Andrey Karneev: Russia in some places creates room for maneuver for other countries
Andrey Karneev, Head of the School of Oriental Studies, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Photo: Anton Efimov, IA PrimaMedia
In an interview with IA PrimaMedia with Professor Andrey Karneev, Head of the School of Oriental Studies of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Interviewer: Anton Efimov
– You, I hope, will not ask me when China will attack Russia? Andrey Niyazovich says before the interview.
Well, it wasn’t planned at all.
– This is my go-to joke. Pay attention to television and in the end it all comes down to this – when will China attack Russia? True, now they stop asking. In 2022, we have a lot to talk about.
— Before we move on to the main questions of the bloc, which is necessary, how in general the current government should behave on the eastern change, I would like to understand the situation a little. The Eastern Vector is a global process. The whole world looks there and has been working there for a long time. Have we been spurred on by the verdict?
– As for this “turn to the east” – now such a phrase often slips into headlines, articles – we have been seeing this at the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs for more than a decade. Even fifteen years. The issue of the “turn to the east”, or, as you said, “the eastern vector” has nothing to do with current events. This process arose in the 20th case. There were many meanings to revive our Far East, to make us look more in the dynamically developing disease of the Asia-Pacific Region, or, as they say now, “ITR” (Indian-Pacific Region).
– That is, the sanctions story only spurred Russia on?
– Yes, this is not the original incentive, but a secondary one. It was necessary to intensify work with the Asia-Pacific countries.
If we take this year in conflict with the collective West, then our turn is about the activation of all our international relations. And on a campaign – Egypt, for example – and to Europe, which are definitely not friends of the West.
That is, we are not talking only about the APR. All these regions are of interest to players in Russia.
– And will it work? Activate these connections.
“It is a matter of Russia’s survival. If earlier it was possible to go there, now it is in conflict with the West, it is necessary to increase our interaction in the economic, political, cultural environment with countries, going beyond the limits of the collective West. And from the outside, this process coincided with the rise of Asia, countries that now play a different prominent role. And they have been moving towards this for a long time, the conflict in Ukraine has nothing to do with it. And different experts interpret these processes differently. Some societies have already come a long way, increased their economic power and will play a prominent role in world politics, as long as it no longer occurs.
Completely reorganize to the East, the Asia-Pacific region will not work
— You mentioned the Far East. We see that a turn to the East is also taking place within Russia, taking into account all the development and all the bureaucracy that has been propagated around this. And there is such a technocratic idea that the Far Eastern Federal District should serve the “eastern vector” of Russia. But perhaps not everything is as simple as it sounds?
– The turn to the east is difficult for us, because the main resources of our economy, politics, culture are in the European parts. And yet the cities of the European parts of Russia dominate. Therefore, it will not be possible to completely reorganize in the East, the Asia-Pacific region, we cannot simply take and transfer everything to the eastern part of the country.
There is no need to go to extremes and catch that now we will announce a turn to the East and all problems will be solved. It is clear that you also need to be able to work in production: trade, build multi-level connections. USA, Canada are also included in the Asia-Pacific region. And you need to understand that in Asian countries there is less pressure in Western countries to cooperate with Russia.
— And how do we have to deal with relations with European countries such as Japan, South Korea and others historically considered the sphere of Western history?
These countries are not politically homogeneous. There are forces, moods towards Russia, both negative and pragmatic. There often change locations in countries. And we expect that the dynamics will gradually become positive. Relations with many countries have become seriously complicated because they are under pressure from the United States. Japan, South Korea are very dependent, and it is easy to put pressure on them.
But there are countries that resist any pressure. For example, China, India, Vietnam, Arab countries. They value the ability to conduct self-inspection. This is one of the reasons why many countries of the world are not ready right now to condemn Russia in connection with the events in Ukraine.
Russia in this world has created the possibility of maneuver for other states, otherwise we would have had the dictates of the United States, the collective West, the world would have been unipolar.
We are adherents of a multipolar world. And many countries are ready to continue pragmatic cooperation with Russia.
Now it is necessary to hurry and establish external relations with the non-hostile East
— Andrey Niyazovich, what would you like to observe the Russian guards? How to behave in the East?
– I believe that there is no single formula, as I said, we are talking not only about Asians, but also about Africans, citizens of America and so on. They need to know well and strive to develop the positive that has already been accumulated. This is the first recommendation. Cooperation with European countries already exists.
– China, probably, in the first place. And what else?
