June 12, 2007 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Dan Drezner suspects that Russian President Vladimir Putin might have been reading his article. The international order, Putin says (and most Indians would agree), needs ‘a new architecture’. Drezner, however, thinks that this might not actually work to Russia’s benefit.
What’s interesting about this speech is that Putin is correct in describing the state of the world, but not necessarily correct in his belief that “a new architecture of international economic relations” is going to serve Russia’s interests.
Consider that Russia is already a member of one powerful club — the G-8. Any realistic reform of global economic governance is going to give China and India more power than Russia relative to the status quo, because Russia still has the great power trappings it inherited from the Cold War. Indeed, unless we’re talking about energy or nuclear weapons, Russia would be a less powerful actor after any reform effort.
Putin probably does not believe this, given sustained interest in the Russian economy and the comfort of high oil prices. Russia, however, should be very wary of what it wishes for — it might just get it. [Dan Drezner]Not necessarily. Russia’s desire for changing the composition of the international high tables is driven by its conclusion that the current system is unable to check American power. Russia may be a powerful actor in theory, especially with its permanent membership of the UN Security Council. But in practice, it finds itself isolated by the West and more often than not, on the diplomatic backfoot.
The call for a reconfiguration of the international system, therefore, is essentially (soft) balancing. It is relative power that matters in the calculation. President Putin may have decided that it is worth losing some power relative to new actors like India, China and Brazil if the resulting configuration leads to a weakening of American power relative to the others, especially Russia. [See also: Don’t blame Putin]
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