People's Democracy

Moving Towards Multipolarity In World Affairs

Naresh ‘Nadeem’

VIEWED in context of the seven-year 200 billion dollars rearmament plan which the Russian Federation president, Vladimir Putin, signed earlier this year, the recent testing of the “Father of All Bombs” by the country signifies a spurt in the arms race in the world --- in an era that is supposedly free from the Cold War mentalities. Interestingly, the test was conducted on September 11, sixth anniversary of the 9/11 and 34th of the CIA-engineered assassination of Salvador Allende.

IN RESPONSE TO US ARROGANCE

Yet the most crucial fact, to be noted down in black and white, is that the Russians tested this thermobaric bomb in just a reaction to the recent testing of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb earlier this year by the US. The Yankee imperialists displayed so much glee over this weapon that they arrogantly expanded the abbreviation MOAB to claim that their bomb was the “Mother of All Bombs.” However, if the MOAB was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon till the time it was tested, the latest Russian bomb is four times more powerful than the MOAB, and it was not quite unnatural therefore that, in response to the US imperialist arrogance, the Russians termed their bomb as the “Father of All Bombs.”

Variously described as a vacuum bomb, a fuel-air bomb, an aviation explosive device etc, the Russian thermobaric bomb comes at a time when the US has been insistent on displaying that it cares a damn for the hitherto existing international arms treaties. Till the time the Soviet Union existed, the US had no option but to pretend at least that it would abide by the arms treaties signed between the two countries. During the last one decade and a half, however, the Yankees have taken several steps to encircle the Russian Federation, as one of the most significant parts of their drive for global hegemony.

Moreover, though rated as equivalent to only 11 tonnes of TNT or just 0.3 percent of the bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima (equivalent to 13,000 tonnes of TNT) in 1945, the Americans bragged that the strike of one single MOAB could flatten as many as 9 city blocks. This logically annoyed the Russians who viewed the MOAB in conjunction with the US moves to expand the NATO war alliance eastward by inducting into it such ex-socialist countries and former Soviet republics as Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, with the US move to deploy a part of its contemplated anti-ballistic missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic in Central Europe, which would upset the balance of power in Europe, and with the US moves to penetrate Central Asia which is not only rich in oil and gas resources but strategically important as well.

Not content with such moves, the US also made efforts to get the existing regimes replaced in some former Soviet republics by more pro-West regimes through orange, velvet and other coloured ‘revolutions’ which were no more than CIA engineered putsches. One could well imagine the excruciating situation the Russians faced in the wake of such developments.
The Russian Federation’s 44 tonnes FOAB, so to say, needs to be viewed in the context of all these developments.

RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM

This brings us to a crucial aspect of the contemporary world situation. When a large number of media-cres, so to say, and their paymasters were chuckling over the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991, there indeed were people wondering whether the resultant unipolar world would last for long after all. The reason was that, because of its sheer intensity, the US imperialist drive to impose its hegemony over the world was bound to evoke resistance from the people around the globe, and also from the existing regimes in many countries. And the events in the last one decade and a half have indeed shown that imperialism is imperialism first of all, it is imperialism after all, and becomes all the more venomous if there is no resistance to its depredations.

The popular resistance to the latest phase of imperialist depredations is most evident in Latin America which the US imperialists for long considered their reserved and exclusive “backyard.” Now, if the US most brutally exploited the natural and human resources of this region to gain and then sustain its supremacy in the world, the moot question is: Will the loss of this region leave the US’s economic strength and consequently its military strength untouched --- in the medium term at least, if not in the short term? On the other hand, significantly, the economic powers of West Europe have gained a backyard of their own through the largely eastward expansion of European Union (EU). As many as 8 out of the 10 new entrants to the EU are the formerly socialist countries that are going through a phase of impoverishment and unemployment. Is it too much to surmise that the cheap human and natural resources of these formerly socialist countries may eventually give an edge to the EU and thus intensify the mutual contradictions among imperialist powers?

At the level of regimes, perhaps the most significant resistance to the US hegemonic drive came from the Russian Federation which took resolute steps to cobble together a Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Creating deterrence to the NATO’s eastward expansion is one of the understood aims of this organisation.

RUSSIAN MOVES

In the recent months, the Russian Federation has also conveyed its intentions to the imperialist powers by cornering a no-insignificant chunk of the Arctic Circle. Though some commentators have dubbed this move as symbolic only, it certainly shows the country’s no-nonsensical approach in world affairs.

