At the fork

Why Yevgeny Primakov spoke in the words of Andrei KozyrevRussian foreign policy seems to be gone. There is a president, a ministry of foreign affairs, and a corresponding division in the presidential administration. There are special services, a couple of academic institutions. There is a Security Council. There are specialized committees of the State Duma and the Federation Council, Rossotrudnichestvo and Russkiy Mir. All this is there, but foreign policy, as a projection of national interests and values ​​on the outside world, is not visible. There is a daily defending fortress, to which even seemingly most loyal allies, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, are in no hurry to help. At first glance, our country found itself in isolation quickly and unexpectedly, because of the Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. Yes, a year ago, none of us in a nightmare could have imagined that Russian diplomats would patiently persuade Cyprus and the Czech Republic to help not extend the EU sanctions regime and cheerfully report support for Moscow's policies by the impoverished states of Africa and Asia. But, in fact, the last fifteen years have prepared this sad - and, I hope, intermediate - result. Vladimir Putin's fatal decision in the first years of his presidency to choose control and centralization as a tool for strengthening power led to the emasculation of the essence of most state institutions. They exist, but the meaning of their existence is in the fulfillment of a higher will. The will is aimed at achieving the main goal - the retention of power. Even the creation of a new Russian identity, to which President Putin apparently attaches exceptional importance, comes down to the same task. A new civil nation that rejects Western values ​​of individual choice and responsibility, always ready to follow the leaders, will allow those who govern it to do so for as long as they see fit. Foreign policy is primarily called upon to contribute to the solution of the same problem on the world stage. In this sense, it is a projection onto the international stage of the Kremlin's way of thinking. In a situation where civil society is weak, public opinion is under constant television hypnosis, cultivating the cult of power and the "cold war victim" complex, diplomacy becomes a tool for protecting the interests of the ruling stratum - which is far from identical with the concept of "national interest". But if before 2014 At least some logic of this activity was observed (the revival of the sphere of influence of the USSR and the prevention of the democratization of the post-Soviet space), now the foreign policy fabric is unraveling before our eyes. Today we conclude the gas contract of the century with China - tomorrow we find that in Beijing they understand it differently than in Moscow, and do not want to advance the promised money for the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. We create the Eurasian Union - and put customs obstacles to the allies. We condemn "geyropu", but we delegate the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Paris march in support of freedom of speech. We threaten our own punishments in response to the sanctions, but we can do nothing but ban the import of the notorious parmesan. Russian foreign policy is paralyzed because it has no clear long-term goal. In fact, this is exactly what Yevgeny Primakov spoke about in his sensational speech to members of the Mercury Club the other day - a man who can hardly be suspected of excessive sympathy for the US and the EU, moreover, a cult figure among former and current KGB-FSB officers As a diplomatic correspondent for Izvestia in the 1990s, I will say: Primakov spoke practically in the words of his predecessor as Minister of Foreign Affairs, the damned and forgotten Andrei Kozyrev. By the irony of history, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, Yeltsin and Kozyrev turned out to be foreign policy realists - all those who are usually called "romantics" at best, and "traitors" at worst. Not that they didn't make mistakes. But they were able to understand that times are changing, that isolation is impossible, that economics and politics are interdependent, that in the open world, authoritarianism, in the final analysis, always loses. Russia, as a subject of international life, has been standing at the most dramatic crossroads since the 80s : isolation or further integration into the global economy, economic development or degradation, opposition to fanatics or dangerous games with international outcasts. Suspend this process, choose from it what you want, like raisins from a bun, in the conditions of the financial and economic crisis and sanctions will not work. Russian foreign policy can and will certainly acquire meaning and purpose. Only for this, Russia itself must begin to change.