Igor Ivanov and Andrey Kortunov attended the World Peace Forum held in Beijing on July 7-8th

On July 7-8th, World Peace Forum was held in Beijing, organized by one of the leading Chinese universities, The Tsinghua University, in cooperation with the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs. The Forum was attended by the RIAC President Igor Ivanov, and the RIAC General Director Andrey Kortunov.

On July 7-8th, World Peace Forum was held in Beijing, organized by one of the leading Chinese universities, The Tsinghua University, in cooperation with the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.

The Forum was addressed by Vice President of the Chinese Peoples Republic, Mr. Xi Jinping, who outlined the basic principles of foreign policy strategy for the country at the present stage. Much attention in the speech of the Chinese leader was given to the increasing role of "public diplomacy" in an increasingly globalized world process.

The Forum was attended by the RIAC President Igor Ivanov, and the RIAC General Director Andrey Kortunov.

Igor Ivanov gave a speech at a plenary session of the Forum:

" 1. If I were to limit myself to only one word reflecting the current state of international relations, the word would be ‘globalization’. These days we talk about globalization in all fields of human activities – in business and culture, in education and science, in environment and social development. Many fundamental dimensions of our lives that used to be constrained by national borders are now exposed to global trends, opportunities and challenges.

No doubt, globalization has a profound impact on how we understand international security. For the first time in the history of the humankind, international security becomes truly indivisible: a military conflict or even a political crisis in one corner of the world has an immediate impact on the situation in many other parts of our planet, even the most remote ones. We can no longer tolerate regional and local wars or instabilities not only on moral grounds, but also due to our globalized interests.

2. Enthusiasts of globalization often emphasize one particular dimension of this trend: in the age of globalization international relations become more democratic and inclusive than ever before. This can hardly be denied; today international relations represent an open system, not a close shop of select players like it was the case in the XIX and even in the XX century. States no longer have any monopoly on international politics – private sector, transnational movements, international media and even small NGOs – all these institutions now have unprecedented opportunities to participate not only in discussing international matters, but in shaping the agenda of global politics as well. The world is becoming flat – new horizontal ties are often more important than traditional vertical hierarchies.

3. In my view, it is a positive development. However, we should not overlook the risks and potential threats associated with this development. One of the most evident side effects of globalization is the rapid accumulation of independent variables, external uncertainties that affect our lives. We now live in the world, where our comfort, our wealth, our security and sometimes even our mere lives depend on factors that we cannot possibly predict, and all the more – to control. We become hostages to decisions that are not made by us, developments that we do not initiate and forces that we know very little about. No wonder that the opposition to globalization is gaining momentum. People all over the world want to be the masters of their destinies, not helpless pawns on the global chessboard.

4. Can we rely on international organizations to help us to bring back stability and predictability in international relations? No doubt, the role of these organizations – both global and regional – cannot be underestimated. However, history tells us that international organizations are as efficient as their constituent member states want them to be. Just look at our chronic inability to do anything meaningful about reforming the United Nations. How many UN reform plans have been discussed over last twenty years! And the net result is that UN is failing to cope with numerous crises and conflicts and becomes the target of a fierce criticism practically all over the world. Or take global financial institutions – like the World Bank or IMF. For decades we have discussions on how to reform the international financial architecture, how to upgrade organizations designed in 1940s. But the real change so far is quite modest, to say the least.

5. In the end of the day, all the changes in the international relations notwithstanding, nobody can replace major powers as key players in global politics, especially in the critically important questions of international security. Their ability (or inability) to interact with each other, to find the right balance of interests, to work toward an acceptable compromise define the fundamentals of the international system, set the overall framework with opportunities and limitations for other actors and players. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the major power relationships form the skeleton of the international system, while the flesh, the blood, the skin of the system is supplied by other players. Take the skeleton out – and the whole construction will collapse.

6. Of course, one can ask a legitimate question: how can a nation qualify as a major power? Traditionally by major powers we meant permanent members of the UN Security Council – US, Russia, China, UK and France. Their veto power in the Security Council puts these five nations in a very special league, implying substantial additional rights and responsibilities for the state of international security. These powers have the bulk of the world’s nuclear arsenals as well as the military arsenals in general. They are involved in most of regional crises and peacekeeping operations. In sum, the “Big Five” have many reasons to claim a special role in maintaining the global peace and security.

