According the Minister of Russian Federation Mr. Sergey Lavrov, genuine multilateralism and diplomacy is against the international rules-based order. The United Nations Organization is the embodiment of true multilateralism, with a central coordinating role in global politics and the only legal framework, after WWII for the international order, is the UN Charter.
Today, this security system that has proved its value for almost 80 years is not working because the US and its allies are trying to impose the “rules-based international order”, “rules” that have never been the subject of transparent international consultations, nor have they been laid out for everybody’s attention.
In this context, the Russian view is that there is an effort to counteract the natural processes of the formation and strengthening of new independent centers of development by using this instrument. Adding to that, the Russian side sees measures to contain access to modern technologies and financial services, confiscating property, destroying competitors’ critical infrastructure, and manipulating universally agreed norms and procedures.
The “rules” are applied whenever Western countries and the US, the so called “golden billion” by the Russians, are trying to structure a justification for their illegitimacy against other countries who follow international law and do not want to accept that situation. Moreover, the West avoids talks in a UN framework and discover new instruments in order to promote their ideas like the theme of united “democracies” countering “autocracies”, the “summits for democracy”, the Alliance for Multilateralism, the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence, the Global Media Freedom Coalition and the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace – these and other non-inclusive projects are all tools to undermine UN and to impose non-consensual concepts and decisions that benefit the collective West.
This is against the key principle underlying the UN Charter, which is the sovereign equality of states and the reason for that according the Russian side is that the collective West has set out to reshape the processes of multilateralism at the regional level to suit its needs. For example, the Russian Federation believes that the United States and its allies, have deployed significant forces to undermine multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific Region where an ASEAN-centered, successful, and open economic and security cooperation system has been taking shape for decades. From the one hand, NATO at last year’s summit in Madrid decided to move its global responsibility for defensive activities to the so-called Indo-Pacific region, while the creation of the AUKUS military alliance, is the next step in the plans that the West develops to ensure its unilateral interests in the South China Sea region, while no one is hiding the fact that this Indo-Pacific strategy seeks to contain China and to isolate Russia.
The Russian side, accuses also the Western countries that they have brought neighboring countries of vital interest under their control, while Russia tried to achieve mutually-beneficial multilateral agreements based on the principle of indivisible security, as in the OSCE framework for example the rules were that no nation shall strengthen its security at the expense of the security of others and that no country, or group of countries, or organization shall be vested with the pre-eminent responsibility of maintaining peace in an OSCE region, or treat any part of an OSCE region as its sphere of influence. To support this statement the Russian side uses as examples NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia, in Libya in 2011 and the invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition in 2003.
Moving further the Russian side mentions the US’s intervention in the domestic affairs of post-Soviet countries like the so called “Color revolutions” in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, the bloody coup in Kiev in February 2014 and the attempts to seize power by force in Belarus in 2020. Meanwhile, the West has according to their own set of rules recognized Kosovo’s independence without a referendum, but still refuses to recognize Crimea’s independence, even though a referendum there was in fact held. All these facts according the Russian side expose the use of double standards just like in the case of Ukraine and the ongoing war in the east.
Moscow tried to prevent this confrontation with the UN Security Council Resolution 2202 and the Minsk agreements, including proposals made by President Vladimir Putin in December 2021 to reach an agreement on multilateral mutual security guarantees. The response was that nobody can prevent NATO from “embracing” Ukraine. In addition, the rights of Russian ethnic minorities were violated in Ukraine according the US planning to weaken Russia and disregard fair multilateralism in global affairs. After all the key point is not about Ukraine, but rather about the future of international relations. Specifically, the question is: Will they be forged on a sustainable consensus, one based on the balance of interests? Or will they be reduced to an aggressive and explosive advancement of hegemony?
