Выступление Посла России в Бельгии А.А.Токовинина перед студентами Гентского университета, 12 декабря 2017 года - Интервью, выступления и комментарии Посла

         12 декабря по приглашению центра региональных исследований "Российская платформа" Посол России в Бельгии А.А.Токовинин выступил перед студентами Гентского университета с лекцией на тему: "Российский взгляд на развитие ситуации в мире". 

RUSSIA’S VIEW ON THE EVOLUTION OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS

Dear Vice-Rector Van Herreweghe,

Dear Professor Schoors,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Colleagues and friends,

It is a pleasure to be here tonight. Ghent University is an outstanding institution of higher learning and research. For me, it is also a special place because of its interest in Russian studies, manifested by the creation of Russia Platform. Ghent is a fantastic city where I always find warm reception and a lot of appetite for Russian culture. In September I had the pleasure to be present together with Governor Briers at the concert of Mariinsky orchestra conducted by maestro Gergiev.

There is a lot to be said of Russian-Belgian relations which are lately taking a positive turn with the agreement on the visit of Prime Minister Charles Michel to Moscow early next year, a marked increase in the volume of commerce and lively cultural exchanges. But today I would like, with your permission, to concentrate on more general issues, as I firmly believe that knowing each other’s views and engaging in a free debate should help to build a solid foundation for long-term cooperation.

It has become a banality to say that we live at a time of uncertainty and rapid change. Still, it is important to better understand what we read into these words. To my mind, when we say that we face radical transformation in practically all fields of human life, we should concede that we cannot really predict what is going to happen in the coming years and decades, and we should be humble enough to accept that reality. Time and again people pretended that they could foresee the course of history, and time an again they were proven wrong. There is very slim chance that we will be able to create “the theory of everything” for international relations as Stephen Hawking wanted to do in physics.

There will be no end of history soon, as many believed in the 1990-s. There is still ample potential for conflict and wars in various regions of the world. In fact, global situation today is causing concern. We are witnessing increased rivalry and lack of agreement on the direction the world affairs should take. There is increasing deficit of security and a risk of disorder being spread to new areas.

One thing we can be sure about: the global development is not going to be linear. The complexity of today’s world coupled with technological revolution and new game changers that we are certain to meet along the way will guarantee that.

Against this background I am puzzled when I am confronted with attempts to perceive history as a logical process leading up to a perfect model of society. This inclination has, of course, always been present in human mind. Hence the wish to bestow the perfect understanding of history on all those who have not yet grasped the meaning of this revelation. Having been raised in the Soviet Union, we know that only too well. But we also know, from our own experience, that to believe you could teach other people to remodel their lives according to your own perceptions is nothing but an illusion.

Democracy, as Winston Churchill is thought to have said, may be the best of all the bad models of government. But imposing it by force on other nations brings the same turmoil, destruction and death as with any other model. In the course of so-called “Arab spring” we saw attempts to bring democratic revolutions to Arab societies, and we have seen the results. When it all started, the reasoning was that by removing authoritarian regimes it would be possible to destroy the root causes of extremism. In reality it only provided ample opportunities for extremists and terrorists to have their heyday.

My country has over the last century come through more turmoil, revolutions and wars then most other nations in the world. That taught us to believe that evolution is largely preferable to revolution. And that one should be very cautious in trying to mold the fates of other nations.

I am saying that to stress the point that the notion of building a uniform world has been proven to be a pure utopia, something that was called by some American writers “utopian globalism”. In fact the transformation of the international landscape brought by almost three decades of globalization was markedly different from what had been expected by the heralds of victory in the Cold War. We have witnessed the rise of new centers of economic power and political influence and the renaissance of Asia and Pacific. And another conclusion, which is perhaps not less important, is that it was achieved through the development of not a single but multiple economic and societal models.

At the same time, the bringing down of barriers for spreading information and the dramatic increase in cross-border travel did not make differencies between nations irrelevant. On the contrary, the understanding that the world is rapidly becoming a global village encouraged people to look for their national and religious identities and to uphold their cultural banners which were now less protected by state boundaries. Regardless of what one thinks of the ideas of Samuel Huntington, I think he should be paid tribute as a visionary who understood the importance of relations between civilizations in our times.

The global picture that is forming in front of our eyes is that of a polycentric world. This reality, however, is ill received in the US.

