Russia reaffirms eastern re-orientation

Valdai forum 2022

By Sanja De Silva Jayatilleka

Russia’s most prestigious international affairs conference, the annual Valdai Forum, was held, for the 19th time, at the end of October, this year. The meeting was rather cynically described, in the quality western periodical press, as the “Eastern Davos for influential foreigners who come for a few days of high-level discussions with the Russian political elite.” (Tom Nichols in The Atlantic).

The Forum lasted four days, from the 24th to the 27th October, culminating with President Putin’s nearly hour-long address to the delegates, followed by a generous allocation of about 3 ½ hours to Q&A. The many questions, coming from foreign delegates, were responded to by Putin, at length, and with a seriousness that indicated a genuine interest in their concerns and curiosity about Russia’s current role and future interaction with the world.

Given that Russia is in the midst of its Special Military Operation, in the Ukraine, extensive unilateral sanctions, imposed on it by ‘the collective West’, the resultant global energy, and food crisis, and media hype of an ‘imminent nuclear threat’, the Russian President was remarkably relaxed and in good cheer, fully engaging with the delegates, joking with them from the platform to much laughter, and enthusiastically replying all questions and remarks, not once avoiding the issues raised with a less than complete answer. With a number of delegates from the East, the Global South, and the Middle East, he was at ease, and seemed to appreciate and even enjoy the interaction. The audience certainly did.

POST-HEGEMONIC WORLD?

This year’s Forum, themed ‘A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone’, had more than 100 delegates, from 41 countries, each of whom had a daily PCR test, before breakfast, and thus no imperative wearing of masks. Accommodated at the Imperial Park hotel, amidst beautiful woods and gardens in the Moscow Region, the very thoughtfully organized event with a tightly packed schedule, including post-dinner sessions, concluded with an overwhelming consensus for a multi-polar world as the preferred option, with most seeing it as an approaching inevitability.

It was clear that Russian foreign policy was turning East, following the aggressive sanctions and hostility of the West towards Russia, including the hysterical Russophobia in the western media.

President Xi of China, Prime Minister Modi of India and President Erdogan of Turkey came in for fulsome praise from President Putin, who described Mr. Modi’s determined independence in his foreign policy stance as being “like an ice-breaker in his pursuit of India’s national interest” despite intense pressure from the west to isolate Russia.

An Indian delegate to the event, former Ambassador to Russia, Venkatesh Varma, told the conference that the “unprecedented” sanctions on Russia were unsuccessful. He said they represented a conflict between “the logic of globalization and the logic of geopolitics”. In the face of the consequences of these sanctions, new efforts have opened up, globally, in the energy and defence interests. Quoting Mr. Modi to the effect that that India’s friendship with Russia is unbreakable, Ambassador Varma said that despite enormous pressure from the West, India was pursuing Rupee-Ruble and other non-dollar mechanisms for continued trading with Russia.

India stood for a multipolar world and multilateralism. As the fastest growing economy in the world, India asserted that it will resist the fragmentation of the world. One way of doing this was by not implementing the sanctions on Russia.

There was a clear message from the delegates that the global South was no longer a passive subject of actions initiated in the West. They called for regional cooperation as a solution to the food and energy crisis facing the world today. ‘Transportation corridors’ running through Afghanistan to South India and an ‘Agriculture Express’ to reduce delivery time and cost of transportation were among a number of ideas that were explored to circumvent the growing multiple crises facing all countries and the cumulative overarching crisis.

It was evident that far from isolating Russia, or de-coupling from it, non-western states were looking to a new world order in which Russia was very much a key stakeholder and were searching for new and innovative ways of making the emerging order more effective and fairer than the old, unipolar one. In this effort, it appeared that several processes were already underway, and that rather than rushing to put something together that would simply replace the old, they were ensuring that it was built well and with careful consideration.

WHOSE RULES? WHOSE ORDER?

The writer and her husband Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka with Prof Fyodor
Lukyanov – Valdai Club

At a session, themed “One World in a New Way”, an economist of international renown said that the world had two choices: either an aspiration for a world under the UN system and international law or for the US hegemonic system. He said unipolarity, a neo-conservative notion, was dangerous in 1992, and it is so today. Unipolarity believes that political alliances and, especially military ones, were key to preserving that hegemonic order. Instead, a multipolar world and multilateralism, was recommended with “Social Democracy on a global scale”, asserting that a first step would be the committed implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the centerpiece of the economic policy of countries.

