By Mikhail Delyagin
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, Russia, in Russian 16 Apr 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Apr 18, 2004

The following is the text of an article by Mikhail Delyagin, head of the Institute of Problems of Globalization think-tank, headlined "Russia needs Bush" and published by the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 16 April. Subheadings have been inserted editorially:

The Russian leadership's striking foreign policy failures in relations with Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia merely highlight its overall strategic slide towards the consistent curtailment of its influence in the world. What at the time of Lourdes and Cam Ranh [ex-Soviet bases in Cuba and Vietnam] - and against the background of vigorous rhetoric about Russia's greatness - seemed a misunderstanding, a vestige of Gorbachevism and Kozyrevism [Yeltsin's Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev], today seems like a consistent policy, necessary as a payment to the West for its taciturn agreement to the policy of the consistent abridgement of democracy in Russia.

You get the feeling that the Russian leadership has taken fright once and for all at the idea of [ex-Foreign Minister Yevgeniy] Primakov's "U-turn over the Atlantic" [following NATO's bombing of Serbia] and has turned its foreign policy into a instrument merely to prove to its strategic rivals its own weakness, insignificance and inconsistency, combined with resolve persistently only to ignore its own national interests.

However paradoxical it may seem, there is some point in this: global competition is increasingly coming down to a clash of civilizations in the struggle for resources, including natural resources, and Russia is not simply the world's largest storehouse for these resources but also the only place where all forms of expansion of different civilizations developing today come into collision. There is the financial and economic expansion of the West (gradually separating into the United States and continental Europe) and the socio-religious expansion of Islam plus the ethnic expansion of China.

Perhaps today we simply do not need to go to the world - the world will come to us - and by resolving our own domestic problems we will thus ensure the harmonization of world relations or, if we fail, our own destruction. Because the place of the weak person in the sharing of labour is obvious: he does most of the work, receives an insignificant part of the reward for success and the main part of the penalty for failure.

However, this "regulation of global problems on one's own territory" requires as a categorical condition of our survival not simply that we pay exclusive attention to everything taking place in stronger countries but also that we strenuously search for and hold on to strategic partners objectively interested if not in strengthening then at least in preserving Russia.

Dearth of allies "can dishearten even the most inveterate optimist"

The practical search for such partners can dishearten even the most inveterate optimist.

First of all the European Union is slipping away. Its consistent disregard for Russia's vital interests is merely the outward manifestation of the lack of any interest in our country as anything other than a source of energy. From that viewpoint at least half of all Russians and the entire territory south of the main export pipelines and east of the Yenisey are surplus to requirements, and represent only nonproductive expenses with no economic justification.

For China Russia is a source of dwindling industrial technologies and virtually inexhaustible resources, primarily energy, the lack of which could in the next few decades simply stop China's development in its tracks.

Stable access to Russian resources for the Chinese is not a question of profit but of life and death. In a situation in which Russia is inclined to restrict that access by succumbing to pressure from a China-fearing United States and Japan, its expansion could acquire obvious features in principle not inherent in Chinese civilization.

It is particularly dangerous that the openly irrational infringement of Chinese interests during the privatization of Slavneft and the determination of the route for the Angara pipeline could reveal to China the weakness of Russia today and lead accordingly to a change in how it is perceived by the Chinese rulers.

With regard to the Islamic world, the situation is even simpler: a weak country which is largely atheistic or which preaches a moderate "home-grown" Islam, a country which has grown poor and is therefore inclined towards the ideals of social justice (and which is disillusioned with communism!) is a simply ideal target for Islam's expansion. There is no ground for compromise.

USA "monster" but Russia's "only consistent strategic ally"

However paradoxical it may seem, the only consistent strategic ally for Russia under these conditions is the United States, an aggressor which has destroyed three countries in the past five years (one side effect of which has been the explosive increase in the amount of Afghan heroin reaching Europe and Russia), who has raised a worldwide financial tidal wave of speculative capital, who has achieved dominance in the world economy and politics and driven mankind into a profound structural crisis of globalization. It is this monster which is seriously interested in a weak, disorganized Russia with highly uncertain prospects.

The reason is simple: the United States has embarked on a head-on confrontation with Islamic civilization, which it articulates in politically correct terms as "the fight against international terrorism" and which includes countries that in formal terms are friendly with it. And the United States is being drawn into a systemic, protracted confrontation both with a rapidly strengthening China and with a stagnant but still powerful and autonomy-seeking Europe.

The acts of terrorism in Spain, which altered the course of the election and ensured a surprise victory for the left-wingers (and accordingly the country's withdrawal from American influence which in the "old" Europe is confined to Berlusconi alone), have shown that even the unbeaten US trump card of recent years in the shape of international terrorism has started to turn against it.

In this situation it is in acute need of allies, and Russia as a target for the expansion of all the civilizations competing with the United States is objectively a key element of the "theatre of global competition" for that country. Russia's preservation even in its present weakened form, even as a target for fierce American criticism (for its corruption and rejection of democracy) is an important factor in the stability of the US-supported world order.

Why Russia needs Bush

It is of fundamental importance that this applies only to Bush and his team.

The 2000 elections showed that the Democrats, in contrast to the Republicans, rely inter alia on ethnic and religious minorities in the United States (although it is only by a big stretch of the imagination that you can call the increasingly influential African American and Hispanic communities "minorities"). So Kerry, for all his personal appeal, is inclined not to curb but to appease the Islamic and Chinese civilization challenges. That policy, in the style of the 1938 Munich Pact, means the United States is throwing its strategic rivals a substantial "bone" whose digestion will consume their time and strength. Today only Russia can be a "bone" equal to the appetites of these rivals.

The Democrats' closeness to the Russian "liberal fundamentalists" is also important to us. The Democrats' victory in the United States will bring a whole series of decomposing political corpses back to the forefront of our political life.

So Russia needs Bush to win the presidential election in the United States. He must be helped, if only by putting up with the only partly unfair campaign criticism. We should not hope for dividends: the only reward can be the preservation in power in the United States of forces which alone in the world today, despite their attitude towards us, have an objective need for Russia's existence for the implementation of their policy.