Before that, in July, two Russian Tu-95 bombers had flown deep into the NATO territory for the first time in the post-Soviet period. Then, in the second week of August, Russian bombers undertook long-range flights --- as far as up to the US naval base in Guam in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Peru. Then, in the same month, in yet another post-Soviet first, 14 missile carriers, support and refuelling aircraft started off from 7 air bases in Russia, spread out across the Atlantic, and came back before the NATO jet fighters could scramble. Putin announced after the event that such patrols, discontinued since 1992, were strategic in nature and would be carried out in future as well.

The Russian Federation has also announced that it would continue its cooperation with Iran in the field of civilian nuclear energy (it is already building a nuclear power reactor in that threatened country), and at the same time it has expressed intention to re-discover its ties with the countries of the Middle East where some of the regimes and many of the people are willing to welcome Russia’s presence in the area. Despite the differences in perception, a delegation of the Hamas has already visited the Russian Federation and the latter is not averse to doing something for the beleaguered Palestinian Authority. Russia has already waived a Soviet era loan owed by Algeria; it amounted to more than 15 billion dollars.

And above all this, the Russian Federation is now all set to send an armed fleet to the Syrian port of Tartus in the Mediterranean Sea. One recalls that the USSR had had a naval base there for decades, which Yeltsin (whom a retired Indian diplomat described as “an occasionally sober Boris Yeltsin”) had got dismantled after the demise of the Soviet Union.
To Admiral Vladimir Masorin, head of the Russian navy, “The Mediterranean Sea is very important strategically for the Black Sea fleet.” After his tour of the Russian naval base in the Sevastopol port in Ukraine, he said Russia intended to restore its “permanent” naval presence in Tartus, with the involvement of its Northern Fleet and Baltic Fleet. This, he added, would amount to “planting the white-blue-and-red Russian banner in the Middle East.”

As Mark Mackinnon wrote in the Totonto Globe and Mail on August 9, “It would mark the first time Russia has established a military presence outside the borders of the former Soviet Union since the USSR fell apart in 1991.”

While Kremlin’s decision has been welcomed by many, it has perplexed Washington and Tel Aviv, gripping them in anxiety no end. “The Russians are coming,” so screamed the Yediot Aharonot, a large-circulation Israeli daily. And an article in the same paper noted, “A Russian flag on Syrian soil has significant implications. Firstly, it challenges the United States and the dominance of the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean. Secondly, with its actual presence in Syria, Russia is announcing that it is actively participating in any process and conflict in the Middle East…..” The article concluded that the latest Russian stance “must be reckoned with.”

As for Russia, it is just a trash to say that its naval presence in Tartus would enable it to keep an eye on US moves in the whole of the all-important sea route of Mediterranean --- from Jabr al-Tariq (Gibraltar) to the mouth of the Suez Canal --- and, if necessary, to counter those moves well in time.

SHANGHAI GROUPING

Undoubtedly much more important than all the above developments, however, is the metamorphosis the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has undergone of late.

Though the SCO was formed more than a decade ago (in April 1996, to be precise), it began to make its presence felt only in the last three to four years. This regional grouping, with the Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as members, granted observer status to Mongolia in June 2004 and to India, Pakistan and Iran a year later. This grant of observer status to some countries was a gesture signifying that the SCO intended to expand its economic and related interests beyond Central Asia.

The SCO officially adopted its charter of objectives in June 2002, at its second summit conference in St Petersburg. (The fact that six long years elapsed before the organisation could hold its second summit or adopt a charter of objectives, may be taken as an indication of the initial prevarication on part of the member countries.) Through its charter, the SCO gave to itself the mandate to build mutual trust, friendship and good-neighbourly relations among the member countries. It also decided that all SCO decisions would be arrived at through consensus.

As Russia faces the terrorist menace in Chechnya, China in Western Turkistan and other countries are also facing it to a greater or lesser extent, the SCO moved to create a Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) for information networking in June 2004. The RATS was finally headquartered in Tashkent though, initially, Bishkek was chosen for the purpose.
However, though the SCO had evolved as the most powerful regional organisation in Asia, it never intended to develop into a military organisation. Its members always and repeatedly insisted that it was a community for mutual trade and economic cooperation, for transfer of technology and other crucial inputs, and not an alliance against any specific adversary.

