Russian roulette: Moscow is developing a new rallying cry. Rogue states of the world, unite

National Review, Jan 26, 1998 by Chandler Rosenberger

Primakov's fence-sitting paid off. He slipped into Gorbachev's inner circle as a member of the Presidential Council. From his seat at the Kremlin he was finally able to turn his long-nurtured ties to leaders in the Middle East into the tools of an assertive foreign policy. The USSR came apart at the seams, but Primakov continued to rise, eventually becoming head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

However, the pro-Western policies that Andrei Kozyrev pursued as the new Russia's first foreign minister in the early 1990s diminished Primakov's influence. And so, relying on his extensive network of journalists and apparatchiks, Primakov stoked a public-relations assault on his own Foreign Ministry. Throughout 1995, for example, President Yeltsin was bombarded by a campaign of disinformation that included reports that a Western diplomat had found Russia's response to U.S. foreign policy to be surprisingly passive. By the time it was revealed that the diplomat had been speaking of France, not Russia, the campaign had had its effect, and the suitably tough-on-the-West Primakov was foreign minister.

In describing Primakov's vision for Russia's foreign policy, it is important to establish what it is not. Primakov is not a field commander in some Clash of Civilizations. He is interested in the trappings of traditional institutions, such as the Orthodox Church, only as a means to a secular end: the expansion of Russian power and influence.

When, for example, it is time to apply pressure on a NATO member such as Turkey, Primakov will quietly permit arms shipments to Russia's "Christian allies" in Greek Cyprus. But the real point is making trouble for the West, not reinforcing ancient cultural ties. There is no traditional Orthodox relationship with Turkey's Kurds. But Primakov's Foreign Ministry was happy to lend its support to a conference on their plight in Moscow last March.

Indeed, forthright expressions of traditional Slavophile fears of other races and civilizations provoke Primakov's wrath. When in December 1996 Defense Minister Igor Rodionov gave a speech in which he listed China and Iran as among the threats to Russia, Primakov helped force his resignation. When Primakov looks to the Islamic and Asian worlds, he sees nations that, like Russia, are unjustly trapped in an American-led world order and are struggling to regain their sovereignty.

Thus, the mantra repeated in every Russian communique, and in every speech Primakov makes abroad, is "multipolarity." Take, for example, the "Joint Russian - Chinese Declaration about a Multipolar World and the Formation of a New International Order," signed in Moscow last April. "A diversity of political, economic, and cultural development is becoming the norm," it reads. "Each state has the right -- proceeding from its specific conditions -- to independently choose on its own a way of development without intervention on the part of other states."

Beneath the statement's reassuring tone of international tolerance lurks a deep enmity toward the liberal-democratic order (in this sense "multipolarity" bears some relation to American "multiculturalism"). There is a hint, for example, of the old "anti-imperialist" rhetoric in the Russian - Chinese declaration, which makes reference to the "numerous developing countries and the Non-Aligned movement" that will be "an important force assisting the formation of a multipolar world and new international order." One Chinese delegate explained the joint declaration: "The earth is colorful and cannot be artificially changed into one single color."