Yesterday it’s been 3 months since the war between Russia and Ukraine started
This war became the continuation of at least 15 years of inadequate internal and international policy.
That policy consistently allowed Russia to play into the USSR and the Cold War and finally it got itself into trouble.
Today we’ll talk about Russia’s international policy as it is the most insane area of Russia’s reality.
It might look like the whole international policy of Russia consists of friendship
dirtiest and vilest bastards on the planet like Assad and Lukashenko and their actual support,
or of endless conflicts with the neighbors and plain rudeness towards the rest of the planet.
We all know about the latest stunt by the Minister Lavrov who found Jewish ancestors of Hitler
and simply offended the only developed country which didn’t introduce any sanctions and was neutral.
And most peculiar, that the man who has been the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 18 years insulted Israel
in a way that the first years of MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) should be warned about – here is a dean’s office, here is a toilet, and by the way never call Hitler a Jew.
But it’s not just about some people. It’s a general trend.
Putin’s international policy is a constant seek of conflict for the sake of conflict.
If the whole world introduces sanctions against some gloomy dictator, we will give him a couple of billions.
Just because.
Because we are building a two-polar world and if the Americans say it’s black, we’ll say it’s white even if there is no sense in it.
Before we go into history, let’s briefly recollect why international policy is necessary at all.
For a normal country. A normal country has a Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What are its tasks, duties and goals?
There can be just one main international policy function in an adequate modern country – people should love your country,
let your citizens in without any visas and your goods without customs fee.
You should have such relations with the rest of the world so that you could be able to help your citizens wherever they are.
So that the local authorities were eager to help them because they are your citizens, and nobody wants to quarrel with you.
The purpose of international policy is to make allies, friends and trade partners
so that the citizens and the companies feel good wherever they go or work because they are protected by their respectable motherland everywhere.
It’s not hard to understand that our international policy is busy with exactly the opposite –
it hurts itself and people around it, makes Russia and the Russians be an aggressor and an outcast instead of an ally or a friend.
Vladimir Putin is such a political genius!
And now we’ll talk about history which is important if we want to understand all this.
ADV
That’s it. Now, we’ll talk about Russia’s international policy before Putin and under Putin’s rule. And a bit about the history.
Previously the world order was destructed in the 1940s when the Nazi Germany started a war and was defeated by its allies including the USSR, Great Britain, and the US.
What is the Yalta system which was created after World War II?
To put it roughly, it’s a division of the world into the Soviet and American spheres of influence, the creation of the UN, and the agreement on the inviolability of borders in Europe.
The Yalta system worked quite well for decades.
Yes, the Cold War happened, the USSR and the US increased or reduced their nuclear potential.
Yes, local conflicts like Vietnam or Afghanistan happened from time to time. But no global catastrophe happened.
There is an opinion that the Yalta system collapsed together with the USSR.
Like there is no second superpower now and all the previous agreements became invalid.
That’s what the Russian management thinks. They said many times that there is a need to reinstate a two-polar world.
In fact, a two-polar world has never existed because one pole was based on mutually profitable collaboration and support, and the second one – just on the USSR military power.
And when this military power became weak, parts of this second pole scattered in different directions in several months.
But that is not the main problem. The Yalta system didn’t stop working after the USSR collapsed.
Its most important elements survived and still exist. Putin is deliberately and insistently killing them now.
For example, the United Nations still exists, including its main agency – the Security Council where Russia inherited a permanent chair from the USSR.
Together with the chair it inherited a veto power – a power to single-handedly block any document Moscow is not happy about.
The system was created assuming that no permanent member of the Security Council would become an aggressor and start a big war in Europe.
Veto power was introduced for the big states to restrain each other so that the balance of interests was supported.
What can we see now?
Russia, a permanent member of the UN’s Security Council with the veto power,
invaded Ukraine, and this agency instantly lost its purpose.
What do they need all those bureaucrats with their teams for if they can make no decision to stop this war, because Russia (of course) declines all their projects?
Obviously, in the future we’ll see the rebirth of this agency. It will become something completely different or it will die.
Another important thing is inviolability of borders. It wasn’t settled for no reason.
Every square kilometer in Europe was showered with blood of many generations
who tried to figure out whose sacred land that was and whose ancestors lived where in the times of the Roman Empire.
Two World Wars started because of that.
Therefore, the Yalta system settled that we should never ever let borders move in Europe unless peacefully and on mutual agreement
(like it was with Germany reunion or Czechoslovakia collapse).
This principle was complied with even during the collapse of the Eastern European bloc.
All the countries left that block and maintained their borders.
Nobody had any territorial claims or started wars to get foreign territories.
The exception is Yugoslavia, but that was a civil war in a very complicated country
which was a patchwork quilt of republics inhabited by people of different nationalities and religions.
And by the way, no one among its neighbors didn’t try to benefit from it and tear some parts from the collapsed Yugoslavia.
Something like that would surely have happened in the previous epochs.
And the Soviet republics parted mostly peacefully, retaining the borders they had in times of the USSR without any mutual accusations or claims.
Again, there are some exceptions, like Nagorno-Karabakh or Transnistria.