Supporting a multipolar world system, another scholar said that according to the latest figures, 60% of the patents came from the RIC countries (Russia, India, China), with the US holding only 12% and Japan 18%. The trends were clear, and the new innovations were coming from Eurasia. He proposed the interesting idea that the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) should transform itself from a security organization to a multi-dimensional one. He explained that the need of the ‘collective west’ for rules of ‘reconciliation of interests’ was far less than the interest of the sovereign states.

The often repeated ‘Rules-based international Order’ came in for major criticism at the Forum, including the point that no one had seen the set of rules that made up this order. The set of rules seemed arbitrary, and appeared to be whatever served the Western hegemonic status. This was emphasized by President Putin in his speech when he asked “where are these rules written, when, and by whom?” and said that the West’s world view was sought to be presented as ‘universal’, when it was actually racist and neoliberal. He reiterated that the UN Charter, international law and UN Security Council resolutions comprised the recognizable, legitimate rules of the world order. He said the collective West contests the sovereignty of other nations and peoples.

President Putin alleged that the West had rejected the proposal for collective security, submitted to them by Russia, which could have avoided the current conflict in Ukraine. He said that there was a depletion of the creative potential in the West and that they should think harder and present their ideas more conceptually, rather than blame the Kremlin for everything.

Reflecting the general consensus in the Forum, President Putin said an absolute majority of the world demands democracy in world affairs. He said the new centers of a multipolar world, a world order in which diversity is recognized and respected, were emerging currently. He mentioned the BRICS, the SCO and other organizations of non-western origin as being important to the future of an alternative world order in the face of increasing intolerance of dissent in western countries which had no creative or positive agendas to offer the world.

At dedicated sessions of the Forum, Russia’s policy elite spoke openly and reflectively of their policies and decisions, including about the Ukraine conflict and the sensitive recent topic of ‘mobilization’, inviting participants’ questions and remarks and engaging seriously in discussions with them.

It became clear that the international participants didn’t arrive with any preconceptions regarding Russia, preferring to address their concerns openly and directly to the Russians themselves, while not completely convinced of western accounts. The Russian policy elite, including Foreign Minister Lavrov, the deputy Prime Minister, a Presidential Advisor and the President himself, took the time to explain their positions in detail with an awareness of the complexity of each of the difficult decisions including the considerations of the social costs of those decisions.

EAST-CENTRIC

GLOBALIZATION?

Having felt itself more a part of Europe than Asia for much of its existence, closer to it culturally and historically, Russia has learned that the feelings were no longer mutual and the contradictions now outweighed the commonalities. While culturally still more a reflection of the West, it however feels its spiritual, civilizational and social values were increasingly at odds with those of, or those currently dominant in, the West.

Certainly, in its foreign policy, Russia finds itself closer to the countries of the East in their acceptance of the United Nations and multilateralism as the current best way to conduct international relations and negotiate resolutions to any contradictions. It also shares respect for sovereignty and the pursuit of national interest with them, including the belief that nations must be free to choose their own models of economic development in the best interest of their people, in keeping with their respective cultures and civilizations. This has brought with it a reorientation of Russia’s foreign policy and a turn to the East, through its partnerships, preeminently with India and China, and its membership of the various multilateral institutions of the East.

Participating at the Forum, with my husband, who was invited to be a panelist at the final session, I was struck by the support of the global south for Russia, and the Russian willingness to engage openly and with disarming self-reflection about themselves and their role in world affairs, which they feel as a great power, is a vanguard role from which they will not shy away.

As a significant take-away, the Forum revealed a new consensus and a resultant process and project that is already underway in world affairs, initiated by emerging powers together with Russia, to shape an alternative order including a different, non-neoliberal globalization, with greater equality, justice and regionalization, signaling the evolution of a new dynamic in international relations, no longer mediated through western hegemonic discourse.

[The writer was a participant at the Valdai Forum 2022, Oct 24-27th, Moscow]