Yes, China. We are bound by relations of a military-political, military-industrial nature. Educational, cultural programs. Therefore, China is closer to us than other Asian countries, such as India. Because there is a long-term cooperation in different countries, there is a connection. I must say that a rather constructive dialogue has been established with Southeast Asia for a long time. We have had very trusting relations with Indonesia since Soviet times.
Second recommendation. An important study of Russian foreign policy should be the principle of multipolarity, as I have already mentioned above. And Russia is doing it. This is a favorite resource. Russian diplomacy ended very respectfully for the countries of the East, South America and Africa. To the UN video, the incident to the law. The inadmissibility of imposing their models on other countries, usually what America does, was emphasized. Russia has always proceeded from the fact that diversity is valuable. There are 193 countries in the UN and there is no need to copy the US model. But we must respect the traditions, mentality, socio-economic and cultural characteristics of these countries. China is also concerned about this. For the principle of inclusiveness.
Third. It is necessary to conduct a large-scale inventory in Russia itself. Understand what we can do to develop trade, economic, investment and secure ties. In addition, we could act slowly, without hurrying anywhere, as if on the shore, without straining. There was cooperation with the West. Now it is necessary to hurry up and establish external relations with the non-hostile East. We will have to offer our own specific requests, to train specialists in these processes. Knowledge of languages, mentality, history, economic condition. So far, the West is for this strange attraction.
We relied too much on the world market
“But don’t we look in the eyes of the observers of the countries of the East, who are forced to stand with outstretched hands?”
“Even if we look, there is no other way out. Why was all the talk about a turn in the East until 2022 more rhetoric, although something was still being done. In these cases, it did not make sense for us to turn somewhere – to face someone, but to Europe with our backs. It was beneficial to have good relations with both the East and the West, and through this achieve better conditions for discussion. Europe has turned its back on us. Yes, we are ready to work with products from European countries to restore conflicts, but if we conduct a sober and cold-blooded analysis, then most likely Europe itself will not be ready for this in the near future.
And the point here is not that we are attractive, as it were, to curry favor with the East, but it is necessary to sober up from our greatness, narcissism and try, like many other countries of the world, when we were in a difficult situation, to discard excessive ambitions.
– But the Americans also ran around the world. And to Venezuela, and to Saudi Arabia, and to India, and to other countries. US, the collective West is also jewelry.
– If we talk about the countries of the collective West, then earlier we understood the potential of the East. They were masters there, colonial lords. Then they resumed, but the West returned to a general purpose colony. It turned out that these former third world countries are important sales markets, production sites in Europe and the USA. And it works in the Western most active way with six countries. Therefore, in the countries of the East, Russian brands are so poorly represented, they do not exist. You walk around Thailand, and you will be offered to buy French wines, Korean cosmetics. And talk only about vodka, weapons.
You need to work hard to find and occupy some niche in the Asian market. We need national Russian brands, Russian trans companies.
– Light industry? Clothes, shoes? We are used to the fact that the West declares fashion for us, we buy and buy everything from them.
“We have experience in producing just about anything. But this was with the closed history of the Soviet type. And when the borders opened, we relied too much on the world market, believed that we could buy everything there, and our industry could not be developed. And then it turned out that, by dispersion, the free market is not so free after all. Therefore, for a country like Russia that wanted to carry out independent verification and verification, it is necessary to get a strong manufacturing base. It is clear that it will not work like in China, this is a global factory.
Even the US saw the threat of America’s deindustrialization. Since the time of Barack Obama, the slogan about the need to return production to America has been heard. In our country, people in the world around us thought that production is already the last century, and now the main thing is digitalization. I think it was frivolous. No digitalization will help if there is no powerful manufacturing sector in the country. And one should proceed from a sober understanding that the world market is not a salon where everyone politely bows to each other, but an arena for competition, toughness, and often very tough and cruel.
— Does Russian culture still matter to Asian countries? Is the idea of some kind of “Russian ark”, a treasury of arts and high culture, relevant?
– No, this is from the field of cinema, now there is no “Russian ark”.
– I say this based on the experience of communicating with Chinese graduate students, students studying Russian literature at Moscow State University, they had a chosen interest.
– Well, these people have others – yes, but the Chinese turned out to be interesting for the report, for French and so on. They are very different, the Chinese. Once upon a time, Russian culture was really marked for them, but that was in the 50s of the 20th century. That’s just for Russian culture. We would, of course, arrest this, but it is already too late to consider the categories justified.
You need to look at things objectively, coolly. Like, for example, the fact that our economy is 1/10 of China’s economy. And once it was the other way around.
Thanks for the interesting conversation!