ASEAN Architect Qualifications

It has become almost impossible to change the vector of the strategic direction of Russia's development determined by GDP

Ten years ago, graffiti could often be seen on the walls of houses in Moscow: Vladimir Putin with scissors in his hands cuts the first letter in the English word Revolution and looks with satisfaction at what remains – Evolution. But now such graffiti is almost invisible. And that has its own homely truth.

John Reed's famous book about the events of October 1917 was called Ten Days That Shook the World. But in February of this year, Putin managed to shake up the entire world order that had developed until then in a single day.

Photo: kremlin.ru

Motives of these actions of the President of the Russian Federation are still a mystery to many experts.

< p>Throughout his political career, Putin followed the famous principle of Peter Stolypin: “They need big shocks, we need Big Russia.” The fateful decision of HDP catapulted Russia into the epicenter of major upheavals. During his time at the head of the country, Putin always tried to ensure maximum freedom of maneuver and freedom of hands.

The great geopolitical revolution of February 2022 forced the President of Russia to act in a very narrow corridor of opportunities. But this puzzle has a solution. And that trace is hidden in plain sight.

“The only constant thing in life is change.” When I set out to find the author of this quote, I soon abandoned the task for its futility. This wise idea is too universal. But what kind of “permanence of change” has been a feature of Russian politics for several centuries?

Every new leader always renounces the political legacy of his predecessor. Empress Elizabeth defeated Prussia. Her nephew Peter III. apologized and returned all the conquests. Peter III's wife, Catherine II, quickly dismissed her husband from the business.

However, their common son Pavel canceled his mother's policy. His son Alexander I declared that “everything will be with me as with my grandmother”. Another tsar, Nicholas I, buried his brother's political liberalism. But liberalism flared up with new vigor during the reign of his own son, Alexander II…

Nothing changed even after the post of the country's leader stopped being passed down like a baton within one family. Khrushchev abolished Stalin, Brezhnev abolished Khrushchev, Andropov-Brezhnev, Chernenko-Andropov, Gorbachev-Chernenko, Yeltsin abolished Gorbachev…

If we continue to think within this immutable logic of Russian history, then in the next round of historical spirals a certain Mr. X, whose last name we do not yet know (or rather we know, but not yet in this context), always nullifies the political legacy of the current leader of the country, Vladimir Putin.

And here is the stop. It is very possible that the notorious spiral will start to turn in the other direction. There are many indications that Putin managed to break the logic of the development of Russian history – to ensure that the vector of the country's political development, which he set, will be unchanged, regardless of which new leader comes to power in the Kremlin in five, ten, twenty or even thirty years.

Why Putin wanted to “break the matrix”

Towards the end of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, against the background of growing chaos in the state, the famous Soviet scientist, Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, brought Bruce Rappaport, a well-known investment banker from Switzerland, to a meeting with the General Secretary. p>

As Velikhov recounts in his memoirs, Mikhail Sergeyevich, as was his wont, launched into long and vague speeches about the great potential and great future of the Soviet Union. The Western businessman, accustomed to specifics, listened to the Secretary-General with growing impatience and then interrupted him to ask permission to tell a Jewish anecdote.

“A certain despondent widower who had just buried his wife came to a rabbi for advice on how to live on. The rabbi said to him, “Let a year or two pass. You will adapt and find comfort!” The widower replied, “What happens in a year or two is understandable. But how should I be tonight?”

I'm not sure that Mikhail Gorbachev, with his amazing ability to ignore unpleasant aspects of reality, understood exactly what kind of idea they were politely trying to convey to him. But Putin, although hardly anyone tells him Jewish jokes with a hint, on the contrary, he constantly carries this idea in his head.

All political leaders are divided into two categories: some live exclusively for today – according to the main mistress of the French king Louis XV., Marquise de Pompadour: “after us also the flood.” Others, without ignoring today, of course, constantly think about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Putin is a prominent representative of the second category. The owner of the Kremlin, who was kept under tight control every “tonight” during his reign, has long thought in historical terms, in terms of Russia's destiny and his own role in determining and securing that destiny. And this is how, in my opinion, the “geopolitical revolution of February 24” can be interpreted in the light of this fact: Putin came to the conclusion that securing the Great Future of Great Russia is possible only if the fear of great upheavals.

I will try to prove my point using the past statements of the president himself. Valdai Club meeting, October 2016. Oksana Antonenko, a British expert of Russian origin, asks Putin about the mood of Russian citizens: “Don't you think they have a demand to reduce geopolitical tensions?” HDP's response: “We all have a demand for a reduction in geopolitical tension, but not in the manner of our funeral. If the payment for reducing geopolitical tensions is our funeral, then that will not sit well with anyone, including those who express doubts about the effectiveness of the current government or those who would like serious change.”

What Putin in this case meant “our funeral”? I think, first of all, the burial of Russia's status as a great power.