But it doesn’t affect the general picture. For these 70 years no one in Europe tried to enlarge its territory at the expense of another country.
Putin’s Russia rudely violated this agreement on the inviolability of borders annexing the Crimea.
It resulted in sanctions and the relations with the West became worse, but they weren’t severed completely.
Of course, it was significant that the annexation was almost bloodless.
The situation with DNR and LNR was worse but still the war in Donbas was considered as an inter-Ukrainian conflict where Russia supported one side but avoided direct participation in this conflict.
And now it’s a total collapse.
A direct intrusion into Ukraine, the seizure of its territories and rumors about the annexation of the Kherson region
without even trying to perform a fake referendum like it was with the Crimea –
nothing like this has ever happened since World War II.
We don’t know what’s going to happen further.
Perhaps, they won’t be able to annex Kherson, but it looks like they are serious about it.
Anyway, after this war ends this principle of borders inviolability is going to be reviewed.
Should new Russia pull this weight inherited from the USSR trying to influence the world order? It’s a very special question.
As practice shows, “to get more influence in the world” is a very nice way to spend a huge amount of money mostly for nothing.
For example, for foreign media nobody reads, to help losing governments, to feed a completely excessive army and foreign military bases, for intelligence, or black and white political lobbying.
It will give you almost nothing, except for the feeling of self-importance on the “global stage”.
Should the country which has just stopped being poor and become a middle-income country
play these games with the US and China who can afford spending the Russian federal budget without even noticing it?
And aren’t there more pressing matters like economy and infrastructure?
It’s a very interesting topic
Shouldn’t we start with school toilets, for example? And Belize will somehow change its government without our help?
But even if we imagine that the expensive international policy means something,
and Russia needs to engage in it for some reason, all the actions of Russian management do not help it, they are against it.
It would be really nice if Russian citizens could travel all over the world (more or less) without visas like inside the country.
It would be nice if the foreigners could come to Russia without any bureaucracy,
like going to the city next-by during the weekend, and spend their money in our hotels and restaurants.
It would be really nice if our companies could work in the richest countries of the world like they do at home.
In order to cancel border and customs barriers, so that goods and people could travel freely,
so that there was a constant cultural exchange,
so that when choosing a place for a new enterprise the Western investors could see Russia as a flourishing ideal and the best place to invest their money.
So that a developer in California seriously considered if he should go to work for Google or for local Yandex.
There is one obvious fact – people are more eager to learn their employer’s language rather than the occupant’s language.
hat will you surely see in all the online English schools’ advertisements?
That’s right, they say they are the first step for you to start working in a foreign (mostly, American) company.
Because working for an American company (even remotely) is profitable, stable and prestigious.
That’s what makes the US a global hegemon.
That’s why the one-polar world has one pole. It’s not because the occupational American army came.
But because everybody wants to sell their goods to the Americans, or work for them, or watch their films.
Everybody wants to take American dollars and put them in their vault.
The American influence is not military based –
they don’t need to enslave anybodyt o make people work for them –
people will even pay for such an opportunity.
I’ve already given you this example, but it was a while ago. I’ll tell you again.
Sitting here right now I’m working for Google for free. I mean, it’s free for Google, but not for me.
To have the right to run their ad and earn money for the American company, which will pay taxes to the American budget
and will build a highway somewhere in Alabama for this budgetary money,
I spend my own money to buy equipment, to pay the team and have all the risks.
Google owes me nothing. I owe it instead.
Why would America seize Moscow or Tel Aviv with me in it?
To send me to the southern plantations as a slave?
First, I’ll not be a good slave. Second, they will need to give me food, bed, treat me and provide for me, make efforts and pay for the expenses.
Why would the US need it?
Their adequate internal and foreign policy let them create such a platform
where I and million people like me work hard for the American economy for free and ask for more.
When you are attractive
(and not just from the inside because of your legislation, safety and rights protection) but from the outside too –
when it’s convenient and profitable to work with you, the whole world will be eager to join your pole.
You won’t be able to get rid of it.
But when you seize cities by force, when you are rude and sever the relations, even if you succeed,
you won’t get more than a pile of smoking ruins and people who hate you for ruining their lives.
Russia’s international policy is just about inflicting harm. Useless harm.
I mean we hurt the neighbor and make him lose a dollar and at the same time we lose 10 dollars.
Russia’s international policy doesn’t let us build a two-polar world, it kills the whole idea of it, in fact.
There are two poles indeed – one pole ensures people earn money and feel good, have fun and travel freely, the other pole is all about war, death, rudeness and aggression.
If Russian international policy had the goal to strengthen the role of the US as the only normal pole everybody wanted to stick to,
if they wanted to hear our closest neighbors ask Joe Biden to send more American troops, then the Kremlin achieved this goal brilliantly.
If Vladimir Putin and his team are ever mentioned in history textbooks, it will be just in a section “How to do it wrong”.
Their management is an ideal example for a textbook on how to spoil life for your own country and for your neighbors,
how to fail achieving any of the goals they’ve set,
and constantly moving in the opposite direction instead of where they wanted to go.
It’s an astonishing incompetence.
And with each passing day Vladimir Putin stays in power, we dig this crazy hole even deeper.
Till tomorrow!