7. However, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council cannot possibly monopolize the status of “major powers”. The world is changing very fast and so does the “currency of power” in international relations. Today, the military might – either nuclear or conventional - can no longer be considered the ultimate foundation of the global influence. And if we look at the economic dimension of the international system, we should recognize the critical importance of other major powers – Germany and Japan, India and Brazil, and so on. Not surprisingly, many experts believe that the definition of “major powers” should be applied to all participants to G8 and G20, because these are exactly the countries, which shape the current state and the future of the global economy. Some would even argue that G20 is a too exclusive club and it should be broadened to include another ten or twenty nations with a significant economic and political weight. Other experts maintain that the state of the global economy depends largely on G2 – the United States and China and only these two countries can be regarded as major global players – at least in the economic sense of the word. In sum, if we move away from the military dimension to the economic one, the notion of a ‘major power’ becomes elusive and ambiguous.

8. Still, even this, extended definition of major powers should not be taken for granted. Economic power is very important in the modern world, but it is clearly not the only game in town. Our day to day life is more and more affected by non material things. And, consequently, the international influence of nations nowadays depends not only on their respective GNPs, but also on the quality of education, on the richness of culture, on the vibrancy of civil society, on the creativity of intellectuals, etc. Nobody can deny the significance of human capital in the modern world. A country with a small territory and scares natural resources, with no nuclear weapons can still claim leadership positions in the world in innovation, science, community development and attractive lifestyles.

The integration processes in the global economy, science, culture, social and political development are gaining momentum. No country in the world, even the most powerful and self-sufficient one, is able to resolve all its problems singlehandedly. Isolationism of any form leads to a dead-end – it dooms a country to stagnation, retardation, and unavoidable decline. And yet, an effective involvement in the global political, economic, technological, social, and other processes requires an exceptionally fine adjustment of multiple foreign policy instruments most of which we are only learning to use.

9. International leadership, above all, means responsibility, not an ability to impose your will on the rest of the mankind. “Be the chief, but never the lord” – the maxim of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu may be applied to all major powers in the XXI century. And to be “the chief” means to demonstrate an example of the responsible international behavior, which other actors of world politics could follow. It might sound trivial and even pathetic, but there are no other ways to provide for a stable and legitimate world order.

10. What do I mean in particular by a responsible international behavior?

First of all, major powers should resist the temptation to pursue opportunistic, short term gains in foreign policy to the detriment of international stability. Only that countries are capable of leadership, countries that are willing even to sacrifice their momentary interests for the sake of achieving strategic goals and accomplishing systemic objectives that do not fall within the framework of their most immediate national interests.

We all know that after the end of the Cold War the United States tried to capitalize on the changing balance of powers in order to secure its positions as the unquestionable global leader. The idea was to construct and to maintain a unipolar world with the center in Washington, DC. The results of such sort sighted policies turned out to be disastrous for US itself: America got involved in a number of regional crises, lost support of many allies and partners, and ended up with huge budget deficits and with a dramatic increase of Anti-American sentiments all over the world. Short term gains led to strategic defeats and major losses – for US in the first place, but for international stability as well. If the US leadership has demonstrated more wisdom, maturity and readiness for multilateral decisions, we would have lived in a different world today.

11. Second, major powers should do their best in order to separate their foreign policy agendas from their respective domestic politics. I know that it is very hard today: international affairs have a direct impact on domestic political agendas. Nevertheless, if any fluctuations in the domestic political life can change the course of our foreign policies, what kind of continuity and predictability can we claim? How can our international partners trust us and rely upon us? I believe that the foreign policy of a major power cannot and should not be partisan; it should rather reflect long term national interests representing all significant political, social and economic groups with a stake in international relations. The art of the political leadership is to reconcile various group interests, to find a common denominator for colliding aspirations, expectations and needs, not to serve just one political or social constituency.

12. Third, I would strongly oppose the idea that foreign policies of major powers can be cynical. True, realism in foreign policy is indispensible; without realism no foreign policy can be successful. However, there is a border line between realism and cynicism that we should not cross. For instance, we can have different positions on very important matters, but we have to avoid making use of each other’s mistakes or perceived weaknesses. We can promote our values, but we should try not to use double standards in this promotion. Integrity in foreign policy does matter, and the international public opinion is not something that can always be ignored – even by major powers.