A lot has already been said about why, from Putin's point of view, by February 2022, the danger of such a burial as a result of the targeted actions of the West has become real. Many, but not all. So far, such an important factor as the unchanging logic of Russian history described above has remained behind the scenes.

key article “Ukraine's long-term strategy” in Foreign Affairs magazine

Richard Haas has emphasized long-term planning throughout his career in public service: one of his previous positions was director of policy planning at the State Department. And as the veteran American diplomat discussed and then immediately dismissed the options available to America, he finally settled on this: The United States should just wait.

Waiting for the weather by the sea? Not really. Vladimir Putin's resignation as President of the Russian Federation. Richard Haas: “Ultimately what may be called for… is change not in Washington but in Moscow. It will most likely take someone other than Putin to take steps to end Russia's pariah status, economic crisis and military quagmire.

The West needs to make it clear: it is ready to reward a new Russian leader who takes such steps and at the same time, it increases the pressure on the current Russian leader.”

For reasons that will be detailed later, I consider this logic of the leading American foreign policy strategist to be inapplicable in the future. But that doesn't mean it was broken in the past.

At one time, I had a good friend, the right-hand man of the last head of the Soviet State Planning Commission, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in Primakov's office, Yuri Maslyukov. Anton Surikov. Anton was a great fraud, but at the same time a very original and interesting political thinker. He was especially fond of talking about the fact that modern Russia would never dare to go into a really serious conflict with the United States.

As Surikov argued to me, official Washington has too many levers of influence over the Russian elite. During Anton's lifetime (he died suddenly in 2009, before he was 50), his analytical calculations on the topic of what sanctions America could impose on our business magnates and how easily it could confiscate their assets seemed to me purely hypothetical, even fantasy logical construction. But just over 10 years have passed and many of his predictions have come true.

Many – but not the most important. America pushed all its possible and impossible sanctions levers to the maximum, but that did not stop Moscow. But here's the question: why didn't you? Answer: because at the head of the pyramid of Russian power stands a leader in whose eyes the losses from Western sanctions are compared with the main goal – maintaining the status of a great power for Russia – albeit painful, difficult, unpleasant, but still acceptable.

< p>Putin weighed all the pros and cons and made a decision. However, a potential successor to Putin or a successor to Putin's successor in a similar situation might make a very different decision. But why am I using this particular verb construction “I might accept”? It would probably be more correct to write like this: “I would choose differently.”

Dmitry Medvedev, an active user of social networks, proves to the public almost every day his burning “hatred” for the Western world. Since in 2011, as the President of the Russian Federation, he was faced with the need to make a real choice, he preferred to follow the Western policy on the Libyan issue, which is very important and indicative for Putin. And this despite the fact that the emission rate in 2011 was immeasurably lower than the emission rate in 2022.

There was no pressure on President Medvedev, they did not demand “do it in any case, otherwise we will unleash the ninth wave on you sanctions! But still he made a decision that, according to Putin's deep conviction, did not correspond to Russian national interests and the criteria for a just world order – he did not block the decision of the UN Security Council on the right of the United States and countries to armed intervention in the internal Libyan conflict, promoted by the West.

< p>Remember that famous public “difference of opinion” between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev in March 2011? Putin: “The Security Council resolution is flawed and flawed, it allows everything and resembles a medieval call for a crusade. In effect, it enables the invasion of a sovereign country.”

Medvedev a few hours later: “We all have to be as precise as possible in our assessments. In no case is it permissible to use expressions that actually lead to a clash of civilizations, such as “crusades” and the like. This is unacceptable!”

The importance of this Libyan episode in the modern history of Russia, from my point of view, cannot be overestimated. As people close to Putin told me, when handing over presidential powers to Medvedev in 2008, the HDP did not at all exclude the possibility of his subsequent complete resignation from power. That possibility was later ruled out when Putin concluded that his successor was bending to pressure (or political charm) from the West.

And now let's summarize the interim results. As a career intelligence officer and seasoned political leader, Putin has no illusions about human nature and its natural tendency to “take the path of least resistance.” Putin is under no illusions about the “loyalty to principles” of a significant part of the Russian elite.

The experiment orchestrated by Putin in the form of a temporary or even permanent transfer of power to a like-minded person has really failed in this part. However, this failure did not, of course, force the HDP to abandon its main task – to ensure the immutability of Russia's political direction to maintain its status as a great power.

Soon after the return of the VVP to the presidency in 2012, a new term appeared in the Russian political lexicon – “nationalization of the elite “. And in 2022, the nationalization of the elite became a definitive reality.

The matrix is ​​broken

< p>In April 1991, former US President Richard Nixon decided to find out where the Soviet Union was headed and paid a visit to Moscow. The retired American head was willingly welcomed by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and member of the Soviet Presidential Security Council Yevgeny Primakov.

