaty, Russia recognised Ukraine’s controversial Soviet-era borders, and its cancellation would open the way for Russia to lay claim to the main Black Sea naval base of Sevastopol, which it currently leases from Ukraine. Mr. Medvedev told Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili that his country’s membership of NATO would not help it to resolve the problem of its breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mr. Medvedev’s international debut showed several things. First, Russia will continue to pursue multi-vector foreign policy during his presidency. China and India are likely to be high on the list of Russia’s priorities in Asia. The day Mr. Medvedev was in Berlin, Prime Minister Putin called up his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to discuss plans for Mr. Medvedev’s visit to India later this year. Second, Mr. Medvedev has demonstrated the will to uphold Russia’s national interests as firmly as Mr. Putin did, at the same time formulating a positive agenda for long-term relations with the West.
Third, the Medvedev-Putin power tandem applies not only to domestic politics but extends to the sphere of international diplomacy. Mr. Putin’s visit to France just ahead of Mr. Medvedev’s visit to Germany showed that for the first time in Russian history the Prime Minister is going to be as active in foreign affairs as the President. This will lend extra dynamism and strength to Russia’s foreign policy.
Fourth, Russia’s relations with the West in the coming years will ultimately depend on whether NATO gives membership to Georgia, and especially to Ukraine. Russians and Ukrainians belong to the same ethnic group, have the same culture and common history. The two states still have an open border. If Ukraine joins NATO, Russians and Ukrainians will become a divided people.
Mr. Medvedev has clearly stated that this is unacceptable to Moscow. Germany, France and some other European nations are willing to accommodate Russia’s objections but the final say belongs to the U.S. The next U.S. administration will have to decide whether to shake Mr. Medvedev’s outstretched hand or press ahead with NATO expansion and destroy any cooperative relationship.
Sceptics have already predicted that Mr. Medvedev, who began by airing ideas reminiscent of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s “common European home” and Mr. Putin’s “single security space,” will end by delivering his own Munich speech.
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