Russia claims that the goals of its special military operation are to remove threats to its security that have been instigated by NATO for a number of years and right on Russia’s borders, and to protect the people who were stripped of their rights set forth in multilateral conventions. In connection to this rhetoric the Foreign Minister asks: What did Washington and NATO do in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya? Were there any threats to their security, culture, religion, or languages? What multilateral regulations were they guided by when they declared Kosovo’s independence in violation of OCSE principles or when they were destroying stable and economically wealthy Iraq and Libya, countries located 10,000 miles away from US coasts?
He continuous with criticism against UN office holders and mentions that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres must ensure that his staff meets impartiality standards in keeping with Article 100 of the UN Charter and that they do not facilitate neoliberal concepts because the world will experience a widening gap between “golden billion” countries (already referred to the US and its Western allies) and the Global Majority. In this vein, he points out that the West promotes democracy only when it is useful for its interests but opposes democratization of international relations based on respect for the sovereign equality of states. The result of that situation for humanity is similar like the Cold War years and even more dangerous, as he accuses the US and its allies that they want to solve things on the hard way, meaning with hard power.
The next message by the Russian Foreign Minister includes a call on responsibility and political wisdom, to dialogue and communication, while he opens the door for a reform on the Security Council in order to promote multilateralism by expanding the representation of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a new inclusive architecture of international relations, using examples like the BRICS, SCO, EAEU, CSTO etc. In connection to the previous efforts, he refers to the proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2021 for a summit of the UN Security Council permanent members, due to the special responsibility under the UN Charter to preserve international peace and security it possesses, but it was rejected.
Closing his remarks, he brings on the table the voices from the Global South countries, ranging from East and Southeast Asia, the Arab and the Muslim world in its entirety, all the way to Africa and Latin America, in order to add their desire also to ensure the settlement of current problems through honest collective work, aimed at agreeing on a balance of interests based on the sovereign equality of states and indivisible security, while Russia will continue to forge productive cooperation with them in the name of improving the international situation and promoting dialogue between countries, based on the principles of true multilateralism, international law, truth, and justice.
Using the previous summary coming from Russian Foreign Minister Mr. Sergei Lavrov, the following step is to understand how Russia sees the future of world order, by applying as a starting point the statement made by President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2022, where he pointed out that a common future for all will require a dialogue between the West and “new centers of a multipolar international order”. More specifically, he made it clear that the basis of the world civilization consists of the “traditional societies of the East, Latin America, Africa and Eurasia”.
What does this statement mean and how someone could try and decode it? The Russian side places the civilizational aspect as a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing a multipolar system while in parallel supports that “the West losing its potential, but striving to restrain and stop the development of other civilizations”. Another angle of that view comes by Russian political scientists. Here is one such opinion: “The worldwide meaning of the Ukraine crisis is about returning freedom, dignity and independence to the non-West – we suggest calling it the World Majority which previously used to be suppressed, robbed and culturally humiliated. Obviously, it should get back its fair share of global wealth”.
This civilizational approach although it can be one way to describe the world for the Russian elite is the most precise “entry point” for the accurate interpretation of processes related to the transformation of the world order. Specifically, these civilizational platforms, each with the unique structure, as well as the development of connections between them, is what builds the pathway to a fundamentally new system. A system that is on the cusp of replacing the existing paradigm dominated by one civilization that expanded worldwide under the slogans of globalization, Westernization, Americanization, universalization, liberalization and erasure of national borders.
According to Vladimir Putin, “Whereas the liberal globalization means depersonalization and imposing Western model on the entire world, the integration, conversely, is about unlocking each civilizations potential in the interests of the entire world so that everyone will win.” So, the world is moving on from globalization to the emergence of civilizational platforms, which can also be referred to as centers of power or “poles”, and onward to the interaction and integration between them.