13. Fourth, major powers nowadays have to demonstrate the ability to exercise a global intellectual leadership. As I’ve mentioned earlier, an abundance of natural resources, large territory or population, exceptional military or economic power is not a substitute to the intellectual potential in foreign policy. History can give us many examples of how major powers failed to cope with problems of international security not because they lacked resources, but only because they did not have the right vision, imagination or could not catch up with a rapidly changing international environment. Changes are unavoidable, and the essential component of international leadership is the change management rather than the change resistance.

14. You do not need to look into the crystal ball to predict a lot of security problems that major powers will have to deal with in the coming years. The current trends are not reassuring: there has been a sharp rise in the number of local and regional conflicts in the world over the past two decades. Hopes that the end of the longest and greatest geopolitical confrontation of the 20th century would automatically lead to world peace, stronger international security and radical disarmament have not come to pass. Old ethnic, religious and social tensions have surfaced after being artificially kept under the lid for almost half a century. The unprecedented rise of instability on the regional and local levels was therefore seen as a price we were paying for the rapid demolition of the old bi-polar system. A few years on, these explanations no longer hold water. The Cold War did not end yesterday, and not even a decade ago. How much longer do we have to wait until the world returns to the normal state? Why does the residual potential for conflict in world politics keep getting stronger instead of becoming a spent force? Now that the world has entered the second decade of the 21st century, do we still have the right to blame our problems on the difficult heritage of the previous century?

15. The situation is something of a paradox. Responsible politicians in Washington, Brussels, Beijing and Moscow have very similar views of the global challenges and threats to international security. We all think along the same lines; we are being kept awake at night by the same problems, and the proposed solutions we come up with are not much different. I do not want to oversimplify things: not all our opinions can be reconciled to produce a common approach. But this way or another, we are all united by the shared challenges and threats we face. It would not be an exaggeration to say that today we have a major powers’ consensus on matters of international security – something we did not have for the most part of the previous century.

16. One would have thought therefore that the task of building a reliable global security system is a merely technical challenge. One would have thought that the shared fundamental interests of the key actors should inevitably lead to the creation of effective cooperation mechanisms. But we have to admit that such mechanisms are either absent or ineffectual. A shared security space remains a dream.

17. In my opinion, since the end of the Cold War the world politics has seen the rise of a very dangerous trend which explains many of our present difficulties. Or should I say, there have been several trends - but all of them have led to a fragmentation of the shared global security space. By the early 1990s it had become clear that a fundamental restructuring of the international system built during the Cold War would be difficult, costly and politically painful. A probably unconscious choice was then made in favor of conserving the old system, even at the cost of allowing localized or regional outbreaks of instability. That choice was based, explicitly or implicitly, on several assumptions.

First, it was assumed that the security of the West (or even the entire North) can be separated from the security of the East (or South), and that local upheavals would not upset the balance of the global system. Second, it was assumed that efforts to freeze conflicts can be separated from efforts to achieve their final settlement; it was thought that time always works for the peace-makers. Third, it was assumed that security in general can be separated from development. The belief was that once the shooting has been stopped, the responsibility for the situation can be handed over to some sensible forces in the region, which would then be able to prevent the conflict from flaring up again, with minimal assistance from the outside.

18. Let me emphasize that none of these assumptions was completely unreasonable. They can be viewed as cynical, immoral or selfish – but they are not entirely irrational. In some way, the belief that security does not have to be shared and that local conflicts can somehow sort themselves out can be compared to the naive hope that the world economy can sort itself out if only market mechanisms are allowed to take their natural course. Both of these assumptions have in the end turned out to be wrong. As a result, over the past two decades none of the serious regional conflicts has been resolved, and new ones are appearing all the time.

19. The situation we are facing is compounded by the fact that the traditional instruments of preventing or resolving regional and local conflicts seem to have been exhausted.

20. It appears that radically new approaches to resolving regional and local conflicts must be sought. The results of humanitarian interventions in the past couple of decades, the operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have demonstrated that the old methods simply don't work anymore. All too often intervention by external powers becomes yet another factor of instability. It destroys the local social and political relationships, economic systems and long-standing cultural traditions. It undermines the legitimacy of both the government and the opposition. The result is chronic instability which can blow up into a violent conflict at any moment.

