Asia Times: COMMENTARY: Looking back to the future



	February 26, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia / Siberia

COMMENTARY: Looking back to the future
By Paul Goble

A 19th-century Russian foreign minister has again been held up as a model for Moscow's foreign policy because of his ability to use ''the force of the word'' to prevent other powers from exploiting Russia's time of relative weakness.

Writing in the latest issue of the Russian Foreign Ministry's journal ''International Affairs,'' Viktor Lopatnikov follows on from the celebration begun by Yevgenii Primakov last year of Aleksandr Gorchakov, Russia's foreign minister for nearly a generation after the country's defeat in the Crimean War.

Lopatnikov, who represents the Foreign Ministry in Saint Petersburg, argues that Gorchakov's approach to dealing with the outside world remains ''amazingly topical today.'' And he suggests that Russian officials study three aspects of Gorchakov's approach in order to learn how to act in the future.

First, Lopatnikov says, Gorchakov's immense dignity in the face of the indignities Russia suffered following its defeat in Crimea not only helped restore Russian national pride but had the effect of demonstrating to foreigners that Russia is, in the poet Fyodor Tyutchev's words, ''a country that cannot be measured by an ordinary yardstick."

To the extent that foreign powers recognize that fact, Lopatnikov argues, they did not in the 19th century and will not be interested in the future in exploiting Russia when it is ''concentrating'' on its domestic affairs.

These powers, he continues, will thus find themselves once again caught between their own recognition that Russia is a country unlike any other and their acceptance of Russian demands that Russia be treated as an equal. Being thus trapped, they will be forced to give more deference to Russia than its position might otherwise justify.

Second, Lopatnikov argues, Gorchakov understood that Russia simultaneously must be extremely selective in deciding where it will actually get involved. It must also insist on its right to deploy its diplomatic and political muscle wherever it deems necessary.

On the one hand, as Gorchakov showed, that stance will keep other powers off balance and thus allow Russia to use diplomacy rather than force to prevent any combination from arising against its interests. And on the other, it will allow Russia to focus on the recovery of its domestic economy, the ultimate source of its power.

As Primakov argued last spring on the 200th anniversary of Gorchakov's birth, this domestic focus both provides an anchor for stabilizing Russia's foreign policy and guarantees that Russian advances internationally can always be justified in terms that other powers are likely to find acceptable rather than aggressive.

And third, Lopatnikov suggests, Gorchakov recognized that the chief focus of Russian foreign policy must be along its own borders. The 20th-century diplomat notes the praise his 19th-century predecessor received for doing just that.

In 1864, Aleksandr II formally congratulated Gorchakov for his use of ''the force of the word'' to disarm the enemies of Russia, an action the tsar said guaranteed that Gorchakov's name would be entered in ''the future chronicle of the Fatherland."

Lopatnikov does not provide the text of Gorchakov's message that won Aleksandr's approval. But most of his readers are likely to recall with precision just what policy the 19th-century foreign minister was advancing.

On 21 November 1864, Gorchakov issued a dispatch justifying the Russian imperial advance into Central Asia. He argued in terms that many of his European counterparts would have found difficult to answer: ''The position of Russia in Central Asia is that of all civilized states which come into contact with half-savage, nomadic populations who possess no fixed social organization."

In such cases, Gorchakov said, ''the more civilized state is forced, in the interests of security and commerce, to exercise a certain ascendancy over those whose turbulent and unsettled character makes them most undesirable neighbors."

Presumably, Lopatnikov would not endorse these specific terms for the present and future. But his and Primakov's enthusiasm for Gorchakov who uttered them may confuse some Russian diplomats and create problems for others.

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