Russian scholars define the civilizational commonwealth as each civilization “is built on the foundation of some kind of spiritual background, some primary cultural symbol of sacred value, which later become the basis for the emergence of an authentic culture”, or a Civilization is “a special category of states with lengthy and uninterrupted history, a pronounced authenticity, with citizens and leaders who are prepared to resolutely uphold their cultural identity”, or even a civilization is metaphorically defined as “a particular mankind on a particular land” and others. But the most important is that civilizational commonwealths need not be, and indeed cannot be, equal in their economic and military might, territorial scope or population numbers. They are united by the fact that they can influence global processes and introduce to the global discussion their own views on how to address various problems.
In order to transform theory to policy pragmatism, the criteria according to the Russian side are:
First and primarily, it is about the capability and will to carry out a sovereign and independent domestic and foreign policy.
Second, it is about the availability of a sufficient comprehensive economic, military, demographic, scientific educational and technological potential. It is also about access to adequate resources that make it possible to maintain socioeconomic resilience and high-level of self-sufficiency of the national economy. The capability to act as an “assembly node” for contiguous geographical spaces and to lead integration projects is a critical element.
Finally, an integral aspect of any civilizational identity finds its expression in its authentic philosophy of development as well as its own “signature” vision of international politics, its authentic cultural and spiritual potential with significance for the world at large.
The civilizational commonwealths that fulfill these criteria are, Russia, China, India, Southeast Asia (ASEAN community), the Arab world and the Muslim Ummah, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the Western civilization with its Anglo-Saxon and continental Europe components. All together will be engaged to shape the future of a multipolar world, while this will happen by combining capabilities and constructive work by the World Majority and the West in opposition to the rest of the world.
Furthermore, the Russian side names some other key players as components that do not have sufficient aggregate resources to form a civilizational commonwealth, although they may attempt to do it (Iran, Türkiye, Israel and some others, including, perhaps, Japan).
The Western world is losing its 500-year long dominance, as many Russian specialists refer to a procedure that started for some in 1492 and for others with the decolonization in the 1960s. Even if the West, has created new more sophisticated and legally (but not morally) defensible form of colonial domination like the US dollar-centric system of international settlements and foreign exchange reserves, the Bretton Woods institutions, the cross-border movement of capital by Western transnational corporations, and much more, the neo colonial patterns are not able to change the flow of history. In the early 21st century, the rise of the Global East and Global South, which gained momentum thanks to the expanded cross-border cooperation, broke this economically and morally untenable paradigm. The Russians also support that up until recently, this process was natural and erratic, even spontaneous. The long-term trend was pretty well visible, but it needed time to shape up in a structured way.
The Russian perspective of the political elite, is that the war in Ukraine has work as an accelerator to this transformation in world politics and it uses as examples the vote count on the notorious UN General Assembly draft resolution about war reparations to Ukraine (November 2022), where more than half of the UN member states refused to support the confrontational draft, or the statement made by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, saying that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems”. All these demonstrate that the World Majority is unwilling to become part of the anti-Russian coalition and Russian experts are of the view that “residents of the former ‘third world’ believe that opposing former colonial rulers is right and historically irreversible”.
This situation is clearly a sign that the rules of the game are changing and it can become an incentive for everyone to sit down and talk. It is something that will take a period of time as the West, or rather, their ruling elites, attempt to restore the “unipolar moment” of the early 1990s by force, using the “divide and rule” maxim, exactly as current US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan penned a magazine article frankly arguing in it that the only way for the concept of American exceptionalism to prevail is to “defeat the emerging vision that emphasizes ethnic and cultural identity.”
Finally, the Russian foreign policy planning elite, shares the argument that the rules-based order will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history, or (in the best-case scenario for its masterminds) will determine the parameters of the Western world only in its natural geographical borders. The civilizational factor in international affairs is a hallmark of time, we are entering a transition phase and an ongoing struggle of ideas and notions about the future intensifies. But this collision takes place neither in an abstract world, nor, or in a power vacuum. Its frame is defined by the geopolitical and civilizational vision of a multipolar world, which is being born today.
For more info and details visit: https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1854841/?lang=en & https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1867330/?lang=en.