|
Indocentric view |
|
Home | About us | Contact Us | Subscribe | FAQs |
|
Russian foreign policy: the sway from past to present Mohd. Moazzam Ali Muztarib
The author argues that Russia’s obsession with the West is hoary, assuming great intensity under Peter the Great (1672-1725), the modernizer of Russia. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev – all shared one thing in common: obsession with the West. This excessive obsession prods Russia to demand to be treated with respect in the international arena – a demand that has remained largely unfulfilled. By virtue of Russia’s geographical location straddling across eleven time zones, Russia’s desire to be respected as a Euro-Asian power is logical. Putin has been back on that agenda to balance out Russia’s foreign policy postulates in the globalising context of the post-Cold War scenario, regain Russia its deserving place in the new world order emerging, when NATO is expanding eastward, the US has been penetrating to the Russia’s periphery to spread its influence and the Putin-Medvedev duo have been settling down in power. The author does some real soul searching of true Russianness, delves deep into facts and figures who endeavoured to unite Russia with the west, and concludes that Russia will forever remain unique driven by its own national interests and devising its own strategy of development to the future.
Colonel Putin: the enigma of Russia’s enfant terrible P. L. Dash
Political Analysts and future historians will endlessly debate Putin’s role in Russian and world politics at the dawn of this millennium. As Russia continued to make phenomenal progress through a painful transition from its deplorable predicament of 1990s to its incredible resurgence in the first decade of this century, Putin’s popularity graph travelled northward. Thanks to Putin, Russia today is countervail to the US. The world expects Russia to play that positive countervailing role. While this is the truism in international relations, within Russia it is different. By evolving a power structure that accommodated him as the Premier by a president handpicked by him, Putin has evinced his adroit political acumen to continue in power until he quits voluntarily. Whether that is a boon or bane for Russian democracy is yet to come about. However, on the basis of the commendable success story of Russia under Putin in the last eight years, Putin is surely the darling of every Russian. He is the enfant terrible, who helped Russia in the years of its enfeeblement and put it back on the rails of resurgence, perhaps to be irreversible forever. Although Russia’s success saga under Putin is beset with ruthless handling of the oligarchs and dictatorial approach to imposing rule of law, in a precarious situation as was Russia, Putin had undeniably fewer options to reply upon than to be a strong political leader.
Emerging trends in Russian economy Arun Mohanty
The article brings out lucidly, and with great details, the nitty-gritty Russian economic achievements through the Putin years. By throwing light on sector-wise comparative analysis of the Russian economy based on Russian official statistics from Yeltsin through Putin years, the author brings out little known details with his perspicacious views on Russia’s current economic situation, the key drivers of this success saga, the problems the reforms confront and the future it faces, should the current Putin course, envisioned up to 2020, be abandoned. The author argues that Russia has been enjoying a robust economic growth for the eighth consecutive year in a row. Though dependence on mineral resources is slowly declining, energy remains the main locomotive of growth, with a lot remaining to be done for diversification of the economy. Weak ownership right enforcement, inadequate competition, incompetent bureaucracy, inflation, ineffective judiciary, low productivity, and widespread corruption are some of the roadblocks facing Russia’s growth path that complicate not only diversification of the economy; but also its integration with the world market. Curbing inflation remains a daunting task in the context of large capital inflows and limited monetary instruments to sterilize them. But then these seem to be Russia’s inherent problems of managing the risks a showing a unique Russian way to the future.
Military ties: where bear hugs the elephant Ranjana Mishra
Defence ties between India and Russia have remained one of the cornerstones of Indo-Russian bilateral relations. The article argues that what distinguishes Indo-Russian ‘entente cordiale’ in the military arena is incredible mutual trust between the two countries. India had first turned to the West for help to build industrial enterprises in the state sector, but turned down, it looked to the Soviet Union that turned out to be a reliable friend. Nehru’s camaraderie with Khrushchev, and subsequently his daughter’s with Brezhnev further facilitated the very base of bilateral contacts. It also cemented the fragile ties in East-West relations in the Cold War context. With a brief lull in the Soviet aftermath, Indo-Russian military relations are once again back on track, this time with its new avatar of a strategic partnership. Envisioned by Putin in 2000, the new framework of strategic partnership has elevated Indo-Russian defence cooperation from a buyer-seller relations to that of equal business partners in the context of an increasingly globalized world. Unlike a laggard pick-up in economic and trade relations, military cooperation has evinced dynamism and pragmatism – the two qualities that have ensured unmatched partnership equations to deal with versatile changes and travel miles farther to cement the bonds of mutual ties.