But the two most important actors in our political drama at the time – Gorbachev and Yeltsin – had no time for Nixon. For all his personal authority and high standing in world politics, the ex-President of the United States was politely but firmly refused an audience. And then, as described in Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by London School of Economics professor Vladislav Zubok, an excellent and unfortunately the only book written in English so far, Nixon's aide Dimitri Simes solved the problem with a funny trick.

Aware of persistent rumors that the KGB was “wiretapping and scanning everything” in the lobby of the elite Moscow hotel where they were staying, Simes began talking loudly about Nixon's upcoming meeting with Yeltsin. The fish quickly took the bait. A few hours later, the former American leader received a phone call from Gorbachev's secretariat and was invited to a meeting with the “father of perestroika.”

What happened next was a matter of technique. Simes informed Vladimir Lukin, then chairman of the International Committee of the Supreme Soviet of Russia close to Yeltsin, that Gorbachev would accept Nixon after all. And the president of the RSFSR also very quickly found time in his schedule to meet with the former American president.

What happened after February 24, 2022, in terms of the nationalization of the Russian elite, somewhat resembles this story. Vladimir Putin did not have to make any further efforts. All the work to achieve this goal was done by the one who previously partially privatized this elite – the collective West.

Article 14 of the German Constitution: “Property and the right to inheritance are guaranteed… Property binds. At the same time, its use must serve the common good. Alienation of property is permitted only for purposes of the general welfare. It can only be carried out by law or on the basis of a law regulating the nature and amount of compensation. Compensation is determined on the basis of a fair consideration of the interests of society and interested parties.”

After the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, it became clear that, from the perspective of the West, the common good requires that the citizens of the Russian Federation have no property in their countries and they were not entitled to any compensation based on consideration of the interests of the interested parties.

You can talk as long as you want that the confiscation of the property of Russian citizens is a violation of all conceivable and unthinkable norms. These conversations will not affect anything at all. As far as citizens of the Russian Federation are concerned, all these thinkable and unthinkable norms no longer exist.

What has happened is irreversible. This unpleasant fact must be accepted. And it is also necessary to accept the fact that completely irreversible changes have occurred in other, even more important areas.

There is such a saying: you borrow other people's money and give away your own for a while. But of course this is nothing but a joke. But what is by no means a joke is that until 2014, the Russian Federation was a fairly complete and established state without Crimea. But after reunification with the peninsula, Russia cannot be imagined without Crimea. To give Crimea to someone is now for the Russian state the same as cutting off a person's arm and leg. When new territories that used to belong to Ukraine are included in referendums this fall, Russia will be included.

Richard Haas hopes that some future new president of Russia will be willing and able to dismantle Vladimir Putin's foreign policy legacy. does not want. And even if he wanted to, he can't. Such a task is basically unrealizable.

The only exception to this principle is the complete collapse of Russian statehood, the total surrender of the country. What kind of president would be willing (and able) to implement this scenario? Here's what everyone hasn't grasped yet, but what will become more and more apparent with each new month and each new year: Putin has created an entirely new geopolitical reality that will continue even after Russia has a new president. The time of great geopolitical forks has passed. Track selected. All foreign policy maneuvers of Russia and, by the way, of the West are now possible only on this track.

What exactly does this track look like? Looking at the situation from an American perspective, it is best characterized by the words of US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady in a private meeting at the White House in June 1991, quoted in Vladislav Zubok's book The Collapse: “Brady, with rare candor, articulated America's strategic priority. “We need to change Soviet society in such a way that it cannot afford a defense system. If the Soviets go to market, they will not be able to afford a large defense sector. A real reform program will make them a third-tier power. This is what we want!”

These words were uttered at the very peak of the thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington. And at the time they were only one (albeit indeed the most influential) of the alternative points of view. But now that diversity is finally gone. The course to transform Russia into a third-tier power is the non-alternative course of action for the Western elite in the coming years and decades.

And this is how the new geopolitical track looks from the Russian point of view. Ivan Timofeev, program director of the Russian Council for International Affairs, noted in an article for the Valdai Club: “Every conflict sooner or later ends in peace. Such is the conventional wisdom that can often be heard from those who, in the current situation of the sanctions tsunami and the confrontation with the West, are trying to find hope for a return to “normalcy”…

We are forced to disappoint those who in such he believes the prospect… The contradictions between Russia and the West are stable. An unstable system of asymmetric bipolarity has been created in Europe, in which the security of Russia and NATO can hardly be indivisible. Russia has no way to crush the West without unacceptably damaging itself. However, the West, despite its colossal superiority, cannot crush Russia without unacceptable losses. Containing Russia is the best strategy for the West. Ukraine is doomed to remain one of the holding areas. For Russia, the optimal strategy of asymmetrical balancing of Western superiority remains.

Источник www.mk.ru