Phantom of Global Concert: Russia and Us Working Together? Not So Fast
© AP Photo / Susan Walsh
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Dogs of war are snapping at the feet of Donald Trump, and – amazingly – Russia seems to be, currently, the only friend of America or, at least, the best friend of its president.
So can Moscow somehow profit from that unique situation, and for how long?
That is the typical question asked by Russian writers and experts regarding a chain of events these days, starting from a 50-minutes’ call from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump on June 14. The call was not just about Trump’s birthday, it was about war in the Middle East and also about Moscow’s desire to lend a hand to the beleaguered president of the US, and help to seek peace.
It seems that everyone and his/hers uncle is trying to prevent Trump from achieving peace and, instead, wants to drag America into yet another war it’s trying to avoid. Similarities between the different tugs of war are striking.
Israel has attacked Iran right on the eve of yet another round of Iranian nuclear talks with the US in Oman, scheduled on June 15. That’s, obviously, a brazen act of sabotage of American diplomatic initiative, a slap in America’s face that would have been unthinkable in the previous era. And, to drive the message home, the whole Iranian delegation to these talks have been picked up and murdered by clever strikes inside Iran. It’s incredible, how Israel is literally putting the US in a situation where it can do nothing but support the Jewish state with all the American might. It’s a humiliating, but powerful plot.
We see absolutely the same plot in Trump’s attempts to end the hostilities in Ukraine. Nor all of Europe, but definitely the Brits, the French, and the Germans are openly sabotaging the Russo-Ukrainian negotiations sponsored by Trump, by rendering aid to Ukraine, however futile it may be from the military standpoint.
So, in both cases we see a previously unthinkable situation of America fighting against its own belligerent allies, that’s Europeans and Israelis, with Moscow finding itself on America’s side.
It’s small wonder the Russian commentators are in awe and amazement. After all, the last time Russia and America were acting together was probably in 1945, while the next year the US has already started to develop plans of massive nuclear strike on Russian cities (codename The Unthinkable, if I remember it right). After that we may mention the age of détente, the literal meaning of the word being only “reducing tension”, or maybe a very short spell in 1990-s, when some folks in America imagined Russia had to become a weak and obedient ally. The rest was animosity all the way.
And now look at it: three long telephone calls between Moscow and Washington only in June, both presidents mentioning their good personal rapport, and Trump proclaiming, at the recent (badly bungled) G7 summit in Canada, that it was a mistake to expel Russia from that grouping, it’d be nice to see it back there (together with China, mind you). What we see here is a phantom of a possible global concert of superpowers, with smaller warmongering nations listening and obeying.
There is always a couple of pessimists to one optimist, at least it’s so in Russia. So the really serious minds started reacting to that surge of happy dreams, saying that one should not dream away with such vigor. And, no, these serious folks are not even trying to say that Donald Trump is desperate and may well lose real power in two years’ time. Things are deeper than that.
Ms. Victoria Zhuravleva happens to be a deputy director of the Russian Academy’s Institute of Global Economy and Foreign Relations, which is old and prestigious. She says: essentially nothing has changed deep inside the US political class. Trump is in total disagreement with the bipartisan consensus, still designating Russia and China two bad boys of the world.
What we have here, says Ms. Zhuravleva, is a totally unique situation when the president tries to demonstrate his wonderful leadership in the world, and his political base is not being impressed. Anyone who is someone in the American foreign policy is still saying that Russia (like China) is a revisionist power, intent on undermining American positions in the world. We see the same Congress, with the same people holding the same positions there, and they are irritated by Trump’s attempts to achieve any understanding with Putin.
Yes, but America has run out of money to support that bipartisan consensus, remarks Victor Pirozhenko, working in a think tank in Huzhou (China). The problem with global politics is, says he, that in Asia or Europe the US is trying to make its allies pay their own way for the old policies. While most of these allies, to add, respond by provoking wars and conflicts, dragging the US deeper in these, so as not to let it jump wagon.
Surely that situation cannot last long, we are facing a temporary hysterical reaction of the old powers to the realities of the new world. But what kind of world it will be? Here we have to watch the ideas published by Russia’s Security Council. That most serious part of the nation’s top governing machine has recently created an expert council on global security, headed by Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko (already quoted in this column about a month ago).
We are entering a world that will stall economically for at least a decade, says Mr. Yakovenko in The Expert magazine. And that simple fact changes a lot. India is expected to grow and expand, maybe by 6 per cent, says he, same with Indonesia. The rest will be lucky to see 2 per cent, and - yes, Russia too is not likely to make a big leap (China is conspicuously not mentioned in his piece). That will be a new and modest world. A lot of powers will have to learn how to adjust to that new reality.
That’s a very good concept that leads you to a lot of conclusions of your own. Like, the world of today is the product of too many changes, as a result of sudden growth of too many nations all around you. You may have noticed that we are living in a world that’s gone completely mad, but isn’t madness a logical reaction to too many changes on the global scene?
Runaway production and trade, as a result of globalization, have led to the current attempts of the US to stop that flow, to safeguard one’s old territories from the flood. Being prudent and modest is not exactly the virtue of the West, not to mention the fact that the Global South is not likely to watch happily the clumsy Western attempts to dominate something where that dominance is nor around anymore. That’s turbulence.
You have to be a real idealist to imagine that good relations between Russia and the US are capable of changing the nature of the current turbulence. But then only the dreamers achieve something in this life.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
