Carnegie Moscow Center’s Director Dmitri Trenin and Rethinking Russia discussed his new book “What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?”, Moscow’s role and place in the region, the future of Syria and the Islamic State as well as Russia’s Syria collaboration with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the U.S.
Andrey Movchan explains what lessons Russia can learn from Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela to deal with the perennial “resource curse.”
Today Russia and the West perceive each other as political opponents, in fact. And one should treat one’s opponent very seriously. After all, if you don’t take your adversary very seriously, it might lead to underestimating your opposing side’s potential and overestimating your own capabilities.
Putin is creating the environment that can provide him with security and insurance and control the wars with the Kremlin’s inner circle. Russia’s political elites have already received a lot of signals from him: If somebody behaves in a wrong way, he will be either dismissed or accused of corruption.
Nobody in the U.S. believes that relations with Russia will be improved until the kremlin changes its foreign policy course and stops its political rebellion against the system of international relations, established by the United States.
What is the worst and dangerous for Russia is the feeling of self-assured satisfaction and perception that it is a great, powerful and invincible country with unlimited resources. It can lead to another stagnation.
Russian society should pay more attention to the Kremlin’s foreign policy agenda and have a better understanding of the nation’s actions abroad. Russia should identify itself as a Euro-Pacific country rather than a Eurasian country as it seeks out new opportunities to become better integrated in the globalized world.
If the nonproliferation regime is violated and terrorist organizations get access to nuclear technologies, it will be much easier for them to reach Russia through its neighboring borders than the United States across the Atlantic.
The main challenge of foreign policy expertise both in Russia and in the United States is to understand where the other country is coming from. The challenge to the U.S. is to be able to go beyond the ideological stereotypes. For the Russians, there is a clear need to do more serious research on the United States.
Russia’s political elites and, particularly, its president have no strategic vision of the future and no adequate assessment of reality. The authorities are seeking to prolong the inertia model until the presidential elections in 2018, but afterwards the Kremlin will need strategic decisions.