But the sheer pressure of the situation developing in the region and the world has compelled the SCO to reorient itself, and it began to hold joint military exercises since 2005. And, held in the Ural mountains in Chelyabinsk region of the Russian Federation in mid-August 2007, the latest round of joint military exercises have been unique in their ambitious scale as well as their sharp message. These three-day military manoeuvres of the SCO involved no less than 6,500 troops and over 10 aircraft, and synchronised with a three-day summit conference of the organisation in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. On August 17, the last day of the manoeuvres, the leaders witnessing it included Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hu Jintao of China, apart from those from other member and observer countries.

Speaking at the SCO summit in Bishkek on August 16, Putin admitted that even though Russia was not trying to forge a Cold War style military bloc, the SCO intended to outgrow its original character of an economic association and take on a greater military role.

Categorically announcing that “any attempts to solve global and regional problems unilaterally have no future,” Putin pointed to the SCO “becoming a more substantial factor in ensuring security in the region.” He also sought to clarify that “Russia, like other SCO states, favours strengthening the multipolar international system providing equal security and development potential for all countries.”

According to Ivan Safranchuk, Moscow director of the World Security Institute, “The SCO clearly wants the US to leave Central Asia; that’s a basic political demand. That’s one reason why the SCO is holding military exercises, to demonstrate its capability to take responsibility for stability in Central Asia after the US leaves” (quoted by Fred Weir in the Christian Science Monitor, August 17).

The words pronounced here do give a patently wrong impression that there is a threat of instability in Central Asia once the US leaves the region, and the implication may well be that it was the US that brought stability to the region. Yet the message has been grasped in no uncertain terms: “The SCO clearly wants the US to leave Central Asia.”

WHITHER NOW?

Depending upon their orientations and even extraneous considerations, commentators have variously interpreted the recent strategic steps taken by the Russian Federation. Some of them have even gone down to the level of suggesting that Russian generals want a bigger role for themselves in the internal and international affairs, and others see all this as a result of President Putin’s megalomania. Even the observation made by a serious analyst like Fred Weir --- that Russia “is moving to reclaim the former Soviet Union’s status as a global military power” --- ignores the question: What for?

There is yet another view that Putin’s recent postures are geared more to the coming elections than to anything else. One notes that elections to the Russian Duma are to take place in the coming December and to the presidency in March 2008. As the Russian constitution forbids Putin to contest for a third time while his personal rating is quite high at the moment, some commentators are of the view that he wants to secure his party before he steps down.

The virtually forced resignation of Mikhail Fradkov from the prime minister’s post immediately after the testing of the vacuum bomb and the appointment of Viktor Zubkov in his place have lent further credibility to the theory. Fradkov’s letter of resignation citing the “approaching significant political events” was followed by these words from Putin: “We all have to think together how to build a structure of power so that it better corresponds to the pre-election period and prepares the country for the period after the presidential election in March” (Itar-Tass, quoted by UNI, September 12.) Zubkov has been an old colleague of the president.

These developments do give an indication that the approaching elections are very much on Putin’s mind; it is another thing that in itself there is nothing wrong in it. The crucial question is whether, more so after the presidential polls, the Russian Federation will stick to its professed objective of forging multipolarity in the world affairs or adopt a stoic indifference a la Gorbachev whose government did not move its little finger to prevent the first Gulf War in 1991? If Russia, in particular, fails to pursue its quest for an end to the currently obtaining unipolarity, it would be nothing less than betraying the world peoples.
As for India, its stance vis-à-vis the recent developments has been one of ambivalence --- to say the least. Take its approach to the SCO, for instance. While India wants to take advantage of the Central Asian energy sources and of the emerging opportunities for trade, it still tries to play safe in relation to the SCO. For example, while Mongolia sent its president, Iran its vice president and Pakistan its prime minister for the 2005 SCO summit in St Petersburg, India thought it prudent to get represented by nobody higher than Natwar Singh, the then foreign minister. This year too, who represented India at Bishkek? Just the oil and petroleum minister, Shri Murli Deora, showing how little importance we are prepared to give to the SCO. As one Rup Narayan Das said in a recent commentary on the All India Radio, “India’s initial enthusiasm for the SCO to push multipolarity, cooperation with Central Asia, strengthening Russia-China-India trilateral efforts and securing strategic energy resources seems to have mellowed down in the wake of the Indo-US nuclear deal.”

The question is: What role would India play in world affairs with such an ambivalent stance, which is tantamount to try becoming clever by half?