Carnegie Moscow Center
The international focus must be on checking Putin’s provocation in Ukraine and preventing him from taking another step—in Kazakhstan or anywhere else—in his reintegration project.
Today, many countries have to fight against terrorist organizations, which have roots in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. However, this lesson is still unlearned: in Syria, fighters under Islamic flags have gained support of several countries, but this support will recoil upon the supporters’ own heads.
The second round of negotiations between the Syrian opposition and the government failed. As of now, the resolution of the conflict almost entirely depends on the position adopted by the external actors, whose relations, however, are now getting more complicated.
Twenty-five years after the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, the Russians watch the U.S.-led coalition withdraws from this country and worry about regional stability, security, and drugs production and trade. To deal effectively with these concerns, Russia should focus not so much on Afghanistan as on its Central Asian neighbors.
Russia’s Eurasian Union project aims at integrating much of ex-Soviet Eurasia into an economic, political, and security unit. Before that can happen, however, Russia needs to better manage what it already has.
The 50th Munich Security Conference marked the charting of a course toward Berlin’s more robust engagement in the world, including with military means. At the same time, the conference was overshadowed by the unfolding crisis in Ukraine.
The slump of interest in South Asia in the West is a positive development, because it makes clearer which countries are the real partners of Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Also, if left to themselves these three countries will get a chance to build their relations without external pressure.
Pakistan is not an important Russian trading partner in South Asia. However, with Eurasian integration involving Central Asia and traditional Russian-Indian economic ties revived, there is no sense for Pakistan to remain in a limbo.
Russia is demanding to be treated as an equal partner in its relationship with the EU, but Brussels had long ignored this shift, and EU-Russian relations have stagnated as a result. It is time for a fundamental rethink of the EU’s Russia policy.
In 2013 Russia’s foreign policy has finally assumed a new quality, something which will probably last. This foreign policy makes Russia much more of an international player than ever before in the last quarter-century.