India-Russia economic ties: trends, constraints and prospects R.G. Gidadhubli
While there is continuity in close political relations between India and Russia after the Soviet break-up, trade and economic ties have badly suffered. India’s exports to Russia have declined significantly albeit a modest upward swing during the last few years. India’s exports of traditional items such as tea, coffee, textiles etc, in which India had a monopoly position in the Soviet era have been the worst affected being unable to meet competition in the Russian market. Only a few items such as pharmaceutical have shown rising trend. Chaotic political and economic conditions, breakdown of old institutions and practices, role of mafia in the initial period, complexities of debt repayment system adversely affected India’s exports to Russia. But Russia has been able to maintain exports to India which consist of ferrous and non-ferrous minerals, fertilizers, newsprint, power plants equipments etc. Indian exporters to Russia face constraints such as high risk factor of the Russian market, ‘information gap’ about new Russian firms, high cost of transportation of goods etc. However, initiatives have been taken by both the Indian and Russian governments as also trading associations to promote trade and economic ties. Hence three alternative scenarios can be visualized—Ambitious-Optimistic Scenario under which trade turnover of $ 10 bln by 2010 and $ 20 bln by 2015 can be reached, if constraints are removed; Pessimistic Scenario of possible decline in trade turnover if constraints persist and Pragmatic Scenario if some major problems are solved with joint efforts of India and Russia at state and private sector levels.
India’s Energy Security and Russia Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra
The article aims at analysing India’s current energy dynamics and prospects of bilateral cooperation with Russian Federation. The current buzz is that the rapid Indian economic growth would suffer from huge energy crunch in coming years owing mainly to two factors. First, it is due to the asymmetric balance between demand and supply, and second, due to excessive dependence on import coupled with stagnant domestic production. Given the prevalent bonhomie between India and Russia, the article argues, the bilateral cooperation between the two countries in energy sector can help salvage India’s looming energy crisis. Though there are some significant steps taken in this direction as the Sakhalin project shows the energy rich Russia and the energy hungry India need to strengthen energy cooperation in a framework of mutual benefit and partnership.
Russian Foreign Policy under Putin: pragmatism unbound Sanjay Kumar Pandey
The loss of Russia’s great power status in the aftermath of Soviet collapse had hurt the Russians badly. This had led to the revival of an age-old, significant debate about Russia’s great power status among the Westernizers following Atlanticism and Slavophiles following Eurasianism, while Russia surged ahead in quest of its own national interests. The author argues that the selfsame debate has assumed a new connotation in terms of bipolarity, unipolarity and multipolarity based mainly on the arguments of Atlanticists and Eurasianists in the changing post-Cold War context. Based on extensive analysis of post-Soviet developments in evolving a viable foreign policy in the midst of NATO ‘s eastward expansion and Russia’s own quest for a rapprochement with the West as well as with the East, the author brings home the readers to Putin’s incredible display of pragmatism in situating Russia firmly between the East and the West, thereby implying her deserving geographical space to play her own role in regional and global affairs. As events unfold, pragmatism prevails over mood swings and national interests overwhelm all other considerations.
Sino-Russian Relations: ushering permanent peace Srikanth Kondapalli Despite the current low-intensity differences between China and Russia, both have been able to usher in “permanent peace” – for the time being at least. Indeed, one could guess that such relations could persist for the short-to-medium term periods, while how these relations unfold in the long-term period becoming a problematic. Both have exhibited maturity in evolving comprehensive cooperative measures with periodic political, diplomatic, economic, trade, energy and military visits and cooperation. While China may have benefited the most with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and subsequent decline in its economic power, recent period had indicated to the resurgence of Russia from a $200 billion to about $1.4 trillion gross domestic product economy recently. Energy resources’ contribute to a large extent of the Sino-Russian cooperation, useful for the fuelling of the Chinese economy further.
Russia’s Relations with Israel and Iran: shaping new dimensions Priya Ranjan Kumar
Since the 1990s, Russia and Israel have established considerably good relation in multi-dimensional aspects. Both have improved the trade relation in various fields including agricultural products, medicine, energy, Science and technology etc. They established a joint commission on trade. Both have joint mechanism in the field of combating terrorism as well. Interestingly, on the other hand Russia’s relation with Iran strengthened in different fields which include arms trade, science and technology (nuclear) etc. However, Israel perceives Iran as the threat to its national security because of Iran’s perpetual support to Hezbollah and controversial Iranian Nuclear programme where as Russia’s strategic considerations towards Iran links with the economic security in terms of hard currency. These confronting interests of Russia and Israel towards Iran put Moscow to approach both countries in the new dimensions in order to secure its national interest without sacrificing the vital interests from any of the side.
|