Rather, the Americans like to present themselves as the leading and indispensable nation who are entitled to do what they please in the international affairs. This policy was reflected in open interference in internal affairs of states in various regions, in actions aimed at bringing down legitimate governments and in military interventions. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya were subjected to attacks without a mandate of the UN Security Council or through badly twisting the Security Council decisions. These wars did not only bring immeasurable suffering to the people of the countries they were waged in, they also failed to achieve their proclaimed goals. Far from becoming an example of a modern and prosperous Arab state, Iraq is struggling to overcome the consequences of the demolition the country, terrorism and sectarian strife. In Libya, state is practically non-existent.

Certainly, Arab peoples wanted change, but they did not need revolutions and wars that pushed their countries backwards in their development by decades. Democratic reforms should have been allowed to develop inside the Arab societies, and in all other societies for that matter, at a pace chosen by the people themselves.

Another observation that seems obvious to me is that a hypothetical world order ruled from one center, by one country could resemble more an Orwelian picture of the future then the hope of continued democratic development. It is very hard to understand why a country that tries to position itself as defender of human rights and democracy everywhere on the planet so bitterly opposes democracy in international relations. Yet it is only logical to suppose that domination and hegemony on the global level, were it to be established and maintained, would inevitably lead to dictatorship at home, putting an end to the liberal model. We all know that there are ample technological means for introducing totalitarianism on a scale never seen before. And there is no solid guarantee that liberal democracy is in fact “the highest and last phase of human development”, if we borrow the formulation used by Marxists to describe communism.

As it became obvious that the process of globalization, instead of cementing Western preponderance in global affairs, heralded the end of five centuries of the domination of the West in the world history, attempts were made to reverse this process and to reintroduce protectionist measures. In fact, the US is trying to use the whole array of instruments at its disposal ranging from political to economic to military and to huge information campaigns in order to block the global trends that are not to its liking. But we know very well that trying to reverse the tide of history can bring catastrophe, but it cannot bring positive results.

If we look briefly at Europe, it is clear that the years after the fall of the Berlin wall were a period of missed opportunities. A historic chance to build a united, secure and prosperous continent was unthoughtfully squandered. The end of ideological confrontation which had seemed unsurmountable only a few years before presented a unique opportunity to open a completely new page and to make a resolute step towards creating a common European space free from conflict and dividing lines. The obvious path to take seemed to strengthen political and military arm of the Organization for cooperation and security in Europe making it the real backbone of a new inclusive security system on the continent.

That, of course, demanded real vision and courage to shed decades-long perceptions. Russia, having performed a dramatic turn it its development, was ready for that, as were some far-sighted European politicians. Apparently, the decision makers in the Western capitals deemed it not necessary. They opted for the enlargement of NATO and pushing NATO-controlled geopolitical space to the East, towards Russian borders. Declarations concerning the commitment to constructing common and indivisible security community stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok remained unfulfilled. So it is not Russia that is to blame for betraying the dream of common European home. And it is clear that the events in Ukraine in 2014 were not the beginning, but rather a result of this negative chain of events.

Unilateralism is preventing the concentration of efforts on facing the real challenges. And these challenges are serious and multiple. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and extremism, poverty, disease, climate change, to name but a few. None of these problems can be effectively dealt with by a single state or a limited group of states. Failing to accept this reality, the international community is losing precious time and risks to lose control of the development of situation both in individual regions and globally. As we prepare to mark next year the 100^th anniversary of the end of the World War I we must remember that the global catastrophe was prepared by lack of strategic thinking on the part of the politicians of that time and by their inability to grasp the real meaning of events.

At this point I believe it is time to address the issue of how Russia sees the ways of overcoming the sorry state of international affairs we are witnessing today. In short, we think one should start from recognizing the reality and to accept that we are going through a period when a multipolar world is being created. Of course, the European Union, in our view, should become one of the strong and important poles of such international system.

In polycentric reality the effective management of global affairs can only be assured on the basis of honest cooperation between all major centers of power. The main mechanism for such coordination is and should remain the United Nations Organization and its Security Council. UN needs to be reformed, but without unnecessary haste and on the basis of the largest possible agreement between member-states. Otherwise a sizable minority of states would feel marginalized, and that could undermine the implementation of reforms.

Of course, constant political coordination and diplomatic dialogue is not a recipe that can be easily implemented, as this can be achieved only through long and tedious negotiations which are often tiresome and irritating. But we have seen proof that, provided there is a sufficient amount of good will, such process can bear fruit. We have seen it, for example, with Iran nuclear program agreement and Paris climate deal. There seems to be no other plausible path to settling conflicts and overcoming global and regional problems. The alternative, as I said before, is sliding down into more chaos and more conflict.

