Having it Both Ways? Russia's Multipolar Tightrope

Back in the USSR, there was a strain of dissidents with a very refreshing/ quixotic programme of opposition: they would live “as if”. As if the Soviet Union were a democratic country that actually followed its own laws.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before reality caught up to them and they were arrested or detained in psychiatric wards, often for offenses that were not technically illegal at all according to the letter of the constitution.

In fact, the trend continues to this day, as protesters are frequently arrested for defiantly and openly exercising their right to free assembly enshrined in Article 31 of the constitution.

Yet if Russia is cracking down on such actions by its citizens, it is emulating them on the international front: by behaving “as if” it is a multi-polar world based on international law rather than brute strength.

Multipolarity, the idea of smaller and medium sized powers working together to counteract the current unipolarity of a US-led ‘West’, has been a concept close to Russia’s heart for decades. In the 60s and 70s, the USSR sponsored the non-aligned world – countries such as India – which were not fully socialistic but provided a shifting and often independent counterweight to the Western bloc. In Europe, the USSR tried to pursue independent policies of mini-detente with France and West Germany, which yielded much tension between those countries and the US.

After the collapse of Communism, Yevgeny Primakov revisited the theme in the wake of the Kosovo War as a necessary buffer against aggression and expansion by the rich world (including into Russia’s back yard and former client states such as Iraq).

Unfortunately for the multipolar advocates, in those days, Russia could only make disapproving noises because its regime existed almost entirely on Western charity.

But as it recovered its independence in the 2000s, Putin began to implement many important tenets of multipolarity. For example, Russia began to aggressively build ties with smaller countries, not only with former allies such as Cuba and Egypt, but also historically hostile states like  Iran and even US client states such as Israel, Egypt and Turkey.

This was great policy for Russia in many ways, mainly by greatly expanding the market for exports, especially in terms of arms and energy. Now the country was selling arms to Vietnam and Iran, raw materials to Israel and Western Europe, rocket engines to South Korea as well as other technology to the North, and civilian nuclear technologies to Turkey.

Most of all, Russia’s new, inclusive multipolar diplomacy helped pave the way for the ambitious South Stream oil pipeline; the success of which relied on securing the support of such stalwartly pro-Western countries as Turkey, Italy and southern Europe.

Politically, multipolarity also yielded results, most visibly in the Middle East. Presently, Russia is the only major player in the Quarter to have functional ties and trust with both Israel and its Arab neighbours, including Hamas. This has given it a much greater stature on the world stage than its relative economic, political and military weakness could have otherwise allowed.

But if Russia uses multipolarity to temporarily ‘break off’ smaller countries from the Western bandwagon for its own benefits, it sometimes pays them back by itself acting as a balancing force.

Two recent examples stand out. The first is the sinking of the South Korean warship the Cheonan. Fingers were immediately pointed at the DPRK, and an international (Western-staffed) investigation had found the North guilty.

Immediately, the anglophone press went to town with headlines like “South Korean ship sunk by crack squad of [North Korean] ‘human torpedoes” while Hillary Clinton warned Pyonyang that it would face “consequences” for sinking a South Korean warship”.

But a much less publicised investigation of the ship’s carcass by a team of Russian Navy experts “had not found convincing evidence of North Korea’s involvement”.

Of course, it’s likely that such an assessment may have been influenced by more than just the facts. But so what? Russia’s symbolic dissent had a calming effect on a potentially dangerous standoff, allowing North Korea to save face and perhaps preventing its from escalating the situation further out of a sense of being besieged and cornered.

In Iran, Russia’s policy really shone this week.  It signed on to the US-led sanctions regime, keeping itself in the West’s good books; but for such a concession it also extracted a major price: a watering down of the sanctions resolution to keep open a loophole allowing for…anti-aircraft weapons exports to Iran from Russia!

In the end, Russia’s decade long cultivation of multipolar ties with both the West and Iran allowed it to simultaneously 1) remain on the record opposing nuclear proliferation 2) side with the West, 3) continue to make money from business with Iran and 4) being Iran’s only big protector, no matter how lukewarm, against a hostile, Iraq style UN ultimatum.

Self-serving, yes. But hard to deny that Russia’s intricate power-play has also made the spectre of war with Iran that little bit dimmer.

So far, this limited multipolarity has served Russia well, and in some sense, the world. But as its relationships continue to expand and deepen, it will become harder and harder for Russia to remain everyone’s friend. It will have to make choices and sooner or later either clearly align itself with one bloc or another.

The only alternative would be to assert itself as a ‘third way’ in and of itself; not strong enough to be a superpower counterweight to the US on its own, but acting as a kind of pied piper to a host of smaller countries ‘defecting’ on individual issues.

But that could only work if it is backed up with real power, the relative lack of which Russia’s nimble diplomatic footwork has done much to obscure, perhaps even from its own policymakers.

If Russia overreaches and is caught out, it may face the same painful fate that it meets out to its own dissidents, whose determination to live “as if” is no match for the police clubs.