During the first one or two decades after the end of the Cold War, the mainstream for the previously “non-Western” countries of Europe (including Russia) was to sacrifice sovereignty in order to be accepted into the “Western club” and thereby not be on the periphery, and even more so on on the sidelines of world processes
For the most part, these calculations did not come true: even being in the “club”, the newcomers have little influence on anything, in any case, they do not dare to show sovereignty yet. On the contrary, the manifestation of such sovereignty sharply increases the role and importance of the respective countries.
The examples are different, but in general about the same thing – that Turkey, that Hungary. At the opposite pole are the completely non-sovereign Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and other recruits, whose only added value in the Western camp is their absolute loyalty to this camp.
Russia, fortunately, got rid of the corresponding illusions before Turkey, and even more so Hungary. It is the manifestation (not to be confused with the demonstration) of independence in upholding our sovereign rights that determines the place and role of our country in international affairs, which we have regained over the past two decades. And it is the understanding of the importance of sovereign behavior that determines the commonality of approaches of the BRICS and SCO countries, which are increasingly becoming an alternative to the world order modeled on NATO and the EU, where the powers that be are on the throne, and the courtiers are ready for anything, just to stay at court.
I do not like the opposition of the Western world to the Eastern one, just as it does not seem to me successful to describe the current Russian policy as a “pivot to the East”. It is not geographic centers of power that oppose each other, leading the game of “king of the hill”. This is a world view clash.
On the one side of the confrontation is a group of states of the “seven”, which has appropriated the status of exclusivity in the rights to rule the world. On the other hand, the vast majority of the rest of the world does not agree with such self-appropriated exclusivity.
And between them, for the time being, not only those who bet on the victory of the unipolar world and on the loss of their own sovereignty consider it an adequate price for the right to “join”, but also a large group of countries that, on the one hand, are forced to join the unipolar world in the same way, but on the other hand, they are invited to become part of the multipolar world on an equal footing and without division into friends and foes.
The outcome of this confrontation will determine the fate of mankind for at least decades to come, and perhaps forever.
Konstantin Kosachev
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