Let me quote the view Andrew Bacevich expressed recently on the pages of the Foreign Affairs magazine: ”As for the United States, although it is likely to remain preeminent for the foreseeable future, preeminence does not imply hegemony. Washington’s calling should be not to impose a Pax Americana but to promote mutual coexistence. Compared with perpetual peace and universal brotherhood, stability and the avoidance of cataclysmic war may seen like modest goals, but achieve that much, and future generations will be grateful”.

This seems to be a very reasonable view. In as much as the Russian-American relations are concerned, I would like to draw on the wisdom of Dr. Henry Kissinger who said that “the long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multipolar and globalized”.

It is extremely important that the global context be taken into consideration in dealing with all international problems. In my younger days I knew the prominent Russian historian Lev Gumilev who happened to be the son of two famous Russian poets – Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. He used to insist that a good scholar of history should, while studying, for example, a certain period in the history of France, know in sufficient detail what happened at the same time in China or in South America. This is increasingly important today as the world became too interdependent to hope that security could be ensured by building walls or sending navy out to sea. And in Europe the stark difference between the situation during the Cold War and today is that now no one can pretend that European developments are the centerpiece of global affairs.

To my mind, attempts to fence off Russia, of which some East European politicians seem to be daydreaming, would only mean precluding the use of the huge potential of sustainable development for all the nations on the European continent. Russia is now engaged in multilateral endeavor aimed at constructing vast integration hub comprising the Russian Federation, Central Asian states, China and many other Asian countries. I believe that the EU member-states could join these efforts. Establishing cooperative ties between EU and the Eurasian Economic Union seems an obvious choice.

The world order in the 21^st century should lean on the partnership of civilizations. The international landscape is today characterized by diversity of cultures and religions, and the only way to avoid conflict is mutual respect.

We hear very often that meaningful and long-term cooperation should have a solid foundation of common values. I agree that it is hard to imagine strong and durable solidarity that is not rooted in values. But what values?

The EU nations sometimes call themselves “values based societies”, and they tend to spread these values everywhere in the world. This trend did not appear today or yesterday. Let me remind you what Oswald Spengler wrote one hundred years ago in his famous book “The Decline of the West”: “All these are local and temporary values – most of them indeed limited to the momentary “intelligentsia” of cities of West-European type. World-historical of “eternal” values they emphatically are not”. And he continued: “In other cultures the phenomenon talks a different language, for other men there are different truths. The thinker must admit the validity of all, or none”. End of quote.

The values that we are talking about are being constantly changed. Indeed, are the liberal values promoted today in France, Germany, or Britain the same as the attitudes that were common in those countries 25 or 30 years ago? Of course not. So if we want to be free to determine our own values and to modify them, we should grant other nations and other civilizations the same right. In other words, we must accept each other’s right to be different. That, I think, is a very important point.

It means that we should honestly search for a genuine common denominator of values-based solidarity in the world of today. The basis for agreement, we believe, can be found in the moral principles developed by the mankind over thousands of years. These principles are broadly the same for all major religions. Rejecting this moral law in the name of modernity is dangerous and can lead to unforeseen consequences.

Global solidarity should be also founded, of course, on generally accepted principles such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

While addressing the root causes of terrorism, which will undoubtedly remain one of the most accute problems of the international relations for years to come, we should dramatically increase our attention to the dialogue between different cultures and religions. Only when peoples that feel today deprived and marginalized realize that their culture, religion and way of life are accepted as part of world heritage, there will be hope to effectively defeat extremist propaganda. Recently a lot was done to deliver military defeat to the terrorists from ICIS. But much remains to be achieved to defeat the jihadist ideology.

The Russian foreign policy is not anti-EU, nor is it anti-American. We are not looking for adversaries, we need friends. We firmly believe that the world stability should be based not only on the balance of powers, as it happened in the preceding centuries, but also on the international law, on good will and on building the culture of compromise. We are convinced that today absolute majority of states accept dialogue as the best method of solving international problems.

We believe in multilateral methods and work earnestly in the UN Security Council, the Group of Twenty and many other formats. If you look, for example, at BRICS, you will see that it is a group that is built across different continents and political alliances. It was not created to oppose anyone, but to promote a positive agenda in international relations based on search for collective answers to global and regional challenges. This kind of positively oriented groups and organizations should, in our view, provide a network of cooperation needed for healthy development of world affairs.

To conclude, I would like to refer to the last version of the Russian Foreign Policy Concept that says, among other things, that Russia fully recognizes its responsibility for maintaining global and regional security and is prepared for common action with all interested partners in search for lasting solutions for international problems. The foreign policy of Russia will continue to reflect its unique role of a balancing factor in the international affairs that has been cristallized over many centuries.

Thank you for your attention.