By Anton Evstratov
Vladimir Putin’s talks and the G-7 meeting that followed revealed a tendency for Russia to return to the G7 as an eighth participant, which in turn would make it an outpost of the West in Central Asia.
On August 19, Russian and French presidents met in Fort Bregancon on the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the apparently heated discussions behind closed doors of the situation in Ukraine, Syria and other regions, with the cameras both leaders seemed satisfied with their results. It was in Fort Bregancon for the first time in many years that the idea of Russia returning to the G7 came from the lips of a Western politician of such a high level.
At the same time, at the summit of the G-7 itself, Macron was much less loyal to the Russian Federation, disagreeing with the thought of the American leader Donald Trump and the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, who joined in on the expediency of Russia being at the next meeting of the organization – even as an observer.
The G7 has not agreed to accept Russia into its membership, and at the moment negative views on this kind of perspective prevail there, however, the discourse is launched – and this is very important. Gradually, the opinion of the organization’s members is likely to change towards greater loyalty – especially against the backdrop of the Russian influence on the still unresolved Syrian crisis and on the problematic for the West as a whole and for the United States and its regional allies – in particular, the DPRK, as well as Iran, Washington’s dialogue with which has stalled.
However, the Central Asian issue is also an equally important aspect that dictates the need for Western leaders to at least discuss the possibility of Russia’s participation in the G7. In Central Asia, it would seem that there are no visible confrontations and opportunities for explosions, armed conflicts and economic sanctions. However, this region is the very border zone, the same frontier, in the term of a world-system and geocivilizational analysis, in which the economic, political and cultural influence of the West is closely confronted with the influence of China.
This situation is especially relevant and dangerous for the civilization of Europe and America against the backdrop of the US-China trade war, which Washington has not yet won, and, at the same time, a vector for the United States to withdraw from this region in light of the contraction of US troops in Afghanistan and the subsequent abandonment of this countries.
In fact, even without this, announced a few years ago by Donald Trump, the United States and the West as a whole had relatively weak positions in the region compared to Russia and China, where the former dominated in the military-political sphere, and the latter in the economic sphere.
On the one hand, the discourse of human rights and democracy, the attempts of pressure on the Central Asian states by the United States and its allies, clearly did not justify itself, affecting only a few layer of pro-Western (mainly educated in European and American scientific centers) intelligentsia. On the other hand, the banal geographical remoteness of the West from the region affected.
In this regard, apparently, very soon all the geopolitical processes in Central Asia will finally come down to a confrontation between Russia and China. In this context, in order not to cede the region permanently, the West as a whole and the United States as its current incontestable leader need to choose a side. Their relations with Moscow and Beijing are tense and problematic, however, on the one hand, the Russian Federation, having much less economic opportunities, is less dangerous, and on the other, with all its local characteristics and problems, it is undoubted an integral part of European and Western civilization as a whole.
It was the last thought, albeit quite veiled, voiced by French President Emmanuel Macron during his meeting with Vladimir Putin. It is especially relevant and useful to “rely on Russia” in Central Asia, a united Europe, which has always acted in the region as an assistant and “reserve player” of the stronger United States, and has never had strong independent positions there. Thus, the fact that the idea was first expressed precisely by Macron has unambiguous logic. Later, the French leader, yielding to the positions of Donald Tusk and Angela Merkel, who were more focused on the problems of the Ukrainian settlement, had to play back at the G7 summit, but Europe will no doubt return to the question of “returning Russia”.
Trump and the Russian Federation also have many unresolved issues on which their positions diverge, but at the same time, it is Russia that can become a bridge for the United States to establish mutual understanding with Iran and the Syrian government, and, most importantly, help balance China in Central Asia.
One cannot but note the benefit for Moscow that it can derive from rapprochement with the West in its Central Asian policy. Earlier, the Russian Federation was focused in Central Asia on the confrontation of the USA and the EU, which turned out to be the wrong vectors and led it not only to the brink, in fact, of economic surrender to China, but also to the prospect of Beijing’s military penetration into the region.
At the moment, Moscow cannot confront China alone – its economy is 8 times weaker than the Chinese. However, with the support of Americans and Europeans, as part of the common Western world, it will seriously increase its potential – not only economic, but also, for example, ideological. Against the background of a possible weakening of the sanctions regime by the more loyal West in such a prospect and its concessions in other regions, such a scenario is, to put it mildly, desirable for Moscow.
The rapprochement between Russia and the Western countries, outlined in recent weeks, will undoubtedly be useful to each of the parties. However, there are still too many cornerstones and unresolved issues between them that make it impossible to move in this direction as fast as we would like.
The Russian Federation is not going to return Crimea to Ukraine, which was the reason for the exclusion of Moscow from the G7, and the EU and the United States are not ready for concessions on this issue, nor in Ukraine as a whole. Nevertheless, they have already, in fact, lost with the Russian Federation in Syria and they are demonstrating the readiness of similar steps in the Iranian direction. This means that there is a vector for rapprochement, and the prospects outlined above are real.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)
Image Credit: Alexei Druzhinin\TASS