21. I do not pretend to have ready solutions to all the problems of conflict prevention and settlement. Neither am I claiming that we must abandon all attempts to reform the existing security institutions; they still have an important role to play in safeguarding global and regional stability. But I do believe that trying to build a new security system for a new globalized world using last century’s templates is a completely hopeless task. The time of hierarchies in world politics is gone. A globalized world – if ever we achieve a globalized world - will probably begin as a tight network of mutually complementary international regimes. As for the institutions, they will be either reformed or created anew as and when the need for them arises.

I believe that this approach, based on a network of separate but interconnected regimes, can be applied to both regional and global security. There are plenty of suitable platforms for such regimes. They include joint measures against terrorism, prevention of nuclear and missile proliferation, cyber-security, managing migration, the future of energy and the environmental situation in Eurasia, countering drug trafficking and transnational crime - the list can go on and on. Efforts to establish such regimes should probably be made simultaneously in many areas; a breakthrough in one area can help us to succeed in several related areas as well.

22. Each of these regimes should be based on its own procedures, its own individual list of participants, its own geography and principles of working out a common approach. The role of individual nations in the various regimes will be different: the problems of nuclear energy or migration are not equally pressing for every country.

Experience shows that the effectiveness of international regimes depends on a whole number of factors.

First, such regimes appear only in areas where there are significant shared interests – and these interests must actually be perceived by the participants as shared. That perception is, I believe, key to the success of many sub-regional formats of cooperation, including cooperation on the Eurasian continent. The same applies to various specific international regimes that serve a clear function, such as the international regime of civil aviation safety. Such regimes would obviously be easier to build in technical, politically neutral areas, gradually moving on to more sensitive subjects.

Second, the efficiency of international regimes depends in many important ways on the involvement of the international expert community. Joint political declarations mean little unless they are built on a solid foundation of expert analysis and proposals. It would be no exaggeration to say that international regimes only become successful when the experts and specialists representing the member states start to speak the same language.

Third, one clear advantage of regimes compared to a rigid institutional system is their openness and flexibility. We should make use of that advantage by inviting all the interested parties to join in. As a rule, regimes do not give their participants the right of veto; they do not make a clear distinction between the great powers and all the other nations. Indeed, in some cases they even include non-state actors which have a role to play in world politics.

Fourth, regimes are an effective instrument of reducing uncertainty in the relations between the key players. Trust and channels of communication established in one area reduce the risks and uncertainties in other areas.

Fifth – and this, perhaps, is the greatest difficulty – while recognizing the general principle that security is always shared in this day and age, we must learn to isolate and shield the successful international regimes from problems, crises and conflicts in other areas. Our world has become interdependent - but we must not allow our security cooperation to be limited to the lowest common denominator. We must not allow another crisis in our relations – and such crises might yet break out from time to time – to throw our cooperation in all areas back to square one. The practice of linking progress in one area to concessions in other unrelated areas must be abandoned. The principle of indivisibility must strengthen the overall level of regional and global security rather than undermining it.

23. The regime-based path towards greater international security will require persistence and many years of painstaking work. But in the end it will probably prove more productive than the ambitious plans of the past two decades which remain firmly on paper.

24. Of course, as we develop various security regimes and make them part of the international system we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from making the existing international organizations more effective. There have been plenty of proposals to that effect. There is no deficit of new ideas. The real problem is the deficit of political will, commitment, and readiness by the key players to sacrifice immediate tactical advantage in pursuit of strategic interests. There is a clear and urgent need to begin a cautious but profound reform of the UN system; to strengthen the role of regional organizations by delegating to them some of the UN powers; to make better use of the potential of public diplomacy and of the private sector in conflict resolution. There is an equally pressing need for firm steps in the reform of international law, including a rethinking of such basic definitions as “aggression”, “sovereignty”, “the right to self-determination", "humanitarian intervention", "information security", and many others.

25. The world has gone through the first ten years of the new century. It is now crystal clear that this century is not going to be free from problems, challenges and conflicts. We cannot avoid all the risks lying ahead of us, but we should do our best to reduce them. The task of managing the emerging international system looks formidable, sometimes – close to impossible. But in the end of the day it is our vision, commitment and persistence that make a difference. As Confucius put it, “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop”. Let us keep moving."