The Irrevocable End of Russia-US Relations

Moscow says NYET to Washington's "Rules-based Order"

By Somar Wijayadasa

"After the present crisis in Ukraine, there can be no return to attempts at a rapprochement with the US and its allies". - Alexey Drobinin

NEW YORK (IDN) — Alexey Drobinin, Director of policy planning of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, has published a keynote article on Russia’s foreign-policy concept describing that Russia’s special military operation was a milestone on the way to new world order.

The document entitled "The Lessons of History and the Vision of the Future: Reflections on Russia's Foreign Policy" aptly describes Russia’s thousand-year history as well as the imperial ambitions of Sweden, France, and Germany.

It compares the confrontation between Russia and the West with the "Cold War" of the 1940s-1980s and today's "man-made crisis of European security", perhaps referring to NATO's expansion into Russia's borders.

Saying that Western arrogance is fuelled by decades (if not centuries) of impunity and permissiveness, Drobinin questions, "How else can we explain the adventurism of American presidents who have taken to declaring countries located tens of thousands of kilometres away from the United States a threat to national security?

The result of military interventions (for example, in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan) was the destabilization of entire regions”.

Drobinin believes that Moscow perceives as inevitable the arrival of a multipolar world order, and countries like Russia that reject Washington’s "rules-based order" have no other option but resistance. That would replace a brief moment of US-led unipolarity that emerged in the 1990s.

He says that "Regardless of the duration and outcome of the special military operation, even now we can acknowledge that a three-decade-long period of mostly constructive, if problematic cooperation with the West is irrevocably over".

According to him, the current situation provides a unique opportunity to finally get rid of residual illusions and to take Russia beyond the paradigm of 'friendly absorption', which has been reproduced over and over again by Western colleagues since 1992. "It is clear that there will be no return to the situation before February 24 in relations with North American and European countries."

Russia will pursue closer ties with non-Western players, foster regional integration, help create new international financial and management mechanisms that would be free from Western control and otherwise ensure that it would have a say in how the future multipolar world would work, Drobinin said.

The formation of a multipolar world order, as President Vladimir Putin has noted, is about "transitioning from a liberal globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based on genuine sovereignty of nations and civilizations".

Several "civilizational" blocs, each led by a powerful nation like the US, China or Russia, will be the stakeholders in the future, but the exact configuration is yet to be determined, Drobinin predicted.

He believes that Russia could "offer to Europe a scheme of future cooperation that would on the one hand support autonomist desires of the Europeans and on the other hand would ensure that our nation would not face any kinds of threats from the European direction". He acknowledges that pursuing that goal would be a challenge.

"For many [nations] the acute problems are access to cheap energy (not a switch to 'green' technology), socio-economic development (not the ultraliberal version of human rights), security and sovereign equality (not the imposed Western-style electoral democracy)," he argues.

As for dealing with nations that Russia deems "unfriendly", it is currently "only possible on a one-shot transactional basis … in cases where Russia would benefit and where there is no suitable alternative".

Drobinin believes that the idea of a "Greater Eurasia" economic framework may become Russia's top diplomatic goal and priority for years to come. For example, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Nations) are embodiments of multipolar diplomacy.

The Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) was first proposed by President Putin in 2015 who calls it "a big civilizational project" meant to "change the political and economic architecture of the entire continent, become a safeguard of stability and prosperity that would account for the diversity of development models, cultures and traditions of all peoples".

The idea is to foster economic relations between nations without interfering with their domestic policies. It would serve as "a framework contour for economic integration and security, which would be open for all nations and organizations on the continent".

According to Drobinin, Moscow hopes that Europe would distance itself from Washington and become a force of its own, as political forces pursuing sovereignty and national interests gain power.

Drobinin accuses the US of actively undermining international institutions and otherwise destabilizing the world in a fruitless attempt to delay the reduction of its power. Russia is at the forefront of opposing Washington, he said.

"We have to realize that the Russophobic-minded collective West is a dangerous and motivated … opponent that remains strong, has a leading military-technological potential and controls a large portion of the global markets, financial resources, logistical chains and flows of information," he warns.

Saying that the United Nations only represents the US and Europe, Drobinin avers that it is in dire need of reform, and suggested that the Security council must be "democratized" first of all by expanding the representation of African, Asian and Latin American countries.

He points out that the organization's current agenda, which is primarily fuelled by the West, is not necessarily in line with the interests of the majority of its international members.

"The saddest thing is that this rust is eating away at the 'holy of holies' of the UN system—the Security Council," Drobinin believes.

"It devalues the meaning of the right of veto, which the founding fathers endowed to the permanent members of the Security Council with one single purpose: to prevent the interests of any of the great powers from being infringed and thus save the world from a direct clash between them.

Drobinin suggests that whatever the fate of international organizations such as the UN, WTO, IMF, World Bank or G20 is, the divisive policies of the West makes it "an absolute imperative for the coming years to form a new infrastructure of international relations".

Saying that "the Americans have lowered the first-strike threshold in their military doctrine", Dobrinin believes that policies enacted by the US have forced other world powers to revive their nuclear war planning and that “the framework for arms control and preservation of strategic stability is now being dismantled at the instigation of the US”.

“These and other concerning factors are yet again bringing the most dangerous scenarios of conflict between nuclear powers, fraught with disastrous consequences, back into the view of military planners,” he maintains.

"After their perfidious decisions and actions against Russia, its citizens and tangible assets, we simply cannot afford the luxury of not thinking about alternatives. Especially since many of our friends who have lost faith in Western benevolence and decency are thinking about the same thing," the diplomat noted. [IDN-InDepthNews – 08 August 2022]

* Somar Wijayadasa, an international lawyer was a Faculty Member of the University of Sri Lanka (1967-1972), worked for IAEA and FAO (1973-1980), delegate of UNESCO to the UN General Assembly (1980-1995), and was the Representative of UNAIDS at the United Nations from 1995-2000.

Photo: President of Russia Vladimir Putin meeting with US President Joseph Biden (via videoconference). Source: Kremlin.ru. CC BY 4.0

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