A new concept of foreign policy of the country has been approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: RIA Novosti / Aleksey Druzhinin)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a new concept of foreign policy of the country. A relevant decree and text of the concept have been published on the official web portal of legal information.
The document focuses on a wide range of issues, including relations with the US and NATO, the situation in Syria, reduction of armaments, and development of relations between Russia and other countries.
At the same time, the concept also lists main tasks of the country, such as consolidation of position of Russia as one of the most influential centers of the modern world, ensuring of global security, stability and fair democratic international system, based on equitable and partnership relations between states, and promotion of creation of networking alliances.
Reduction of armaments
According to the document, Russia considers strengthening of international law as its priority. Moscow strictly adheres to obligations under the arms control and achieves the same from its partners.
The concept stresses that Russia is ready to further discuss a phased reduction of nuclear arsenals and aspires to strengthen the regime of nuclear non-proliferation. Moscow also advocates an agreement on prevention of an arms race in outer space.
The document also notes that danger of war, including nuclear, is not high, but risks of retraction of the leading powers in regional conflicts are increasing.
The US and NATO
The document gives special attention to relations with NATO and the US. Russia has a negative attitude to expansion of NATO, approach of infrastructure of the alliance to the Russia’s borders and augmentation of its military activities.
It is noted that Russia considers creation of a global missile defense system as a threat, and reserves the right to take adequate measures. At the same time, Moscow attaches great importance to implementation of an agreement with Washington on strategic offensive weapons and expects that the US will strictly adhere to norms of international law in its actions on the world stage.
The concept reads that Russia is interested in building mutually beneficial relations with the US, taking into account special responsibility of the two countries for international security. At the same time, Moscow does not accept attempts of pressure from Washington and reserves the right to firmly respond to unfriendly actions.
Syria and the UN
In addition, Moscow advocates settlement in Syria, unity, independence and territorial integrity of the country. With regard to fight against terrorism, in particular, the Islamic State terrorist group and similar organizations, according to Russia, the key focus should be creation of a broad international coalition.
The concept notes that the main trend of the current stage of world development is a struggle for global dominance, as well as stresses lack of options of the UN as a center for regulating international relations. For its part, Russia will contribute to improving of perfection of a UN mechanism to apply sanctions.
Separately, it is stressed that Moscow will oppose attempts to interfere in internal affairs of states for unconstitutional change of government.
Media and other tasks
It is separately noted that Moscow will use new technologies to strengthen positions of Russian media abroad and protection its information security.
According to the paper, Russia will take necessary steps to ensure national and international information security, as well as to counter threats to national, economic and public safety, emanating from information space, using information and communication technologies, including internationalization of management of the Internet information and telecommunication network.
The concept also states that Russia will expand its presence in the Antarctic, seek to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, and continue to develop cooperation with China and good-neighborly relations with Japan. The document stresses that coincidence of principled approaches of Russia and China to the key issues of world politics is considered by Moscow as “one of the basic components of regional and global stability.”
The document separately stresses that existing military-political unions are not able to counteract the entire spectrum of modern challenges and threats, and efforts to ensure stability and security on a separate territory already have no prospects in conditions of increased interdependence of all peoples and states.
According to the concept, a polycentric international system is currently forming in the world. At the same time, possibilities of the historical West to dominate in the world economy and politics are reducing. The document notes that rivalry starts to have more and more civilized nature, takes a form of value orientation, but, at the same time, a role of a factor of force also increases in international relations.
In this way, we can see that Russia challenges the Atlantic elites, clearly defining threats and highlighting the key points. At the same time, we should note that the word “Ukraine” is used in the concept only one time in the neutral clause 56. It means that Russia does not consider modern Ukraine as an independent actor in international relations. At the same time, mention of the IS terrorist group once again underlines importance of this threat.
“Ukraine” doesn’t deserve even that single mention it did receive.
Even before the end of WW2 the western powers where considering attacking
Russia once Germany had been defeated. They would have done this
using reconstituted German divisions. That indicated the utter
squalid and evil nature of those in the west. In the end this plan
was never developed into action but the fact that they where even
able to conceptualize such an action shows their truly demonic state
of mind.
Things are no different now. President Putin hopefully understands this. The
west will never co-operate with Russia except with the hidden
intention of destroying it.